Outside the line

I was gently reminded in various ways this weekend that my time in Australia needs to be a little less structured. In a way my life needs to be a little less structured. I crave unmovable boundaries and absolutes in a world that doesn’t function under these pretenses.
This weekend I have a grand delusion that I was going to write three papers and read close to two-hundred pages. It is now Monday and I have read two pages (close to two hundred right? Haha). But I don’t really feel overly guilty about that. Life isn’t meant to be lived the way that I have been living it. It’s humorous to me, because if I was at Houghton I would be able to get all of my work done and socialize with people with time to spare, but that is because there isn’t really a city sitting off to the corner, waiting to be explored. In a way, that is the appeal of Houghton, a place to learn that is so far removed that there aren’t any distractions other then those which are self-created.
Saturday I crashed. I didn’t get up until 11:30am. For those of you who know me best, you are probably gasping. I normally go to bed around midnight to two am and wake up by eight am. But my body jus wasn’t cooperating on Saturday. After going through the daily fight with the internet, I sat down to get all of my homework done. Yeah right. Jeremiah ended up coming over to borrow a train ticket and we ended up talking from daylight until evening about everything and anything until my flatmates came back. Next thing we know some of the other guys are looking for Jeremiah in my flat and we ended up playing speed scrabble and cooking pizzas on flatbread, a new standard for my flat. Then some of the girls from the next two flats over showed up to watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Will and Grace. Really it ended up being a great day for relationship building.
Sunday, I attended the Hilton Street Church. I went looking for a place to go to church and found a family. Amazing, amazing place. Everyone ran up and hugged me, not shook my hand, hugged me. I have missed hugs. A lot. I talked to Hannah the other day when I called Jenn and told her that I wanted to ship her to Australia just so I could have hugs. Jude, the pastor, and I were chatting and she asked if I had my birthday while in Aus. When I said yes, it was this coming Thursday she got up during the service and said “Michelle is new here. She is going to have her birthday away from her family on Thursday so we’re going to be her family and sing to her now.” Who does that? I was almost brought to tears. I had the opportunity to meet so many people and plug into a church that is diverse in ages, races, and genders. I will be serving at this perish as well, which is such a blessing.
After the second service and we had hung out with a lot of the people from the church, Shane and I decided to embark on an adventure. On Sundays you can go anywhere in the city – all zones are free game, whereas usually we are restrained to zone one. So we headed out to the ambiguous zone two. And our first stop was boring. So we decided to head 2 ½ hours the opposite direction to this place called Upper Ferntree Gully, which totally reminds me of the movie Fern Gully, does anyone else remember that movie? Anyway, Upper Ferntree Gully is the Australian version of Clearfield, complete with highway and dollar store. By the time we got there I was starving, so we found a quiet little Italian restaurant and just chatted for a while. Ending up back at the school around midnight, which I just found out from one of the Australians that you aren’t really supposed to do. Oppps. Oh well, adventures are worth a little risk. A little more stepping outside of the rules and boundaries.