We came to break the bad, we came to cheer the sad, we came to leave behind the world a better way.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Only seven more days in Vienna, which is surreal, and it's my first Thanksgiving to not be home. I'm sure this will probably happen fairly often as life goes on, but it is weird to not be "home for the holidays". On this holiday.

I'm having a Wuthering Heights problem lately. All I want to do is read it, and I feel like that will be the first book I attack when I get home. I miss the story - though it breaks my heart - and I miss the words. I regularly wish that I could speak with the eloquence and poetry of the Romantics.

"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine..."

Oh, right, Thanksgiving. I traded in my family this year to eat turkey & dressing (minus the dressing, for me) with the Lowrys and an extremely varied group of thirty with whom I've been living & exploring for the past three months. And it was great. I expected to be a bit melancholy, but I was completely happy; I expected to cry a bit, but I laughed too much instead ... if there's even such a thing as laughing too much.

Tomorrow we're heading just outside of Salzburg to get a cabin in the Alps and have another little community thanksgiving. I'm grateful for all of this (not to be cheesy) just because I have hda a better perspective on the holiday than ever before. This is possibly (extremely likely) because I'm not home, I'm not on a break from school, I'm not with my family, I'm not overwhelmed by food, and while generally you're supposed to be thankful for those things, I almost think they're so traditional and habitual that it's hard to remember the whole purpose of the holiday.

Being thrown out of that system has caused me to reflect on all the incredible blessings in my life far more than I ever really have before. I have so much, too much. I hope that I always share it, and share love, and share light. There's a lot of good and hope and sincerity in this world if we'd just look for it a little more often.