This weekend has been fantastic! Along with 22 other people, we went on a fun-filled weekend trip to Green Island! We slept on the tain and took a boat ride there (Boat ride was awful! I puked half of the way there, which was a downer). Then, after recovering a bit, we zoomed around the island in scooters…

went sight seeing…

went snorkeling in the afternoon (with matching neon wetsuits), ate a whole lot of food, gone nature watching, dipped in the JiaoRi hot springs, and partied the night away care of a healthy supply of vodka, orange juice and Smirnoff Ice!

My gosh, people were just grinding like mad after midnight while I spent the rest of the night exchanging theories and lying down prickly blades of grass with a couple of friends. 🙂

On Sunday, we spent the rest of the morning going around the island in scooters, which was a thoroughly liberating experience. With the help of my dear friend Mark, I even tried driving one myself and was lucky enough to encounter only two hair-raising experiences of running into a store (Mark reached out and braked just in time) and hitting an old man in his scooter (Boy, was he cursing mad!!!). It was truly a scary yet thrilling experience.

After lunch, we headed back to Taitung to buy some souvenirs (Century egg cakes… yum!) and boarded the train back to Taipei.

Overall, it was truly fun. Enjoying much of the fresh air, I’ve made a lot of new friends and Green Island was a much-deserved break for me. 🙂

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I’d like to share with you something I received in the mail earlier this morning. Written anonymously, it’s entitled, “Happiness is a Voyage,” and I believe it describes perfectly on how we should approach life:

Happiness is a Voyage

We convince ourselves that life will be better once we are married, have a baby, then another.

Then we are frustrated because our children are not old enough and that all will be well when they are older.

Then we are frustrated because they reach adolescence and we must deal with them. Sure we’ll be happier when they grow out of the teen years.

We tell ourselves our life will be better when our spouse gets his/her act together, when we have a nicer car, when we take a vacation, when we finally retire…

The truth is that there is no better time to be happy than RIGHT NOW. If not, then when? Your life will always be full of challenges. It is better to admit as much and to decide to be happy in spite of it all.

For the longest time, it seemed that life was about to start… real life. But there was always some obstacle along the way, an ordeal to get through, some work to be finished, some time to be given, a bill to be paid, then life would start.

I finally came to understand that those obstacles were life.

That point of view helped me see that there isn’t any road to happiness.

Happiness IS the road.

So enjoy the moment.

Stop waiting for school to end, for a return to school, to lose ten pounds, to gain ten pounds, for work to begin, to get married, for Friday evening, for Sunday morning, waiting for a new car, for your mortgage to be paid off, for spring, for summer, for fall, for winter, for the first or the fifteenth of the month, for your song to be played on the radio, to die, to be reborn… before deciding to be happy.

Happiness is a voyage, not a destination.

There is no better time to be happy than NOW.

Live and enjoy the moment.

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Sometimes, we get lost in all the hustle and bustle of life. These past few weeks, I’ve been so stressed out and overwhelmed with all the pressures that I broke down and cried for 15 minutes in the bathroom. But now, after the much-deserved Green Island break, I realized once again to just take it easy and things have a way of working it out in the end.

I’ve grown SO MUCH in the past couple of months. It’s like undergoing a crash course on life and people management, which almost broke me down… yet ultimately made me a stronger person. I worry less now, and I’m glad. Worrying makes you old and doesn’t help much.

Some days are just so terrible that you just want to get out and poke your head in the ground. Sometimes, it’s so overwhelming that you just laugh because it can’t get any worse than this. But you realize that bad things pass, and the best thing you can do is to tough it out and ride the wave — good things will resurface after a while.

All in all, I’m still very thankful and happy. I’m glad that I have a steady flow of friends I can rely on, and that God has ensured that I can handle these hardships slowly yet surely. Yes, happiness is a voyage… not the destination. And I’m thoroughly enjoying every step of this journey.

Carpe Diem! Seize the day!