Welcome back, me?

Hullo - she has returned.

I'm back from my three nights away - rising at 5:45, spending 9 hours a day at the hall, and keeping an eye on five 18 - 22 year olds (and one 40-something).

It was suprisingly tiring for what it was - I didn't do any training and when I wasn't teaching I was wandering around and correcting, not sweating it out. We had an hour and a half for lunch for two days and I managed to nap during both. We were up at 5:45 each morning but were asleep by 11, but still suprisingly tired!

The candidates did a fantastic job - protocol started to lapse towards the end, but Magf and myself were just as much to blame and I'm not that stressed by that sorta stuff. It was good to see them bonding and getting friendly and it was also good to see youngest bro step up as the senior of the group.

There was an amazing amount of rain last night - 12 hours of rain! Something I haven't seen or heard for a long time, and something that definitely made it easy to get to sleep when sharing a bunk bed room with another person.

We also found two tiny baby sparrows! I headed out to the bathroom and heard something fall behind me - it was a tiny little baby bird - I ran into the hall and fetched the 40-something lady to come fetch it as she has done a lot of wildlife caring and would know what to do - she picked the little fellow up (who was amazingly uninjured) and put him into a tissue box. Not two hours later there was some chirping in the hall (louder than the rest of it) and there was another tiny fellow sitting in of the sheet nets that were hanging from the roof! The hall was over 100 years old and had all these nests in between the walls and roof and the birds were falling out (I think the nets were put there to cushion the fall from all the babies) so we were lucky there weren't more. She has taken both of them home to look after and will release them near her mothers house - her neighbour has sparrows everywhere, apparantly. They were so cute (so tiny!) and I wanted to take them home, but knew that it wouldn't be a good idea with The Hun's dislike for animals and the whole rental agreement with the not having of the pets (including goldfish!).

I think I'm off the blues train again - I think that having some time away from everything was helpful (thanks Adam and Mick for your talking me through, I really appreciate it!). I think that being in the camp situation (which is such an all-consuming environment) helped to put a full stop it in all - like when you slap down on a mosquito bite to stop the itch. I just needed an 'out' to catch my breath.

What was also helpful was reading more of my Buddhism for Dummies book that I bought a little while ago. Whilst it may seem that I'm jumping onto D'jen's bandwagon, it's something that also I've been thinking about for quite some time, more actively since my vegan transition - and with the Dalai Llama and our Rinpoche making visits/tours this year, I'd like to make sure I have at least some idea of what's going on! I've read less than 30 pages of the book so far, but I've already read something that struck a chord with me:

"...suffering and disatisfaction originate in the way your mind responds and reacts to lifes circumstances - not in the raw facts of life."

It might'n't sound like much, but it was a bit of a !ping! moment when I realised that things aren't just the way they are, they are how I perceive them - and I have the ability to control that.

I've also organised my valentines and anniversary gifts for The Hun for Wednesday and the Wednesday after - after finding out there would be no going out for dinner on either of those days, and then wondering why to bother at all, I've picked myself back up again (at Adam's insistence) and put that effort back in there. Because it IS something that makes me feel specialer. The Hun also mentioned that he read the last post and comments and does love me, and will forever and was sorry to hear I've been down in the dumps and please don't leave to rediscover my youth with some slutty 19 year old boy in a nightclub. Which was never going to happen (of course!) but was good to know.

Anyways, I'm gonna catch up on my LonelyGirl and get back into my reading - nigh nigh!