Ayyam-i-Ha

Happy Ayyam-i-Ha everyone! Tonight, Ayyam-i-Ha began at sunset, and I love it. I've been home for a couple days, and all of our little festivities have been fun. We made fudge, and listened to the Grandpa Sears CD (a tape we have listened to at this time of year since I can remember... we know it really well!), and the house is a little decorated, and we played with little children, and visited with friends, and opened gifts, and the family cooked breakfast together. I love it. God gives us these four days to celebrate family and friends and His love for us, and to prepare for the Fast. I'm excited about the Fast too. I already know a few things that I want to focus on this year during the Fast, to prepare for the coming new year. It will be even more interesting since daylight savings time is beginning in the middle of the Fast, which means dinner time will be much later.
Yesterday, my brother, mother, and I attended the wedding of a dear friend, a sort of big sister. She went to university here in Columbia, and then the added bonus was that during my year at the Baha'i World Centre, she was also serving there. She had been there over a year before I arrived, and it was so nice having that comfort of knowing someone the night I arrived, and the rest of the year. It was a gorgeous wedding, outdoors and very small and intimate. It really felt like a family gathering, even though some of us weren't technically related by blood ;). We still felt like family.

In that one place, I had three of my Baha'i big sisters there, and it was really wonderful. During the reception, one of them was talking to me and said something like, "I can't wait to watch you find someone and get married and begin a family." It struck me because I never really thought of anyone except myself and maybe my mom thinking about that, especially not this amazing person that I look up to so much. Maybe it was because she watched me playing with her eighteen month old son, or just the fact we were at a wedding. For whatever reason she said it, it was sweet and took me by surprise. I'm so lucky to have such incredible examples to learn from.
Tomorrow, I head back to Ithaca to continue the semester. It's been nice to have a glimpse of spring while I've been home, but I'm still excited to go back to winter. It's been almost a dream being back in Columbia. I know it's real, but it seems slightly surreal, like I kind of belong here but I don't. Which is pretty much the truth. I do enjoy sitting in a restaurant and hear someone say the word tomorrow like tahmawrah :). I love the diversity that exists on this planet :).