Despite

Today featured an odd but lovely mixture of emotions and experiences. Discipline played a key role, yet I felt calm, not stressed. Homesickness made a cameo appearance, yet today I lived thoroughly like a local. I got a lot done, and yet it felt relaxing.

In other words, it was a good day despite and because of itself.

I made my way back to church this morning, and discovered that large groups of foreigners makes me genuinely anxious now--they were pooling on the sidewalk outside the church as I drove up, and it felt so so wrong for absolutely no reason. Also on the way, I realized that the shave ice place I visited last night with my host family is literally just a few blocks from my church.

In church, my love for being there was offset by my longing to be back at City Church, and the (sorry) horrible music during worship made me miss my bass, which I hadn't thought about playing in ages. For some bizarre reason, I also developed an intense craving for a  pulled pork or BBQ beef sandwich, which of course I can't fulfill here.

Post-church was a stream of errands and duties: I stopped by a Starbucks in a (failed) search for a mug, located and scoured the local 小北 store for a cheap lightweight bag (to send back with my oh-so-wonderful brother who's now in Taipei :) ) and vinegar, then making a second stop at a cooking store when I couldn't find food coloring at 小北. (On a side note, between my stops and Rachel's generosity, we're set to dye eggs at school this week!)

Then it was home to research, plan for and design worksheets for my tutoring session tonight. (Special practice tonight: conditional statements like "If I had a million dollars, I would travel more.") And, once tutoring was over (much earlier than usual, since we both happened to be early to the coffee shop), Rachel and I cornered the 7-11 staff into helping us retrieve our train tickets for this week, with some success, and then were cornered ourselves by a Taiwanese photography teacher asking us to be her models!

So yeah, it was a full day, and one in which nothing, neither my emotions nor my physical self, stayed stagnant for long... and apparently, that's the best way to make an average day great!