It seems odd, but I'm awake, I'm not dreaming

Things slog on, mucky day after mucky day, sleeping through seminary, failing quizzes, drifting away from the people I loved. It all seems like a revolution of mud after a while. And then there are days like today... days that remind me I am alive, here, now, and only now.

Today my orchestra teacher sat me down and told me there is a man in our community who is very rich and who supports orchestra students who work hard. He comes to all the concerts, watches at the festivals. Every six or seven years he picks a student and he pays for them to go on one of the overseas trips.

I knew all that... she'd told us all that my freshman year. I'd forgotten it, but it began to surface and bloom in my brain...

Apparently this man has been watching. And he's decided to pay for me to go to Australia and New Zealand in 2007, which I really wanted to do but knew I could never come up with the money. It's $3000.

I felt like I had a heart attack. She only told me I could tell Erin, no one else, so I sprinted down the hall and I hugged Erin. What an excitement boiling inside you... I haven't felt that excited in a long time.

I kept waiting to wake up, waiting for it to have been a joke, but it wasn't and I knew it wasn't because she'd told us about it two years ago, and I remember thinking, "I'll never get that, but it would be so nice."

I thought about it maybe being my teacher but she doesn't have that kind of money. Who is it then? I don't know. I won't ask. I will take this gift and make the most of it.

CAN YOU THINK OF ANYTHING MORE EXCITING IN THE UNIVERSE????

Even today at the Humane Society when we got yelled at for letting our dogs walk on the wrong patch of grass I didn't feel depressed. There was this in my head, in there all day, growing bigger and bigger...

I thought things like this only happened to other people, people on TV. Other people win the lottery, never you.

Oh man typed words on the internet cannot do justice to how I feel and how amazing this is to me.