made

Today was the last day I helped with the Healthy Lifestyles project, and it was quite sad. July seems just about over and I'm headed into a new chapter of summer.

My meeting people mission is going quite well. After this month of trying to acquire friends that will lift me up, I have had the pleasure to get acquainted with a couple of Ukrainians that I hope will prove a huge help in my future during my time here. The word "new" has taken on a very positive and important meaning. It feels so great when I meet someone new that I know will be around as long as I make sure to keep him/her in close contact.

That is the beauty of this new friendship I have found in Tamara and Zhenya, two incredible Ukrainians that have made it their responsibility to educate youth about health. Even after just a few short meetings and days together, I know that I met special. If not for the educational inspiration that these two can offer me, I know that I met people that I can count on if I need help while living here.

New gifts, new friends, new moments, new days, new tools... all helping me figure out what I am doing here and forcing me to write into this blog something, well, new.

seize

Dudley Clendinen so perfectly writes in two pages about death. I have been trying to write and write and convey for the past 9 months something special about life and service, and I read this man's published words, maybe some of his last, and he zings me into the atmosphere after less than 2000 words and gets me thinking about death.

I love how he writes, as if I'm the one only one reading it and knows what he's thinking. He eases me into a conversation about death, convinces me that humans fail to really recognize that death is natural, exciting and inevitable. And the way he mentions us - for wanting so badly to live, even at the expense of our loved ones' wallets and time, hearts and emotions - it hardly even feels like a critique.

I love seeing that everything he is writing is carefully chosen - all the ink and effort that he uses is of value. Like, each word he wrote was a last breath for him. As if, his last words are of true worth, real advice - with all that is left of him he is trying to tell me, us, anyone... "I think it's important to say that."

All has been good. If you are already a loved one, then my announcement of coming home in October for a visit should be of no surprise... but it feels good to know that it's in less than three months, and I am happy that I can write about it in/on here. Three months until I can soak in my home, energy and love. Does it feel like I'm talking to you?

memo

Meeting new people is surprising. And then add in a big fire jump, no running water and a cow and it becomes a surprise party that can last for a few days.

And then after you meet people, there is always that goodbye feeling that infiltrates even if it does not directly include you. I had the opportunity to meet people that are important to Jeremy and see him smile in a way that maybe only happens when he surrounds himself with old friendship. The only complaint about meeting people that are so important in another friend's life is that the expiration date on visits magnifies the large themes of that friendship, and all the small details fall at the waist side.

Okay, so, note to myself: try and meet as many people as I can this summer and learn just a bit about them, or take in something that he or she says, that will make feel like I am engaging the summer brain. Then those fresh air memories or karaoke until 3am will make me smile instead of just fade into a log, or a cube (logs at least roll around).

Ivana Kupala bonfire

Jeremy and Sonja in her beautiful wreath (contest winner celebrity)

Cow that was milked and milk that was drunk

Roof tour of Boyarka

up

"Knowledge not increased is knowledge destroyed" (Hillel, Pirkei Avot 1:13)

You know that feeling when all goes well? When you just wake up and look around and it seems like everything is going forward? You have decided to make yourself move up. As if that thing that had been bugging you for so long seems irrelevant? And that one thing that keeps you down repeatedly... which burns your brain and keeps you from breathing, and pushes you into bed or into mistakes, starts fading.

This morning I woke up feeling so happy. I just knew that the day was going to be great, even if the weather outside seemed to be falling down on me, stopping me from whatever I want, and then the sun just peeked out of the clouds, and I continued on to a camp where I was greeted, along with two other volunteers, by almost 300 Ukrainian children cheering and screaming "HELLO!!!" And I saw that I have all that potential to make a kid smile just because she saw asking "how are you?" was enough to make me smile and communicate.

All of the work I can put into increasing my knowledge instead of destroying myself with television shows (although, LOST has helped time move faster when I am in between meetings), facebook (deactivation project is going well), obsessing over food blogs (one recipe in a million gets cooked), transitioning from love to hate to love to disgust to hate to ... I forgot to keep up that hobby I picked up in a fleeting moment. When we bother with all of those things in extreme, we lose sight of learning, stop going up and stick to what's bad. Man, I hate that.

"HELLO!!!" All you need to do is remember: "You will be holy, because I, God, am holy" (Leviticus 11:44)

oops!