throw a stone and watch the ripples flow…

the newest reason i hate them being, they’re terrible for walking in the rain! absolute rubbish. who invented flip-flops anyway? psychos.
slipping and sliding all the way over to frisbee the other evening, i just thought, screw this, ditched them, and walked the rest of the way barefoot. much more productive.

the other day was the iv new student picnic….they had a few tables set up – one was a table for church of the good shepherd, i think they were called. so i went up to go talk to your one who was running the table. i don’t know how it came up but, he learned that dad worked for whm, and he got so excited. it was so funny. apparently he’s a huge fan of world harvest, he absolutely loves it. he said he’d met hunter and thought he was amazing, and then started looking further into whm. he said he loved everything they represented and all of their ideas and programmes, and pretty much everything about them. which was so cool, it was so good to talk to him, he was so enthusiastic and curious about everything.
so we talked for ages (so long, in fact, that i nearly missed the whole dorm small group division thing), he was so excited. apparently he and his wife are interested in going overseas with whm, particularly to my republic state, so he was particularly excited when i was from there.
i highly recommended the dpc for a sort of check-things-out trip. look at me, look at me, recruiting!

so that made my day. not the recruiting part. the conversation part.

and tonight was just a *brilliant* experience…i spent most of the afternoon with my hall mates…which was great…we went to dinner together…which was great…we hung around afterwards…which was great…and decided to go to this music thing on the im fields…which was also great. so we walked over, no problems, got in line, no problems, chatted away to each other, no problems…
then close to the entrance this woman stopped me and asked to look in my bag. so i opened it up, she stuck her flashlight inside and saw my water bottle, which was given to me in colorado. which also happened to be completely empty.
“you can’t bring that water bottle in,” she said.
“sorry?” i said.
“you can’t bring that water bottle in,” she repeated. “you’ll have to throw it away.”
i blanked. “i can’t throw it away,” i said.
“you’ll have to if you want to get in.”
“i can’t throw it away,” i repeated, and backed away.
“abby, what..?” chris said from the line. “where are you going?”
“i can’t throw the bottle away,” i said again, rather stupidly, and walked off.

they rang me shortly after that, wanting to know what that all was about. i said i was just going to drop my bottle back off at the dorm and then come back. which i was planning on doing, but then i got sidetracked. so now i’m sitting here puzzling over what i’m going to tell them. how am i ever going to be able to explain it? they’re not going to get it. i mean, who gets upset over throwing out a cheap plastic water bottle? but it’s not that – not to me – it’s so much more -
but i know i’m going to be communicating one way and they’re going to be communicating the other – so this is going to have interesting results. right now though, i’m too busy congratulating myself on exposing myself as a freak within the first week. well done. there’re much better ways of showing myself to be a tck…ah well. maybe i’m not giving them enough credit.
anyway, i think i can hear them coming down the hall…this is going to be interesting…

i left it too late, it is now half one (in the morning), but i have unpacked everything i own, and i am just so happy to not be living out of a suitcase anymore! so happy.

so we are back from colorado, back from the reunion, and now on college campus. and i will have time for more hopefully, right now…my duvet is looking pretty good…of course that could be because it is freezing in here…so cold it could actually be the arctic…but no wind, so that is a plus. although, i do like wind. just not when it could potentially be as cold as the arctic. so it’s good now. that there’s no wind. ok. i’m just going to go before this turns into a completely random stream of consciousness with lots and lots of run-on sentences, which happened when i emailed a friend of mine just about twenty minutes ago, which turned out interestingly, but -
oh wait it’s starting to happen now – nooooooooooooooooooo

ok ok ok i’m going bye.

yesterday i printed off all of the information we need for debrief. we’re pretty apprehensive – we were wondering what we’ll do there (besides the whole debriefing part) and started joking about it -
’swimming…outdoor activites…maybe some team building projects…there’s sure to be some sort of craft…’ pause. ‘oh come on, there’s got to be crafts!’
and we both started laughing because that’s what you do.

we slag it off because we’re apprehensive and unwilling to go – but in the end we’ll probably end up loving it – just like mti, just like greece. but somehow it feels different.

but i kind of am looking forward to it as well – well maybe not looking forward to, more relieved – if it means i can get out of the house, if i can do something besides shop and mill around. because i try to do things that use my brain but unfortunately every time i try to focus my brain just kind of collapses and refuses to do anything or engage. won’t even go places i try to make it go because i think it will help. deadpan.
and if it means i will stop or i will have someone to help me and i won’t feel like this, or as intensely like this, or even just a little less like this.

and yet right now it just feels selfish and self-indulgent.
but…i miss the pearliness of the sky and the myriad of colour in the sea and the purple of the hills in the background and the unpredictability of all three. and i miss laughter and people and buildings and streets and irish on the signs. and i miss smells and sounds and imprints on my memory and plenty of other things too. and i miss fuchsia. fuchsia everywhere. 

grandma is very funny with her hand and foot group. and she’s very funny with making me go to bed because our flight is out early tomorrow morning. even though i won’t be able to sleep, and giz won’t either. i expect her any second now. so no more, for tonight.