Ladies and Gentlemen, Boy and Girls.

20 reasons to smile today:

1. You woke up before your alarm
2. Your favorite song comes on while you get ready (Pop goes the world)
3. The birds are singing right outside your window
4. Finding money in your old jeans pocket
5. Recieving a text from that person you have been thinking about all day
6. Giving a hug to your mom
7. Remembering an old joke
8. Friends that make you laugh
9. Knowing that you made a persons day, just by being yourself
10. Letting your feet hang over the water
11. Sitting in the sun
12. Looking at old photos
13. Finding old letters
14. Doing an anonymous good deed for someone
15. Knowing that you made someone blush
16. Having an old friend contact you out of the blue
17.  Seeing a lil kid doing something insanely cute
18.  When you realize you were singing in public
19.  When your friends go outa their way to make you smile
20. When you make someone else smile

Dare to fly again.

To my fellow: Geeks, friends, assosiates, enemies, lunatics, cashew lovers and bloggers.

It's been a while! I didn't want to write unless I had something real to write about... I still don't, but I've got the urge to write.

  So. A lot has been going on. Last week I got back from a 4 day trip to Ottawa, for the Rotaries "Adventure in Citizenship" Pretty awesome program. 220 youth aged 16-19 from allll over Canada together in our capital city for 4days, finding out what it really means to be Canadian. Between meeting Justin Trudeau, visiting Parliament, the Supreme Court, participating in a Canadian Citizenship Ceremony and making new friends, it was an experience I will never, never forget.  Above all, the trip got me thinking. Here are all these amazing youth, achieving amazing things, with huge dreams and hopes, and most of them had never even HEARD of UWC. It makes me smile in a bittersweet way, but above all, it gives me hope. Hope that I too, will find a way to succeed without the help of a UWC. The chairman of the program, Nabil, said something very wise to me, "It is not a school, a job, or a title that makes you who you are, but the attitude you have. A brilliant man does not have to be King to be a great leader, he just has to have the support and the love of many. You don't need UWC to make you a leader, you already are one." I've had many people say words like this to me, teachers, lifecoaches, friends, family. But it took someone like Nabil, someone I saw as a role model, as a superior over the rest to make it truely sink in. I believe he is right. I do not need UWC to make me a great person, I need determination, drive, motivation and people who believe in me and love me. I already have all of that, so what am I waiting for? As Corinne once said to me when I told her I didn't get into UWC, " One day soon R, you will spread your wings again and fly amongst the clouds. People like you don't stay down for long."