Christmas Eve Thoughts

Warning! This post will consist of a series of rambles that I will continue until I'm tired.

Lets see, I've been sad this week... just becuase Christmas here thus far has beed a kind of let down. But I'm happy right now becuase this sadness was never bad, it was just a thoughtful profound feeling that got me thinking this week. I feel weird that the only presents under the christmas tree are mine to my family and that my mom told me that we would do the gift giving on the 28th.
I'm amazed at how thankful I am right now. I felt like something was wrong in my life after my birthday passed, I just had a weird feeling that life was passing me by and that there was something missing in my choices. I've passed this and have matured a lot in these last weeks. I had been creating walls that were closing in my perspective, I was pushing myself in some areas where I shuld have been taking it slow and setting myself up in situations that weren't healthy for anyone around me.
I have changed, my life here has become so different. Image the person that I was before i left and wipe it out of your memory, I'm not sure how to describe what went down since I've been here but I'm not the same at all. It has all been responses to my new situation and none of it was on purpose. Living in a new family, city, sitting in busses all day, etc. I actually was calculating it one day in the bus. If I'm here for 300 days I will have spent more than 20 days in a bus. This a rough estimate cansidering weekends and vacations... but I'm always on a bus. Up to three hours a day, and then some days I'll get home and my parents will invite me to do some errand, which is of course in car and bus and my day is just being lost. I am still the same in many respects, but perspectives have changed, the soul remains the same as everything else around it is creating a dance of the stimulouses that we recieve from outside. I have become a piece of clay that can be molded day in and day out but I will never change from being clay. This expirience has taught me so much, I just want to fly... in a literal and abstract sense... I havve learned so much here, and I have so many ideas, many that I had before I came to ecuador, but they have become obscured or morphed. Right now I just want to breathe in the enery of the universe and become the best being that I can be, to do this I must work on opening up my soul and eliminating my prejudices and my ideas that have no positive meaning in my life and neither in the lives of those who I'm interacting with. I feel like school and much of the life in the city has begun to close many of my earlier receptors to life, and at the same time has opened new doors that I thought could never be opened.
Today I recieved a call from the president of my rotract club to see I'f I wanted to go and give bags of candy to poor kids in a population in The Valley of Chillos, about a half hour from my house. I jumped on it because I was just talking to my sister about how I needed to do something today. She went with my mom to work at my moms shop in a shopping center in a poor part of quito, she is there now, her cellular was stolen today too, I don't know the details becuase my cell phone broke today too. I met up wit my clubs president who coincedentially actually went to SOU for a year two years ago. So I actually have some one to talk with about the CO-OP, and all of the other cool places in Ashland. We met up with two other guys from Roteract. We drove into this little village where all the women were dressed tradionally and all the houses were concrete rectangles and the community building doubles as a school. We walked into the place to find the kids practicing a presentation for their holiday program. We were t obe a part of the program, in the building were about 25 kids and their mothers. We started off by giving a christams message. I talked about family and how important it is especially duringg christmas. After we talked the kids did a couple of dances and games, we handed out the bags of candy and a couple was there with more bags of candies to give out to the kids. Some kids were overjoyed, these were probably the only presents that they would be getting for christmas. At this time of year there are kids out in the streets that ask for money or christmas gifts. We played a couple of games and did the Tomato dance, which is a dance between two people with a tomato pressed between them on their foreheads. The last team with the tomato wins, it was pretty funny. I actually didn't play because I was too tall. But I cheered on the teams. This expireince really put everything in perspective, how much I appreciate what I have in the states and all that goes with it. I love my life!
We are all in search of fufilment and I am finding what is most rewarding in my life these are the things I will follow, my dreams will carry me on when I'm down becuase I have recieved my answer. My path is a good one, there are some tall mountains and strong rivers but I must keep on walking this path, for on this path I will become the best that I can be... a human being in the fullest sense.
We can all rise to a level of conscience that will eliminate the problems in the world, it all starts with the individual, when the individual has reached ones potential and is ready, one will pass the level of life in the individual sense and begin to see the world as a huge interconected being. We are all one, part of what has put us here is in all of us. We are a part of the one and at the same time are the one. We are beginning to move into a whole new level of thought on planet earth.... I lost my train of thought becuase my sister came home sad about her cell phone, but in my philosophical state I talked her through it and told her just look at where she is in life and how much of difference the cell phone will make. So it is all good.
So, I think that I have lost the flow that i had so I'm going to change and keep on going... wee... I'm sure you are having fun reading this. I did a secret santa with my class and with some rotary exchange students! I gave a shirt to a kid in my class and got a cool ecuadorian shirt. And with the rotary kids I got a shirt too! I'm stoked to have gotten things that I'll be wearing when I get back!
Life is good, I think that there is hope in the world and that we are growing as a planet of real dilinquents... after all that we have done we can still fix it. I want to wish everyone a merry, jolly and thoughtful christmas. Lets spend this time with family and be thankful to all that we have and thoughtful of those who don't! I will do my part and we can make an agreement to all work together. I love you! and am so grateful that you are reading my blog!!! YOU ROCK!
La Paz es el Camino y el amor la Manera!