Week 2

**My new favorite thing: myself.
This may sound vain (probably because it totally is) but I'm just feeling so great. I think that it's a very important part of life, knowing how to truly love yourself. At home it's not like I particularly dislike myself, generally I feel pretty ok with who I am, how I act, what I do, etc. Sometimes I would find myself acting in a ways that would make me dislike certain parts of myself, and obviously there's always propaganda saying that I'm not beautiful enough, but generally I like myself at home. But I think that I've been falling short of real love. I'm done with telling myself that I'll love myself when. When I lose 10 lbs, when I can run as far as I'd like, when I act in a certain way, when I can hold down a relationship...I love myself now. Loving myself doesn't mean that I can't still have goals, I can still try to be a better person without withholding love and awaiting perfection. The funny thing is that the more I love myself the easier it is to be a better person, which makes it easier to love. It's a cycle, but it's the opposite of vicious. Not to say there haven't been and won't be rough days, but I have been so happy this week. I am doing something that I can put my heart into, and I have a positive outlook, which I think even the others here can see. This week I was one of 4 nominees for a newly implemented "volunteer of the week" program. An anonymous volunteer wrote "I would like to nominate Elizabeth for her friendliness, generosity, hard work in the garden, and her phenomenal effort in the fruit shop on Friday." I am so touched by this, it makes me feel so appreciated and like my inner joy might just be manifesting to the people around me.**

I'm behind on my journaling and even more on typing it up for the blog, so this week's entry will be short. Really, the biggest thing has just been how amazing I feel.

8 new volunteers arrive on Monday: Jemma, Liz, Lea, Mardi, and Vicky are Austalian nurses here together for 2 weeks. Marion (unfortunately not a librarian) is from New Zealand here for 2 weeks. Jesper and Karina are a brother sister pair from Denmark here for 8 weeks. On Tuesday Sian and Hayden, 2 friens from England, arrive for 7 weeks, and on Thursday Mary and James, a couple from Ireland come for...I want to say 6 weeks. The volunteer houseing is getting quite full, and everyone coming seems very nice. I try to make sure that everyone feels welcome and invited to mingle with the established group. The Australian women are older and keep mostly to themselves, but I really enjoy their company when I do chat with them.

My birthday is wednesday and I have the most amazing birthday that --like an elephant-- I will never forget. I get up, wash Rani, have a wonderful day working in the garden, fruit shop, and mingling with everyone. It's been a while since Rani has done a painting, so for my birthday I request that she make one for me. I have pictures of her making my painting, which I then buy. And now I have a very special birthday present from my beautiful Rani. After work a group of us go out to a movie in the small city 10 km away. I think my ticket was 250 rupees or something absurdly low (although I'm not sure because someone splurged and payed my ticket for me). I was hoping The Avengers would be playing, but it was Battleship instead. The screen wasn't the best quality, the seats were uncomfortable, the movie was horribly cheesy, and it was wonderful. I had such a blast. Oh, and the power went out halfway through the movie and we were sitting in darkness for about 5 minutes wondering what to do. It was such a good time, we'll go back in a couple weeks, I'm sure.

On Friday I am on the fruit shop for an hour and, due to a scheduling conflict, end up staying on for another hour. I had both my notebooks with me so that I could either journal or write my book (yes, I'm writing a book, more on that in a moment), but don't end up touching either of them because it is so busy at the elephant rides. 2 large groups come through in addition to the normal string of tourists on their own. I have 2 fruit plates made up, 2 elephants come back and I  sell them both, and then I can see another elephant coming and have to rush back to chop more fruit before they return! I am a selling machine, and chopping like a fiend. I don't even have time to be afraid of the bees crawling on the fruit while I'm chopping.

A new fund raising idea for our up and coming gift shop is for volunteers to write books that we will sell here. The coordinators have purchased publishing rights for 6 books up to 32 pages in length and have a friend who is an illustrator. I immediately offer to try my hand at writing a children's book. I used to occasionally make up stories for the boys when I was a nanny, so I think I can do it. And if everyone likes it when I'm done, I might get to be a published author in Sri Lanka! And have a really easy addition to my mom's autographed book collection.