Bring On The New Year

So did anyone else usher in the New Year sporting a stank-nasty ponytail, UCHS T-shirt, and a fake mustache*, or was it just me??
* Oh, how I miss DTC.

Needless to say, my Paris-for-New-Years plans fell though. Basically, I got lazy, cheap, and extremely sore from skiing. So instead of even catching an hour and a half long train to Zurich, I slummed it up here in the Hasliberg holiday house.

Don't get me wrong, we had some fun times here. Nothing says ''2009 Grand Finale'' like the traditional Swiss games of ''flour eating'', ''cotton-ball soccer'', and another one that I never quite learned the name of, but (it) involved a newspaper-wrapped chocolate bar that you had to open with a knife and fork while wearing snow gloves, a scarf, and a tobagen. ...Pretty much, I was just in a funk all day, and never quite managed to recover. And especially by the time Swiss-German Pictionary got underway, I was just not a team sport. (Nothing pisses me off more than yelling the correct answer out in English only to be trumped by someone who yells out the exact same thing in Swiss German two seconds later and wins... Uh huh. I wasn't having any part of it.)

So less than an hour before midnight fell, I was completely homesick. I don't know of it was my lack of productivity the whole day that brought it on or just the closing of the holiday season and beginning of a New Year in general... But either way, things were just ''off'''.

All in all, New Years wasn't quite how I had envisoned it to be...
I didn't look sexy...
I didn't party it up...
I didn't kiss anyone at midnight...
And because I forgot my Schick in the Netherlands, I had the legs of a grizzly bear.
(That last part was TMI*, I know, but I just had to get my point across.)
*Too much info.

However, not all was lost when the church bells on the radio* chimed 12. Because after the champagne toast with a family that wasn't mine and all the cheers and toasts in a language I didn't speak, I stepped outside for a breather... (Notice, the choice of wordage, breather.) And with every intention to just get away from it all and get my bearings, I looked out across the field, and mesmerized. The view I saw was breathtaking. There, standing in front of me, were the snowy Swiss Alps gleaming under a full moon. And when I looked up, there were stars. It was the only night here that the clouds weren't hiding them...
*Church bells are how they ''count down'' to midnight here.

So standing outside, my glass of champagne still in my hand, I took it all in. I stood out there forever and had my moment of solitude. Although I wasn't starting off the new year with some of the people I hold dearest my heart, I couldn't deny the fact that I was starting off the year truely blessed. How many other people in the world have half the oppurtunites that I do this next year?!

So while things can get tough and hard to process being away from home, my simplest goal for 2010 is just to appreciate the oppurtunities I have. And to take all the gifts God has given me less for granted.

There are many more ''resolutions'' on the list--if you will-- for the next year, but I think the one mentioned above is a good place to start.

=)