A Home Away From Home

Many times I hear people call our school, a 'home away from home'. With sports and school activities, it is not unheard of to spend more time at school than at home. Friends, teachers, and coaches, are all like a second family. We go to them when we have problems, to spend memorable times together, or even when you are in need of a simple cheering up. I know I have created like a second family. As I think about it, I find it pretty cool that many students have a second family not only here, but across the world.
Today in chapel, three seniors spoke to us about their experience studying abroad for an entire year in either France or China. The pictures and short presentations all seemed to have the same overlapping focus, their host families. Each would call them their family/adopted family, calling them mom and dad. I just couldn't believe how much the host families bonded with the seniors. It went from complete strangers to mom and dad. It goes to show how open and welcoming those families were to take in a student from a different country for a whole year. What brought them together I guess was the love for the culture, people, and language.
One of the girls who spoke, mentioned how amongst the new experiences, she had a longing for Hawaii and her family. That's totally reasonable, because after all, she was away for an entire year. Away from friends and family, and away from home. Soon that all changed, she made lifetime friends and had another family, and China was her home. Now that she is back in Hawaii, she misses China and her other family.
Seeing how every single one of those seniors were able to bond and become a part of another family in another country, it gives me some confidence that I will be alright when I go off to college. Who knows, maybe I will do just fine.

Regret

Since our main assignment right now is our "Defining moment" paper, my energy and thoughts have been focussed on that. It has kind of led me to think about another question to think about as well. While going back through the memories, for some reason I began asking myself, "Do I regret anything?"
It's kind of a big question because yeah, I regret things, but at the same time I don't regret having them. What I'm trying to say is that I have made mistakes and did the wrong things, but I am glad that I did them. It's because if I never made those mistakes, I might not be where I am today. Everything in our lives has a purpose and every little things shapes us into the person we are. This can sort of tie into a defining moment, but one of my regrets is not cherishing and fully living every moment. I just assume that there will be more moments like that one in the future, and in the back of my mind, expect everything to be the same. What I haven't realized is that things will not always be the same. People change, situations become different and more complicated, and the things we wanted to relive don't come around again. Making this mistake has caused me to miss a lot of fun things in life.
One of my favorite lines from the movie/musical, "Rent", is "Forget regret, or life is yours to miss". It just stood out to me and made me take a minute to really think it through, only to realize that it is totally true. If you live life constantly watching what you do, making sure that you won't regret anything, you will end up not living your life at all. I'm not saying to go out and do careless things, but if you are so caught up with making sure you don't, "life is yours to miss". And if you think about it, regrets are something in the past. It's not worth pondering and worrying about forever. All you can do is take those regrets in life, and learn from them.