An adventure, a longing feeling, a thought on poverty and riches, and 2 top ten lists, some more words,and a game of sorts for my friends and readers!

THE ADVENTURE:
I had a small adventure coming home from Paris last night. I was waiting in the metro station for my train and I saw this big black fellow ask someone pasing by for a cigarrete. The other guy said no, but I was feeling generous, so I bummed a cigarette to him. He proceeded to try and talk to me in French and I realized that he was really drunk, so I said that I didn't understand French and started to walk away. He said 'oh, English!' And proceeded to try and tell me how beautiful I was and blah blah. I tried to leave, but I found that I wasn't really able to get him to stop trying to speak to me, in his poor english, long enough to say 'ok thanks good bye.' Luckily my train started to pull into the station and I was at the far end of the platform so I said oh this is my train bye, and quickly started to trot towrds the nearest car. Unfortunately, he followed me onto my train. I tried to be nice and make him leave me alone, but he was plastered and didn't get the idea. I sat across from this other guy, who looked very harmless while reading his book, hoping that would deture the drunken guy. It didn't, he sat next to me and I was starting to get freaked. Not badly, but sort of. The guy across from us, not being drunk, noticed that I was having a hard time of it and so he started to talk to me in english and kind of distract the guy. The black guy was supposed to be getting off at Versaille Rd. and the other fellow and I were both getting off before him at La Celle St Cloud. However, when we got off the black guy followed me again. The other guy, named Arnold, offered to escourt me home. I thought that was probably a good idea. He wasn't a very big guy, but I thought it better to have a small, not drunk, white guy walking me home than to walk home alone with a large, semi scary, drunken, black man following me. The black guy stopped following me after a bit, and I got home safe but it was deffinitally a weird experiance. I will be far more careful as to whom I give cigarettes to in the future!

THE LONGING FEELING:
I don't think I will be able to save enough money to go home for Christmass and I am getting all bummed out about it. I don't want to spend another Christmas without people I love. I don't want to be alone in Paris. I would be happy to spend it with my friends in Ireland, except that I have some really bad memories spending last Christmas there with "he who shall not be mentioned" and his family, so I would rather not go to Ireland. I am thinking about going south. Maybe my friend Maria, from Ireland, is going to go home to Spain for Christmas. I might ask to visit her and her family for Christmas. I might try and spend it with another Irish contact named Stephanie in Bretagne, that's in the north west of France. I don't know... Do any of you have ideas as to where I should go. I still owe money to Mel and my mom, so I really can't even think about coming home. (Mel it is coming! I haven't forgotten your kindness in my hour of need. )

THE THOUGHT:
I hear that money can be a burden for the soul. Clouding the mind and making it harder to think of God and easier to think about worldly possesions. However, I find that not having any money, ok in my instance I have 5 euro for the rest of the month, is also a burden and draws me away from God. I am always distracted and worrying about paying my bills, student loans, and freinds back. Not to mention worrying semi constantly and being uncomfortable in my social surroundings, because of my clothes. My one pair of jeans that didn't have a whole in the knee, have started to simply become worn out. (Most girls know where jeans wear out the fastest and are next to impossible to patch.) I can't wear them anymore, so I am left with only my 2 pairs of old lady pants to wear. I would really love to buy a new pair of jeans, but I don't have resources to do so. The fact that I am always slightly uncomfortable in my surroundings distracts me from being sweet and social like I would like to be. It also bothers me that when I go to mass I am uncomfortable. I know this is pathetic and vain, but it is a distraction for me and is making it hard for me to concentrate on Jesus and not the people around me. I know others who have greater needs, but this in and of itself doesn't really help me to feel better about being poor. It actually just makes me sadder about the state I am in because I am unable to help them like I want to.

Rhetorical question: Why is it that the people who want to help others are the people least able to do so?

I don't know, I guess I am still young and that there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to help people. Maybe someday I will get rich from singing and will be able to help change the world! Probably not, but hey it's still a nice day dream.

THE LISTS:
Top ten list of what I would do had I an inexorbitant amount of money:
1.) Pay all debts back for myself. Student loans, medical bills... etc.
2.) Pay all debts back for all my friends. Kate and Lum at the top of the list, but closely followed by many of my friends at Ave who have done their best to follow Gods will and get an education, but in the process have, like myself, become indebted to so many.
3.) Pay all debts back for my parents and siblings. Yes, I put this one after my friends because, my parents have such old debts that their credit is already ruined and it really wouldn't matter if they waited a week or two longer for their money. My friends need it now.
4.) Secure a well insulated, simpley furnished, comfortably spaced, little house where my family can live without worrying about freezing in the winter or having hay bails as a sofa. Yes, we really have done it.
5.) Find out if there is any possibility of getting my father a liver transplant (He has Hepatitis C), my mother some kind of help with her weight problem (maybe a stomach staple?), my brother Peter and sister Jubilee braces, my brother David a completely paid for tuition for the next '4 years at Oxford. So that he doesn't have to leave after a year.
6.) Find some way to help Ave Maria College in Michigan. If nes. I would help them to pay anything they need to pay in order to stay alive for the rest of the time God has Earth spinning, or until the institution becomes corrupt. The later not likely to happen for at least 100 years.
7.) Arrange for a huge shipment of medical supplies and food to be shipped to Calcutta India along with several very carefully selected doctors who would be paid to live and work there for as long as they chose to stay. I would of course want the best most kind hearted people and would of course be willing to pay for whatever they needed.
8.) Donate large sums of money to several religious orders that I know would use the money to further Gods plans.
9.) Donate large sums of money to the Pro-Life movements in America and Europe.
10.) Go work in Calcutta for at least a year, and leave the money to my father to worry about while I was gone.

Top ten things I would be tempted to do if I had inexorbitant amounts of money:
1.) Get lyposuction. He he he It sounds so simple! My bum could be perfect!
2.) Buy lots of beautiful clothes. Nothing vulgar, but some beautiful skirts and blouses and a few pairs of shoes.
3.) Spoil my friends with expensive gifts that I know they don't really need, but would like. Cars, trips to exotic places... etc.
4.) Travel the whole world by myself or with... He he he I won't say who.
5.) Make the side of my barn into a drive in movie theatre and watch more money roll in! The closest theatre to my families home in Wisconsin is a 45 minute drive. Most people near us have to drive even farther. We could make a killing with a drive in right where we are located.
6.) Build Hobbit home in the side of a hill on my farm! Oh so cool.
7.) Have a huge party with lots of food and great musicians. Free for my friends from everywhere. It would be a huge reunion of sorts. I would fly ALL my friends to it! Everyone, Germans, Frenchies, Italians, Irish, Polish, everyone related to Ave, proffessors and their families included, all my long lost friends in Illinois, my parents friends, and those that they have long lost as well, and maybe a few choice people from Wisconsin including Slatterys, Korishs, and most of my brother Davids friends. I would have the beginning last for a month and have different groups arrive at different times so that I was able to se everyone, and then finish it with the huge evening bash.
8.) Find a really good organist/pianist and hire them along with a good bunch of singers to work for my church. Every mass would have good music.
9.) Pay my brother and another to write songs for me to sing and record.
10.) Be lazy and take a few select female friends of mine to a beauty retreat center thingy.

SOME MORE WORDS:
Hahaha I can't stop babbleing in this post. But I think that isn't really unusual. Katie, Louise, Mel, what would you girls do if you had all the money you could ever need or spend? You'd save Ave too, and since its on my list you don't need to put it on your list.

THE GAME OF SORTS:
Oooh ooh I have an idea!!!! I say that Kate goes next and writes a list of things she would do with our inexorbitant amount of money. She can leave out Ave and any other things that she would do and I have already said I would do, such as give to pro-life and religious orders, I say that she has to come up with her own ten ways to change her world. But at the bottom of her list she can say which ones of mine she would have also listed had I not listed them first. Then Weezy should go next off of Kates list, then Mel off of Weezies, then Justin off of Mels, then as many people as I can get. I want to know how my friends would change the world they live in to make themselves and those they care about the happiest, healthiest, holiest people ever! Yeah happy thoughts!

Go kate go!
By the way if you are not one of my friends and you happen to have stumbled across my blog I would be happy to know you exist. Please say 'hi' in my comments box and try writing your own ten things. You can post them here if you have no where else to post them! Tell me how the world could be different!