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It's been a long time since I've posted an entry in this blog. Longer still is the time since I left the Seminary, returning home for my eagerly awaited gap-year...fifteen months to be exact! Still, as I type these words, the clock ticks onwards, every minute that passes bringing me closer to the end of today and the beginning of tomorrow, and it is from the notion of what lies ahead of me from tomorrow onwards that I'm getting my fair share of angst.

Tomorrow I leave home once again to join the other seminarians at the Seminary for another batch of three years, at the end of which time (totalling seven years) I will (God-willing) be deemed worthy of the ordination to the priesthood. Hence, from tomo onwards I restart my journey of studies and community-living-and-prayer which had been put on hold such that I could go through the "Formation with a difference" my fourth year (the afore-mentioned gap-year) provided me with. You may wonder why I'm making such fuss on the fact that I'm going back, given that I've already spent the three years prior to the break at the Seminary....it's not that I've never been therer before...how big a deal can resuming what's been put on hold be?

Don't get me wrong...I'm really expectant as to what life at the Seminary, particularly as regards following wholeheartedly whatever Jesus will be putting on my heart, has to offer me this time around:) The thing is I go back a changed person, maturer and wiser if you will. The old Rene' which the Seminary walls have seen storming in rage after some disappointment or quarrel, or making unexpected bursts of enthusiastic laughter following some achievement and cause of satisfaction has to a certain degree moved on to become a deeper young man. This is not to say that I have lost my "cool" or traded my "fun-factor" for a more somber demeanour...nothing of the sort (I hope :p). However, the months I've spent helping out in Ethiopia, tending to the wounded, singing lengthy songs in a language I do not understand to kids and distributing food to the homeless along with the close association with the sisters of Mother Teresa (God bless them!) this entailed, as well as the hundreds of hours of guidance work to Malta's kids and youth on bullying, drug and substance abuse and physical abuse, not to mention my role within the parameters of my family...the family man hehe...have given me an all-too-new perspective of life. (pic>>>the home economics pupils preparing non-alcoholic cocktails for their peers at Guzeppi Despott, Verdala, Boys' JL, during a week of activities themed "Il-Hajja Bis-Sens" organised by a colleague of mine, myself and a PSD teacher at the school as part of the substance abuse prevention programme...faces blurred for data protection purposes. if only i could use that excuse to blur, what was then, my ever fatter stomach :p)

I don't like listening to rants, more so when it's I doing the diatribing, so I'll cut to the chase...what I have to do now is find an opening...an opportunity by way of which I'll be able to share all that I have been blessed with, learned and acquired in the past months. In so doing, the new me'll gradually return to the folds of the institution with greater ease.

Hehe...sounds easy, doesn't it? Think I'll succeed? Well...of course...(at least I hope so LOL)...I can't give up now I'm on the home straight...

(This piece is dedicated to my fellow friends who were part of my seminary year and somewhat like family to me, who, for some reason or another, shall not be resuming the seminary experience, but shall seek their life's path in other ventures. I love you guys...Thanks for everything. Godspeed!)