Today is the halfway point of my trip, but it doesn´t feel like it´s been that long at all! Time really moves fast...I think it´s been just over a week since my last post. It´s tough to get to a computer for long enough to write a decent post. I started to post last Sunday, but never got a chance to finish. This is what I had started writing (I´m going to complete the paragraph now):
So Brazil got knocked out of the World Cup yesterday. It was kind of the last thing I expected to happen. All the Brazilians were so confident that their team would win this year, I just assumed it was something that would soon come to fruition. It´s funny how sometimes the things we think we can count on the most are not always there. Take Angel, for example (See previous post for a little more info.) Everyone thought he would surely stay with Idolos for at least a couple more weeks; but when the votes came in, he had to go home. I think it´s easy to depend on things, take things for granted, or assume that they will always be there. Angel leaving Idolos and Brazil getting knocked out of the World Cup were two things that caught me by suprise, and they´ve made me realize that I should be thankful for the opportunity every moment holds. We never know for sure what we can count on to be the same tomorrow, because change is always taking place. Every day we face the choice to live the fullest life possible or to wait and try to live a full live the next day. But tomorrow may not hold the same opportunities that today does. Tomorrow holds "a new good" for each of us--(a C.S. Lewis quote that my friend Chad told me about)--but today holds its own ´good.´ ( I hope that made sense.) It´s always easy to wish for the past or wait impatiently for the future, but it´s a beautiful thing when we can simply be grateful for the good and the bad that exist for us today. I know I´m not the best writer in the world, so I´m not sure if I communicated exactly what I was thinking in my head. Hopefully we have at least some shared meaning.
Anyway, you´re probably wondering how my life has been, since I´ve been so infrequent in my postings. I was thinking yesterday about how my week had gone, and the words that came to mind suprised me: "This week was pretty normal." I find it a little humorous that I chose to describe living at a TV station in Brazil with the words ´pretty normal,´ but I think it just means that I´m actually settling into somewhat of a routine here. For the last two weeks I´ve spent Monday through Friday living in the Idolos house and then I´ve come to my friend Lucas´s house for the weekend. Lucas´s family is extremely warm and welcoming, and I think their house reflects their hospitality...what I mean by that is I feel very much at home here, both because of their welcoming attitude and because of the house itself. Here´s a picture from their kitchen that gives a taste (this pun was accidental) of what the house looks like. In a way, the house reminds me of my grandparents.
Oh yeh...back to how my life has been. Nothing incredibly exciting or out of the ordinary has taken place beyond the fact that I wake up everyday to find myself in Brazil. Every day still feels somewhat like a really good dream. I definantly miss my family and some of my closest friends very much, but I know that the next month before I see them will pass very quickly. I hope that until then, I can keep the attitude of being thankful for the good that the present time holds for me.
