10 Things To Brighten Up You're Day

Huge playmobile men,

Connecting with art :-)

A mushroom tree!

Goose glamour shots,

An Eiffel tower of suitcases,

Cheetah Print hair in Starbucks,

Drain pipes that look like friends :-)

Funny British signs,

Settlers of Catan Cake,
And,

Raccoon band shots!


Have a splendid day!

Long time since I saw you, eh?

Oh my, I need to learn to be much much more faithful with my blog. Chh. SO I am very much back in England now, and have been for several months. Wow, so much has been going on inside me - I really wish I had been better at keeping up on here for the past few months :-{ Now I can't put any of it into words! So frustrating. Right now, as I'm trying to think of what to say, situations, ideas, conversations, plans, dreams, are coming to mind. But they are swishing and swimming around my head like a bucket-load of demented worms. Not so helpful for clear thinking. I don't know what I think. I don't know what I feel.
Right now, I feel emotion. I am not sure what it is. It's in my stomach... deep. Pushing and pulling my heart around in circles. I'm not sure what it means, or where it's trying to lead me. But it's there, indescribable and unexplainable. Even to myself. It feels like a deep longing... for... something.
Off-track! Anyhow, that is one thing that is making my thoughts gallop around my head. This is just so frustrating to me, because there are so MANY things that I want to say, to verbalize, but they are all running away screaming from my head - like they don't want me to tell you about them. Lets just take a step back. Sometimes if I just start typing, what I want to say will eventually come out.
Hello, I'm Abbey! I'm 17 years old. Is that strange? I can't tell. It seems fairly average at the moment. I wish I was 16, and I wish I was 18. 17 is also good. I am liking it. But I am scared of it - I can't believe I am 17. It seems like I should be 7! or 28! Do I make sense to anyone but myself? I think not. I mean... time is going too fast. It seems like I should still be 8, because that's sort of how I feel... like I was 8 yesterday. and with how fast time is going, I'm almost expecting to wake up one morning and find myself 50 years old, half (or more) of my life gone! Oh dear, I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon. I hope I wake up 17 tomorrow.
Is it just me, or do these seem like the insane ramblings of a mad-woman?



Oh dear (deer). I wish I made sense.



*sigh* doesn't seem to be working. So life, right at the moment, is fairly average. I need to find more ways to make it spectacular, but I am beginning to run out of ideas. (suggestions, anyone?)

Oh my. My head feels so flummoxed right now. So twisty. Unfocused. Confused? Maybe. Ironic? Yes. Satisfied? No. Spirally and serpentine. Gone.

Hum. Methinks that is all I will be able to cull from my head for the time being. I will honestly try to keep up on here more though, so see ya! Have a wonderful Valentines day next year! Much love, peace and prosperity on all of you. Liberty, equality, fraternity! ..................

Here I am.

so here i am. in america. i freaking love this country. i feel soo much more at home here than anywhere else i've ever been. cereal. i want to die here. not now, but here. i LOVE this country. and this town. well, parts of it. i love the trees, and the people, and the mountains, and the food, and the styles, and the freaking space needle. i have missed this place SO much more than anyone will ever know. honestly, i would kill to go back in time. i miss my house more than everything else in the world combined. i want to be 5 again. i want to be little and living in 931 k street. with my family, my two dogs and three cats. i want the most dangerous thing i've ever done to be balancing on the back fence while my parents weren't looking. i want to get in trouble for leaving the yard without an adult. i want to hide under our canoe in the back yard on a hot summer day. i want to lie in the front lawn in the middle of the night and stare at the stars, wondering what the rest of the world looks like. i want to go eat strawberries in the back yard, knowing they were the only strawberries that would grow back there until next year. i want to walk, barefoot, to the candy store and spend a whole 25 cents on penny candy. i want to go on the awesome, exciting once a week trip to costco, and go try all the samples. i want to read old books about england, and picture it without knowing what it looks like. i want to sit in my bedroom all alone, wide-eyed reallly late at night - at least 8:30, wondering where kaeli and anna are and wondering what might be in the closet that could possibly eat me. i want to wonder what canadians are like, and what canada looks like. i want to be curious about europe and wonder which language they speak in holland. i want to run outside in the pouring rain and play with the earthworms that came sliding out of the cracks to avoid drowning. i want to pretend that i believe in ghosts with kayleen, and create my own fake ghost friend named 3. i want to think that walking around the block once is 'going on a walk'. i want to be super excited to get an e-mail account for the first time. i want the the worst film i have ever seen to be PG13. i want to think that the matrix is evil. i want to not know how to swear in foreign languages. i want to think that drinking a sip of mom's wine is exciting and rare. i want to think coffee consists only of black drip. i want the coolest music i listen to to be jump 5, aurora, stacie orrico and plus one. i want the most exciting food ever to mcdonalds and very rarely burgerville. i want seattle to be a really cool far off place that i get to go to every couple months.
i want to be satisfied with my life. i want to be super excited to go back to england. i want to be overjoyed to be in ywam. i want to be ready to make more new friends again. i want to be unemotional. i want to love happy things not deep melancholia. i want to want out of america. i want to want to travel a ton right now. i want to absolutely love my life in every respect. i want to be so excited about what i'm doing. lalalalalalalalalalalala.
happy birthday world. why am i always hungry? interesting question. alright, enough depressing wistfulness for one night. farewell internet. see ya. -me

On my own...

Here I am, in England. Soon it will be only me. What then? Thankfully in my aloneness I am not alone. There are still 25 or 30 other people on base. Just not mon famille. And, as it has been everytime I am left somewhat alone for periods of time, I haven't really noticed... not that I don't miss my family - I do, It's just that It almost feels... normal. Somehow living in a separate country from my family, living with friends, going about my life on my own (ish) feels... normal. Why the heck is that?? Well, YWAM has twisted my mind I guess. I have on the other hand, found myself singing On My Own much more often, but I think that may have more to do with my obsession with making life a musical than loneliness. Plus, it's one of my favourite songs. Oh how I love musicals.

I finally went to the doctor yesterday! So, it turns out that the reason I can see and feel my heartbeat in my stomach so well is... I'm skinny. Yeah, big surprise. I still have to get a stupid, evil, vampiric, blood test done though, just to make sure I don't have an overactive thyroid. Mah. I thoroughly despise having smiling, pain-loving women who know they are making the world a better place stab my veins with their cleverly designed blood stealers. I want to keep all of my blood, thank you very much. Is that strange? Hum.

Soo, I have watched SO much filmness since I got here. It's like this flat has a filmy aura-around it... You walk in and you just want to watch films... okay, so that is way over-exaggerated. But fun so say. I got up this morning and found my flat-mates/in loco parentises watching a show online :-) I love it.

Okay, so what is this all about - my parents are gone for what... 5 days, and my brother already has an injury! Apparently he fell out of the back of a pick-up truck... don't ask me how, none of my family will reply to anything we have written to them about it. So, he is supposedly okay, but you know Alex. He would say he was okay if he had just fallen off the side of the empire state building and landed in a truck full of steak knives. Ouch.

So, speaking of school, I should do some. I miss you world! Have a good life!

-Sincerely, Oxxana

May

Tis Maytime! Yay! Wow, so much going on right now. Or maybe not. I'm on reception at the moment.  So exciting. And I am alternating between waaaay too cold and waaaay to hot. Oh, yyeah. Ok. Enough. This is one of the most useless things I have ever written. Tata.

-mushroom obsessive

Musicality

Yay! Last week I ordered music from Amazon, and it finally came! I got Paramore's Brand New Eyes, and Taylor Swift's album. Yippee, I feel like an idiot. But oh well, I'm really not ashamed to listen to country. At least I balance it out with metal. And Glee. I am suddenly slightly obsessed with Glee. Even though a lot of the music is fairly annoying, and it seems to be increasingly turning into a high school soap opera, I love it. I am thoroughly addicted. At the moment, my favourite character is Jesse. He has the best voice as well. Oh course he is playing Rachel, and he is obviously a spy for Vocal Adrenaline. But He's awesome anyway. Oh dear, I sound so horrible. It really is a good show! haha. Oh my. Well, enough. I must stop talking before I say something truly incriminating. Adieu, farewell. -Ahhh

It's the end of the month as we know it.

Wow! It's almost the end of April! It IS the end of April! where has the beginning of this year gone?? So crazy! 2010 is going soo fast! And I'm on reception again! How interesting. Did you know, I have two main fears, and they are ridiculous.

#1. Large things under water, such as whales and giant squid. 

and

#2. Bees. I am freaking terrified of bees.

Neither of these fears make any sense. I have never been involved in a traumatizing event involving bees or whales. I am an irrational being. Just though I'd mention that. Flippin 'eck, what is NOT scary about an octopus? Okay, so that's a drawing, but whatever.

 -the owner of irrational fears.

BooksBooksBooksBooks. Oh Literature, I Adore Thee.

Here is a list of 100 great books! Stolen from a friend's blog :-) I have read the bold ones, and I am in the process of reading the ones with an X next to them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (wait a sec, what about #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

Dang, only 17 read. But another 7 in the process... I guess I haven't really been reading many classics lately.

For the past few years my brother has been obsessing over Robert Jordan's (RIP) Wheel Of Time series. For one reason or another I haven't taken the chance to read them, being distracted with Twilight, etc. SO, last week, I finally got up the guts to start the (soon to be) 14 strong book series. *whew*, trying not to think about how long this could take me... ANYWAYS, I started book number one, The Eye of the World. And it is sooooo good. At the moment I am only about halfway through it. It's going a bit slower than usual, because I've been fairly busy lately. For a few day I only got about 1 chapter finished a day. But yeah, the book so far is fantastical. I love it. It is brilliantly written, and so imaginative. Even though some points do remind me of Lord of The Rings, it has really been super original so far, especially for fantasy. So the cover is... hilarious. The picture shows the main characters, all COMPLETELY wrong. Serious, Lan looks like a freaking giant, and Moiraine and her horse both look like midgets... And otherwise, none of the character look like or are wearing anything close to what is in the book. I find it very funny, especially since Robert Jordan used the same artist for the covers of all 11 of the Wheel of Time books he published before he passed away. Not exactly sure why. Anyhow, I must bee off - my sister is patiently lying on the floor waiting to use the computer. Adieu! -The tempestuous mushroom obsessive.

More Wallowing?

Oh today. It is an interesting day, yes it is. Church this morning was AMAZing. The Purefire team was there, and Paul Hopkins taught. It was seriously awesome. Had some awesome conversation with God. And then we got home, and I had a sudden lonely depression moment. So fun. I had to leave lunch to freak out for a few minutes. I don't really understand myself. At all. Stupid emotions. Wow, I have a headache this afternoon, and I don't know why. Well, I guess I have guess as to why I had sudden freak out times today. It's just a compilation of random events all suddenly stacked up together. on top of me. Everyone leaving, etc. The last two schools to leave have been painful for me. And then, today I really, really miss someone. He used to be like a brother to me, but now he's gone, and I probably won't see him again. Maybe ever. I've know this for like, half a year, but for some reason it's really hitting me today. I mean, it sort of makes sense - last night I had a dream he came back. But I've had at least twenty of those dreams since he left, but it never did this to me. Ugh. Oh life. Why does it have to be this way sometimes? I hate it. So much. Not life, just these situations. *siiiigh*. Mah. I wish I could go back a few years. Life was much more simple then. Wow, that is such a stereotypical teenage thing to say. Oh well. Alright, I must leave. Time to stop wallowing. Ta ta! -A

Mutterings of a self torchuring mind.

Ahh. Oh no. I feel it. I will not fall apart, I can't. They're gone though. Already. It is just now starting to sink in. I managed not to freak out when my beautiful last DTS left for good, because this football DTS was here... but... now they're gone... they just left this morning... there goes all my social interaction... I am exhausted of this... I can't handle it again... people say you get used to it, and get numb to the leaving of others, but I don't. I just get so freaking attached to people so flipping easy. Ugh. My stomach hurts. Why do I do this to myself? Grrr. I just don't want to have to go through the lonely months again. I can't handle that anymore. And I know I actually don't HAVE to this time. I have another very close friend. He never leaves me alone, and I don't want him to. God promised me to stay around even when they all left. He will keep me company through the lonely months, and the desperate moments. But it's hard,... to get that.... because I can't see him, physically... in the room... he I S here... but I can't technically 'hang out' with him. But I can. I can. And he's here. We chat, I can hear him sometimes... but It's not easy. I just need to get used to it still. Not feeling lonely when I don't need to. Which is all the time. He's always here. He's with me right now. Now. I can feel his presence in the room if I think about it. And he loves me so ridiculously too much. I don't deserve it, darnit. Aright, I need to go befriend the people inside now. Fare thee well. -Abbey

Hello Bright World!

Guess what! I knit a mushroom. I'm fairly happy about that, actually. This is my loverly purple and pink mushroom >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I have only just a few weeks ago discovered the bright and wonderful world of Ravelry! Oh my, what a place. It's like knitting and crochet heaven. I am loving it. Hey, did you know that I have a random obsession with mushrooms? Well, I do. They are at the top of my favorites list, along with moss, trees, ivy and oil pastels. WOW, I feel like I have done nothing in the last few weeks. Except knit, of course. Lalalalala. And I've been, strangely enough, listening to a lot of Taylor Swift. And doing school. Yeah! Life is monotonous at times, but awesome. Just thought I should say that. Sick. See y'all later. -A

Back in the Land of Eng.

Hola, Bonjour, Friendly World Wide Web! I am, and have been for about two weeks, back from my mad adventures in Spain and Belgium. Sooo, last week in debrief we had to think about how we could tell someone about our whole time in 2 minutes, so I'm going to try to write that here... NOW!

So, you know the Youth With A Mission base I live on? We run this school called the Discipleship Training School, that's got about 3 months of lectures, and then 2 months of practical outreach in another country somewhere in the world. My dad was staffing the one that started in September last year, so when outreach came, I decided, hey! I want to go with them! So about two weeks before we left I started collecting pennies, and somehow God provided me with all the money I needed for 2 months of outreach in Europe :-). So first we went to Spain, which was reallly super amazing. We got to help with the opening of the base in Caceres, and see some of the local churches unite. In Spain a lot of our ministry was prayer, and I believe we made a huge difference in the spiritual atmosphere of Spain.

Then, after about 6 weeks, we left for Brussels! The base there was much different, because they were already very well established. Brussels is definitely one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to, the architecture is breathtaking. In Belgium we did a lot of moving around, apart from Brussels we also spent some time in Kortrijk and Genk, in the Flanders half of the country. In our time there we got to prayer walk, work in a school for a week, do some street evangelism, help with a food distribution group and lots of other stuff. After 4 weeks in Belgium, we finally few back to England! This was the best outreach I've ever been on in my life. The team was really, really amazing, and let me fit right into the group even though I wasn't a student. They all mean soo much to me now, and I will value their friendships, hopefully for the rest of my life.

Last week was debrief from outreach, and then on Friday night was commissioning them all off into the real world. Most of them left the next day, and I miss them all like crazy :-( . Yepp! That was my outreach this year!

Oh my, that may have gone over two minutes... Oh well. So yeah, then this week I've just been really ill, sitting at home, doing nothing, feeling like I'm in solitary confinement. So much fun. I guess that's all for now, I should go get dressed, just in case on the off chance something actually happens today. Talk to you later, blog! See ya! Have a lovely day!

-Abbbbbey

Blog.

Blogblogblogblogblogblogblog. Still in Brussels at the moment, but leaving for England on the Eurostar on the 5th.

Ah! I am so unfaithful!

Ah! I can't believe that I haven't posted anything on here since the 10th of December! Mah! I am in Brussels, Belgium at the moment. We left for Spain at the end of December, stayed for about 2ish months, and then came over here about 2 weeks ago! Brussels is soooooo amazing. Unfortunately, I have no time right at the moment. I must go do some preparation for an art workshop I'm helping the lovely Catherine Evans with next week. I will be back though, to describe the ancient poetic city. Au revoir!

-Abrussels