finding time to breath

so while i have a minute where my thoughts are still and i can breath deeply...

my days seem to get away from me before i realize where i am with what seems like a nonstop build up of busyness. sometimes i'm ok

with this go go go but then i realize i can't remember when the last it was that i was free to write in my journal or take a nap or just think. any second i let the gears slow down i get bombarded with reminders that i'm not done yet, my check list for the day has just been revised and now i have ten more things to do.

sometimes i find myself getting so frustrated that i get overwhelmed and claustrophobic that in one way or another i end up exploding. it's the shorts moments when i can actually breath that take me a step back though, making me realize that i need to learn to 'move like water' [some advice i received this week].

i realized today that i've witnessed a lot of celebrations in the last few days and weeks.

some were hard but as a whole wonderful, as three of the boys i worked with were adopted during the last few weeks. it was hard to let them go, seeing apart of the Agape family leave. but at the same time, witnessing people becoming parents was so amazing and knowing that now those boys will have a family of their own just overwhelmed me.

today we celebrated the near end of my roommates Maiken and Hanna's time here in thailand. they don't leave till right after Christmas but with all the festivities going on, we had to have their party a little early. I have really learned to love their friendship and watching them work as they are so committed and really love the children. I'm going to miss their laughs as my house will be a little more quite and a little less danish with out them.

side note: they made danish rice pudding and it kicks so much ass. i've never made my dislike for rice pudding a secret but their recipe made me a believer.

i can't believe it but Christmas is coming so soon upon me and i can barely get over the fact that i'm still wearing shorts in december. seeing Christmas celebrated so sparsely here makes me excited to even see a fake tree standing in someone's living room. this last saturday i had the pleasure of baking cookies all day with sarah, amy and our friend shanna. it felt good to be back in the kitchen along with all the cooking mishaps that are destined to happen. such as the salt slash sugar mix up sarah and i had with our first batch of molasses cookies. luckily we did some quality control before we actually baked them, only to realize what we thought was the sugar container was really salt. even after trying to possibly kick out the salt with some actual sugar, the batch had to be tossed.

esther [anna's mom, my home-away-from-home mom] used this experience to remind us that we are the salt of the earth. and honestly, until that moment, i never understood that story from the bible. so maybe that cookie dough didn't go completely to waste.

i keep waiting to feel like i've gotten the swing of things but i still end up confused every once in a while. trying to find a rhythem to my day to day can be difficult but maybe that's where i'm getting it all wrong in the first place. maybe i'm just trying to hard to make thailand fit for me, and really it's the other way around. i have to learn what it really means to be flexible and realize so called 'plans' can and will be changed or disregarded. i guess this is all one big lesson on patience...

my favorite.