Ordinary Life Continues

It's been awhile since I wrote my last post on here! Oops. I guess I got a little bit sidetracked. I also really didn't know what to write about that would be relevant to my blog. Things are pretty normal here! As an example: today I went grocery shopping, did some laundry, and made some dinner. For some reason, it's not quite what I expected.
I'm not sure exactly what I was predicting ... In all honesty, before I left home I daydreamed about huge adventures out in the wilderness of Australia happening every few days, give or take. Don't know where I got that idea. (It's probably safe to blame the media.) Overall, life down under is very similar, if not the same, to life in the States. People get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, go to sleep, and start it all over again the next day. It's all very ordinary. Which is nice, in the sense that it makes it feel very home-like, what with the normal routine and everything. There is enough differences, however, to make it not home.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not disappointed or anything. I adjusted my adventure-thinking pretty soon after I arrived, I just couldn't place exactly what was different than I expected. Turns out "normal" is kind of difficult to spot. And this trip is still an adventure. A leaving home, meeting new people, and generally branching out kind of adventure! That's basically all an adventure is, right? Every good (or possibly bad) adventure story usually followed those basic plot lines. Character leaves the familiar. Character meets new people. Character learns new things. My adventure just isn't as dangerous as all those we read about! (Thank goodness!)
Every time I meet someone new, I get so excited! I don't know why, but I do. They are adding little bits to my story and making it more interesting or enjoyable or fun. And every time someone meets me, they usually are a little taken aback that I am here, of all places, by myself, working in a strange country half a world away. It's funny... If anything else had been different, if I had gone somewhere else on this huge, magnificent planet of ours, or if I had chosen not to come at all, I would never have met any of them! And they wouldn't have met me. But this applies to life in general. If we meet some random stranger at the grocery store (I've gotten to talk to the same cashier just about every week) we now know them. They are part of our life, even if it's a very small part. If we had gone to the store even five minutes earlier or later, we would not have met them. Things would be different.
Everything, huge or not, happens for a God-given reason. We don't know what it is, and that's the amazing beauty of it. I always picture an author writing a story. The author knows exactly what is happening with every single one of the characters, and know the ways they are connected, even if the characters themselves never find out. And if it's a good story (preferably one with a happy ending) the characters are grown in ways they never could have imagined or done by themselves, without the help of that unnamed someone in the grocery store.