right in this moment this order's tall

hello blog. the past two days have been good. this morning i woke up and we were sailing down the amazon exactly as i pictured it! well, kind of. we were closer to the edge and we could see trees and grass and huts and fisherman and birds and... cows. yeah, idk about that either.

anyway, classes are good. my newswriting class is sooooo interesting. i now know how normal people must feel in school.  it's freakin awesome to not be doing science! to learn about things that are funny and interesting and relevant.

this morning I met a girl named Kelly. we both didn't have anything to do so we decided to go to the meditation seminar that was taking place in the union. it was AMAZING! i was so pleasantly surprised.  i walked out of there feeling more balanced and alive than i have in a really long time.

this afternoon i had indian singing again. sooo much fun. i can't wait to upload some videos.  during class in between songs our teacher said "Ok... now story time..... who wants to tell a story? You look like you have a story."  And this is the story I told about last night:

"I was sitting on the deck writing in my journal when I saw a beatle with some of it's legs broken. It was struggling to stand up and fly but it was too hurt and couldn't do anything. For 15 minutes my friend Aidan and I watched it die, helpless.  There was nothing we could do to make it better.  We looked at each other and both understood what we were seeing - it was a metaphor for so much that we will experience on this trip. We are going to so many countries where I will see people who are hungry or sad or dying and there will be nothing I can do to help them.  I felt so hopeless that I started crying, feeling like no matter what I do I will never make a difference big enough to matter.  Eventually, Aidan had to go inside and my friend Hassan sat next to me and told me to snap out of it. I told him why I was sad, thinking it was a good excuse, and he said 'so what?'  Do you realize what an amazing opportunity you have been given to be here? Do you realize how little of a chance there was that you, as you, would be here right now and have a chance to learn all of these things and actually make a difference? So many people are sitting at home, in front of their TVs, in America, and they will never even know about the world.' He took out his notebook and showed me the math of how I ended up here. The chance that of all the eggs and sperm I was born, of all of directions my life could have gone, and when the numbers were too high to count he said 'You see?  It's incredible. This math is what keeps me going.'  I took a second to breath and realized he was right.  We sat in the dark and made funny faces and sang Indian Ragas under the full moon, but not forgetting about the journey that lies ahead."

ps. we finally got speakers on the deck today. we were rocking out to dubstep, and Hassan turns it off and puts on Skinny Love. I'm happy and amazed to say the exact same thing happened that happens at home.