These days...

I am honestly too tired to explain how I feel lately... but I feel like there is so much going on inside my mind...it's almost as if I can feel my growth..almost as if I could touch the way living in a foreign country is making me change. It's like I have been stripped away of all I knew about myself and I have started over. Friends, skills, appreciation from the people around you, etc. It's almost like you have been thrown in a crowd and you have to start building an identity for yourself all over again. I am learning more these days about what I can or cannot do than ever and I am finally enjoying saying "I don't know" and "I need help". I am also appreciating team work in the truest form and now I can honestly acknowledge that the sum of all the people in a team is so much bigger and so much more valuable than the individuals. I am starting to look for that special contribution that each of us can make. And I am so happy handing over things that I know someone else may do better than me.

There's so many things that I took for granted...(for instance today..the fact that I thought I had good public speaking skills, which I though made me a good trainer)..and so many things that I am still discovering the sheer pleasure of...like cooking...or olives...or pasta with basil :)

I feel like now I am learning to be a true leader and at the same time follow what I think makes other people great to me...

Even though this will make the post longer, I feel I need to share with you this inspirational poem, my mom read to me the first time. It is a piece of writing that reflects in a sense the kind of feelings of getting stripped and reinventing yourself.

IF - by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

P.S. I think I'll search for his stories these days too...I remember to have enjoyed them greatly.