2010, we come to a close

I've been thinking about this post for weeks now and I predicted that I would be prepared and know EXACTLY what to write, but the truth is I don't. There's just so many things I could talk about but I wouldn't know where to start.

I guess a good beginning is to say that I am not the same Karina coming out of 2010 as I was coming in to 2010. And that this blog post is going to be me, being completely honest, a lot of it is going to be rambling but I hope you stick with me.

The start of the year I was in a relationship which was going pretty well so far, it also lead me to Brisbane, where I spent roughly four months of this year. During my time in Brisbane I grew a little bit more independent. I had quickly learned that Centrelink are sometimes really difficult to deal with, I spent a lot of time not being able to support myself, which meant I had to learn to be reliant on others during some of my time there. I am so thankful for all the people that gave me a place to stay, fed me or gave me lifts in their cars.
But there are a lot of good memories from my time spent living in Brisbane, I made friends with people I now call my second family, even now after all the things that have come to pass I still treasure them and will be spending a lot of my time in the future with them, God willingly. I had discovered that youth work has a secured place in my heart, and through that I am now reaching towards a career in that something that I feel most deeply passionate about. I had the privilege a few times to discover God's beauty in nature, I got to climb through some stunning waterfalls in Mt Tamborine, watched gorgeous sunsets and got to see lots of wildlife just sitting in scrub not too far from suburbia. A lot of these things I don't have in Adelaide and I'm glad I got experience them.

At the beginning of true winter in Brisbane I discovered that even though I had a heck of support from people around me, I still felt incredibly homesick for Adelaide and living in Brisbane was proving to be more difficult financially, as I unfortunately discovered. So late May I packed my bags and flew home to the loving arms of Adelaide, my friends, my family and my church. In course of that, my relationship, with the one that held out his hand and asked "come with me", fell a part and that is something I struggled with for months. I can't say if it's good or bad that it happened, that I'm now a stronger woman in God or that I've actually now lost hope in love happening to me, but it happened and it's just something that made Karina the person she is now. I hope in due time I find that love can happen for me again.

The last half of the year seems like a real blur to me. Possibly because I was trying to regain the pieces of my life after it was shattered again and again, or it might have been because I felt like I had no real direction, or it's possible that I felt completely alone. All I know is that I'm here now and somehow I made it through these past six or so months. I got to go back to Brisbane for a short time to visit friends that were previously mentioned, the change in weather from Adelaide's dreary winter to Brisbane's sunshine couldn't have come at a better time. Though the trip was also a bit of a mess at times, I enjoyed it and it was good to be with those friends again.

I sound like a bit of a broken record, but all of this, ALL of this stuff that happened to me this year... I can say that I am thankful that I was brought through it. I am thankful for what 2010 did to me.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7)

Here I come, 2011.

Just a Quick Post

Please go to my video and comment (on Youtube, not here), every comment I will be donating a cent to TWLOHA (To Write Love On Her Arms), so far there's a total of $11.08 =]

Books!

Firstly, I failed with the NaNoWriMo, but it was a pretty decent try for my first year. Next year's will be even better!

Secondly, I'm a little behind with my Decembookathon, due to reading pretty intense books. At the moment I'm almost finished the Dead of the Night by John Marsden, of the Tomorrow series. It's a pretty great series so far, but it does pay to take a break from reading every now and again if you aren't into action-y books.

Thirdly, I wanted to do this...

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

NaNoWriMo

This Monday the madness all starts! I'm fairly certain that I'm going to suck, but that's okay. I just worked out the maths and I'm going to have to write at least 1,600 words per day. Ah! O_O

As for Pottertober, that's certainly gone down the drain, but I may have to merge it into November, which will be interesting. I figure if I'm done writing 1,600 words in a day I deserve the right to get some reading in. I will be needing inspiration anyway seeing as I'm pretty much going to suck!

Pottertober, NaNoWriMo and Decembookathon

My life has been lacking a lot of motivation to do things; I don't finish reading books and I haven't been producing all really great things from my outlets of creativity as often as I feel like I should be. So I've been suddenly inspired to go out of this year with a bang, at least to what I call a 'bang'.

There may be only a couple of weeks left of October, but I know in the past I managed to read HP and the Order of the Phoenix in a matter of a few small days. Since the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be out in under a month, all of the rest of this October will be devoted to going through the whole of the series (though I may stop at about half way through DH because, even though I know how it ends, it can't hurt to not spoil it for me.. haha).

All of November will be dedicated to NaNoWriMo (also known as National Novel Writing Month). Whilst I'm not entirely the best novelist, in fact I have never written anything longer than a two or three page story, I think next month will be a good start.

Following on from November, December will be dedicated solely to reading, and finishing, books. Some of you avid followers of my blog may recall a post I blogged late last year in which I wanted to read a whole bunch of books before the end of the year was out. Unfortunately I only ended up finishing one of them, so I will persist to finish a whole bunch of books. Some of the books from that list I have purchased over the past year, but haven't finished, so I may tweak the list a little bit.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Black by Ted Dekker
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Jumper by Steven Gould

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'engle

Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
What's So Amazing About Grace? by Phillip Yancey

If anyone has more suggestions of books I should add to this list, leave a comment. =]

Summer weather is almost here

I'm loving it! Especially now that I am allowed to wear shorts and walk along the beach barefoot without actually feeling cold.

On a good note, I am also feeling much more happier these days. I have finally cut things out of my life that were keeping me down and I'm on the up and up now. I've taken up my hobby of photography again and back to editing old and new photos with Photoshop. Hoping that one day I will be able to purchase a DSLR to advance my photography skills. Perhaps then I will be able to take professional-like photos for friends and at certain events. That's a very exciting possibility. =]

Spiritually I've been trying to draw closer to God, as I feel I have been quite neglecting of that certain part (though really it is ALL of my life) of my life. I've started getting into Psalms lately and trying to read them daily, particularly in the mornings. I also feel like I'm getting to know Jesus all over again and it's a good experience, sometimes I forget just how amazing a person he is. Recently at a camp I was a leader on we went through John 8:1-11 where a bunch of people bring this woman who has commited adultery with intentions of stoning the woman and see if Jesus will slip up in his words, Jesus responds to the people with "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." So one by one, the people walk away and then eventually there is no one left there except Jesus and the woman. Jesus tells the woman that she can walk away a forgiven woman. Even though I have heard that story so many times before, still now I am amazed at the love of Christ. It is truly amazing and staggering. That there is absolutely nothing I can do stop his abounding love, he considers me his treasure even when I feel absolutely worthless, down in the bottom of the deepest hole.

Pain is Funny

Just when you are at that point of time when you think it doesn't hurt anymore, something reminds you of the pain you felt back then and then you realise again how crushed your heart still is. Pain is what makes us stronger, but the way it breaks one person's heart is incredible. Sometimes it just feels like one long, never ending episode. And it's those times when you feel like giving up.

But surely it's going to get better, right? So I should just keep holding on to that to give me hope. God gives me hope. He lets my heart break so that I may be shaped and changed into the Godly woman he wants me to be.

Right now it just hurts. Right now I need to just let these tears flow endlessly. Right now I need to keep holding on to my faith that he will deliver me.

"The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." (Psalm 34:17&18)

It is such joy

To live by the beach, to feel every grain of sand between my toes, to dabble my bare feet in the ripples of water, to hear the crash of gentle waves reach the shore, to have the sea breeze lightly play with my hair.

Love Fool

Love... what is it?

I thought I knew, but now I'm not so sure.

People come into your life, but people also walk out sometimes.

I hate that 'sometimes'.

I give of myself too easily.

But trust is not something to be given lightly.

My heart plays tricks on me,

fooling me to believe something when it is not.

Diversity and Youth Participation

For one of my Online Tasks in my Diploma of Youth Work at Scripture Union QLD we were given the task of reading this blog post (link here) by Michael Grose and an article on 'Young people in multicultural Australia' by a woman named Louise Olliff, surrounding the topic of 'Diversity and Youth Participation'.
The blog post covered a number of predictions of 'emerging trends' that may arise for kids from this year on. With the way in which technology has advanced, ideologies have changed and the way in which the average life has increasingly become more complex in the past decade, I'd say that a number of these predictions of trends may just become true.

One of these trends I do see happening is sleep deprivation, though I do not think that it will necessarily replace cyber-bullying as the biggest threat to young people's well-being. The pressure on young people to exceed in their education, sport, social-life and status in society and culture is becoming more important. With these factors in mind, young people would be generally feeling more stressed and this tends to affect their well-being, particularly their sleep.
I still think that cyber-bullying will not become a lesser threat, as technology is becoming more advanced, accessing information has never been easier (e.g.. social networking websites like Facebook or Twitter) and communication tools such as the internet, mobiles and computers are in the hands of almost every young person.

Sleep deprivation is a difficult issue to combat, particularly for an individual or group who is outside of a child or children's care. It is possible that some guardians or parents can be so focused on encouraging their child to succeed in every area of their life that they overlook some important issues, such as their well-being. Particularly children who may be attending at a top-end private school or those involved with many extra-curricula activities (sport is a big one), the pressure to exceed may be quite higher than children who come from a low-economic backgrounds.

If it were up to me to help ensure that the young people within these social groups have an opportunity to share their opinions on this issue, I would be ensuring that young people know how important well-being is. This could be achieved by running sessions with young people, making resources on health and well-being available and encouraging them that well-being is an important factor of life.
To make sure that a young person's voice is not just allowed to speak, but is heard, I would be involving third parties such as their educators or parents/guardians, and making sure that each young person's voice is heard and valued. Sharing the sessions and resources with the third-parties would also be helpful in this.

Birthday Wishes

So it is almost a month exactly until I turn 22, and even though I'm not really expecting gifts, here is what I would wish for if I could...



'Looking for Alaska' by John Green. It comes with great shame to inform that I am a nerdfighter, though I haven't read any of John Green's work or do I even post on nerdfighters, at all in fact.


Pam Beesley bobblehead from The Office. I've always kind of related myself to Pam, being a relatively quiet and timid person with a gift in creative arts, I can also be a great practical joker.


Ticket to Jónsi's concert at the Palace Theatre, Melbourne, in August. I've enjoyed Sigur Rós for quite some time now and when I first listened to the solo album 'Go' I had it pretty much set in my heart that I will go see this man live, since Sigur Rós are on hiatus for now.

Some of my favourite photographs that I or friends have taken, blown up, printed and framed. I've never had the thought or afforded to be able to do this.


An apron, particularly with a pretty pattern, like this or that one. I spend a lot of the time in the kitchen, baking and helping mum cook dinner. But for the major part, baking sweet treats. =]

Postcards, new and old. I have an ever growing collection of postcards at home here, that are actually stored away until I have somewhere to put/display them. But I do like postcards that are unique and stand out from others. I collect them from all sorts of places, I tend to make sure I pay a visit to Adelaide Central Markets when I can and pick up some free postcards.



Need I say more? Hahah... but I know it's coming, one day soon. And I'm excitedly looking forward to it ever so patiently.

'Things that are handmade are things that come from the heart' is a little saying of mine (which I happened to come up with right now, I'm so crafty!). Handwritten letters, hand-painted pictures, unique jewellery, designed t-shirts and home-baked cupcakes! There are just so many things people can make! I just adore things that are created from the heart.


Guitar lessons! Elliott has left his first acoustic guitar with me, in hope that one day I will know how to play it. It's kind of difficult to get lessons from Elliott right seeing as he is currently on the other side of the country, but it would be nice to get some lessons so I can suprise Elliott the next I see him.

Small and simple things that are nice. Hugs. Conversations over coffee. Cake. Flowers. Smiles. Time spent enjoying each other's company. Compliments. Letters. Laughter. Phone calls. All these things and a lot more! If anything, I'd like all of those things wrapped in a big box tied up with string.


Love, Karina.

Blessings and Curses

Oh rain,
How you like to invade.
Never missing a patch of open ground.
Oh rain,
You come and go as you please,
heavy and light.
Oh rain,
You are both blessing and curse.
You are needed and you are not needed.
But oh rain,
Please go away,
Save it for another day.

The Wonderful Journey

I've been so pathetic with keeping an update with what's happening lately on my blog, but here goes...

Since Elliott moved here in September life has never been the same. It's been amazing and exciting. But it also came with it's flaws. Elliott still hasn't quite found his sense of homeliness in Adelaide and has been struggling to find people he can spend time with outside of spending time with me and playing music. Over Christmas break Elliott went back home and felt really happy to be back there, even if it was for a short time. But ever since, things haven't been quite the same. So Elliott and I have decided that it's probably best if he moves back to Queensland.

And here's the kicker... I plan to move up there with him. I think I might find going back to long distance quite hard, especially since I just got myself into a 3 year youth work course here at Tabor Adelaide. Whilst we were mulling over the decision of what to do, I hunted down a diploma in youth work run by Scripture Union in Brisbane. Just this week I took a deep breath and applied, which I definitely felt was a big step in our plans. Scripture Union called me today and so I now have interview with them on Thursday morning next week. Quite nervous about the interview, but I hope it'll be just as easy as cake like the one I had for Tabor not long ago.

A few issues we've come across already is that Elliott's centrelink payments have been suspended for the time-being, and with both of us not working at the moment it might be hard to gather some money together to pay for flights and such. We plan to move up some time in February (before the youth work course starts), God willing!

Please, if you're the praying or even hoping type, pray and hope that God will have his hand upon us and everything Elliott and I need to do, including discussing things with my parents, financial needs, my interview with SU (Thursday morning next week, don't forget!), finding accommodation (at the moment Imight have found a place) and the emotional side of things. I think it's going to be a teary farewell from Adelaide, leaving almost every bit of my life back here. But I am hopeful about the year ahead and the wonderful journey God's going to take me on. :)