It was interesting how different life can become with a week and a half in a slower town without the normal hectic newspaper and college deadlines and assignments. I feel as though I've come back from Salt Lake City and the eastern parts of Utah and Colorado a new man. (Man, boy, young man... I guess I've got to deal with it sooner or later, I'm 25 for goodness sakes.)
I'm ready to take on the rest of the semester, the five and a half weeks that remain, with a new vigor and intention to complete everything and more of what is asked of me.
Published in today's paper was an article I wrote about the feeling of culture shock in Los Angeles after coming home from Brasil more than three years ago. I was up most of the night writing and tying up other odds and ends before my trip. They changed all of my Brasil with spelled with s to z, and took out some of my more reflective parts "for space concerns" so they say. I was almost utterly disappointed in the article until I got an email response this afternoon from someone who read the article.
Life In Brazil is the article in its online form.
The email message I received wasn't lauding my article by any means, but rather someone whose attention sparked up at the mention of missionary training center and remembered her recent conversion into the church a few years ago. She had become so caught up with her studies that church has become an infrequent hobby instead of the same lifestyle that she lived for the years she attended before going to the university.
She ended the article by writing,
"I really don't know why I'm writing you, but after I finished reading your article, for some reason I just wanted to share this with you and also thank you for reminding me of the little things that bring happiness."
Whatever animosity I felt towards the editor for taking out some important part of my article were gone when I read this response. I didn't change this girl's life, and may not have made an impact. But she thought about her own life enough after reading my article to respond in an email message to me. Coming from a campus of more than 32,000 students, where less than 500 students vote in the student government programs, I'm overjoyed that even one person responded.
I'll put up photos from my trip in the next few days. I have more things to write about but don't know how to put it down, whether or not I should share them in this forum, if anyone would bother reading it other than myself, or if I should return to the brutally self-honest days of blogging some two years ago. More than likely I'll write more when I put my photos online.
