Lots of walking over the last two days: yesterday I went to the Tate Modern, walking there along the Embankment, and then wandering through looking for the Rothko Room. It was the last place I looked, of course, but that was okay because they cycle their permanent collection and there were lots of new things to see. Today we went to St. James' Park and up into Mayfair and down into Belgravia. I wanted to see the great old squares, to gather finishing details for my romance novel. Christian accompanied me (he had school and errands on Monday and Tuesday so I wandered alone) and it was a different experience. When I find a square I have been looking for, I meander all around it, and then sit usually, and stare at the houses, and take pictures, and scribble in my notebook about the air and the other people around. Christian is more goal-oriented. When we got to Grosvenor or Belgrave Square, he was immediately ready to turn around and find the next place, while I sort of sighed and followed more slowly after him, my head turned over my shoulder to see what shape the windows are, what color the facades. He did save me a lot of aimlessness though, and my feet thank him for all the buses he got us onto.
Apparently LiveJournal is blocked in Dubai, so I may not be able to post about the rest of my trip. Rawaan can access it from work, but I'm not sure if I will get around to stockpiling entries for her to put up. So if I don't post here for the next two weeks, don't worry: I have not been kidnapped by terrorists. I am just in a county where speech is not entirely free. I'm not sure about Flickr - I will try to update photos regularly.
I wandered from Charing Cross Station through Trafalgar Square, Chinatown, Neal's Year, the British Museum, Russell Square, the British Library, and then back down through Bloomsbury, Charing Cross Road, Soho, and down Regent Street to Picadilly Circus. My feet hurt (now).
I've remembered the smell of London, and the way my heart beats faster here when I encounter something particularly wonderful. I am overcome with the fact of being here. How I love to simply sit in the middle of a small square, on a bench, watching the fallen leaves and the tiny red flowers blooming from beneath them, the statues, the sunlight coming in and out, the men in pink button down shirts eating lunch, the fountains, the skeletal trees, the old buildings with their faded brick and rows of white windows. Or in the cafe, where I had tea from white china, and you never have to ask for milk, it is just understood. Or in the British Library, where the beautiful old books live, where I heard Gertrude Stein reading a poem, and T.S. Eliot, and looked at manifestos from the 1910s, when everything seemed possible, when that century was as young as this century - only now we are postmodern, and believe in nothing, certainly not ourselves.
Pictures of the day here.
Off to bed.
My host, Christian (a friend from San Francisco who is now attending the London School of Economics) went to a movie with his roommates, at my urging, because I thought it best to go to sleep early, and it would be quieter and easier to do so if he was out. He appeared to be under the impression that the mattress would inflate itself. I am approaching the end of some kind of very very short rope. It's my birthday, but feeling bad for all the trouble I am already putting Christian to, I found no easy way to slip this into the conversation, and so I didn't tell him. I will celebrate in Dubai with Rawaan and Annie, and have already celebrated in San Francisco with my friends there. Still, I am tired enough that this feels fairly disastrous at the moment: sitting alone in a strange house on my birthday with aching arms and legs and a half-inflated mattress between myself and sleep.
But. I am in London. My flight went well. I found Christian's house easily. We had a nice dinner at a Singaporean restaurant that happened to have replaced a restaurant Lily and I went to once (the old one had a better name, something about the people's revolution, but this one was still delicious). On the way home we walked across Westminster Bridge, which has the best view: Parliament and Big Ben lit up against one side of the sky, and St. Paul's against the other. Tomorrow, assuming I someday get to sleep, I will be rested and happy again, and I will spend all day wandering around the streets, thinking about Victorians and discovering Edward Monkton cards, and drinking tea.
Okay, enough of a break. Once more into the breach: I will inflate this mattress or fall asleep trying.
I have been panicking, the last couple days, because I was on the verge of getting sick, sick in a really nasty way that would have made it almost impossible to get on a plane on Saturday. I didn't realize how much of myself I have hung on this trip until it became endangered: The pieces of me that have been living in London all this time. The pieces of me that feel right and well only when sitting with Rawaan and Annie, as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration. The pieces of me that hate going to work every day. The pieces of me that love watching movies on airplanes.
The danger seems to have passed. I am still on a knife's edge, though I think now everything is okay. And of course, it would be okay anyway. Even if I had to push my flight back, I would still go. Even if I didn't go, all of those pieces of me would survive. They've survived the last year and a half, or longer, and they will keep surviving, waiting for their turn. But I really do very much hope their turn comes on Saturday.
Work is ridiculous. I want to say, it will be over soon, I will be gone, but I have a terrible feeling that even though I'll be gone it won't be over, and it will haunt me all through the month of December. Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now though. They won't be able to get to me when I am half a world away, unless I let them.
Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo! Last Sunday. I reached 50,000 words (plus 90 or so) and have not touched it since. I have a lot of novel left to go, and I do want to write it, but I haven't had time. Maybe on the airplane. Maybe in Rawaan's garden, giggling and smoking shisha and scribbling away.
It's been a strange couple of weeks. A strange couple of months. I am alone again, but I'm not lonely yet. Recently: My car window was smashed. I got a check in the mail from my insurance company, not because of the smashed window, apropos of nothing in fact. I went to Orange County, and Seattle, and spent two nights in different hotel rooms, my head on strange pillows, blinking at the television instead of sleeping. I went through old journal entries looking for writing to submit with an internship application, and thoughts of all the things I have not recorded recently, and how I wish I had. There is nothing quite like the moment. But then again, some moments it is better not to remember in great detail.
Our cat (my new cat, my roommate Alex's cat from before we moved in together) Simon only loves me when we're alone. If no one else is in the house he lets me pick him up and hold him. He doesn't squirm or protest. He pushes his face into my hand, and cuddles up. If, however, there is anyone else nearby, he runs when I approach. He will sniff my fingers, but if I move them closer he bolts. He's like that boy (or girl) who whispers sweet nothings when there is no one to see, but when his (or her) friends are around, makes fun of you. Though it's possible that person only exists in movies. And anyway, Simon doesn't have friends, just other people he dislikes as much as he dislikes me.
I have been hiding in my room all week, as promised (threatened?) I want to call all my friends and ask about their weekends, and their weeks, and catch up on gossip, and reconnected, reaffirm our mutual admiration, etc. But instead I have been hiding, and watching Anne of Green Gables. It is not any person, in particular, just the general fact of people, so many people, out there. I have been reestablishing my skin.
On Monday, when I was supposed to fly back from Seattle in the morning, a quick two hour flight and then to work, my flight was canceled. I was stuck at the airport the whole day; it ended up taking 12.5 hours door to door. I read all of Atonement, and tried not to cry, exhaustion and helplessness welling up periodically through the long day. My cell phone battery was dying, and as much as I wanted to be in a private place, so I could collapse without the weight of strangers' eyes, I also wanted to be connected to someone, anyone. I wanted to call and tell somebody how miserable I was. (Robin pointed out that I could have used a pay phone for that purpose, which I knew, even thought of once or twice; was my failure to do so because I didn't really want to talk to anyone, or because I am a child of the 21st century and disdain the use of pay phones?)
My little sister Merlyn missed school on Friday, to drive up to Seattle. She informed me that at recess, two little boys in her class were getting married, and she had missed it. She was supposed to officiate, but she seemed to think they would find a replacement easily enough. She admitted that a girl in her class had dared them to, and I imagine there was much teasing, and affectations of disgust all around; nevertheless, the thought makes me ridiculously happy. Two boys getting married is a possibility to these children. We move forward, baby steps.
And one final happy note, that overwhelms all else: Rawaan is coming! To San Francisco! In July!
Two days of work left. I've basically finished two of the three things I was given to work on this week (my boss being out of the office). The last thing is some research. Should take a few hours. At most, half a day. My suggestion to my boss for future interns is going to be to expect more.
I bought my train and plane tickets. I am going to New Jersey, for just over a week (a couple days of which I hope to spend in New York) and then to San Francisco on the 20th. I am leaving D.C. a week from tomorrow. I made a list today of things I want to do once I get off work (museums, monuments, etc.) It's got about fifteen things on it, so far. I have to become a tourist, muster up energy. The heat is supposed to break, at least, Friday.
This is a pointless post. Made mostly because Laura was complaining about me not posting enough. And because I only have two days left, and don't feel that I should be going to bed too early.
Oh, I am trying to figure out how in one year and a bit of work, I can save up enough to go to Dubai and Senegal (ideally in one trip, so I can kidnap Rawaan from the former and bring her with me to the latter), and then go live in (or at least pay an extended visit to) Panama. I realize these places are all on different sides of the planet, but it's an interconnected world now, right?
Our arrival in New Haven was uneventful. We had missed the Thursday events, so we did work in the hotel for the rest of the evening. Yesterday was the main colloquium: four panels on different areas of public interest law, plus a conversation with Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The panels were very interesting: one addressed the intersection of disabilities and welfare; one examined the death penalty and juvenile life without parole; one was on immigration and labor; and one on working with communities/compromise and different tactics for accomplishing change. The introductory speaker quoted Yeats: "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity" and then argued that this was not, in fact true. It was heartening to agree with him throughout the day, to see incredibly smart men and women of all ages dedicated to public service and with the tools to accomplish things; people who have in fact already accomplished things (though not enough). I don't think I want to go to law school, but in fact a lot of the panelists talked about non-litigation work, about research and media work and community building. To slightly problematize the experience, there was a tight sense of identity, a shared culture among the panelists and presenters, and I wonder how many of these highly educated and upper-middle-class lawyers interact with the people they are trying to "save"... however, given that, it was a very interesting and valuable experience.
Oh, and I got to meet Doug Liman (of "Go" and "Swingers" and "The Bourne Identity" and "The O.C."). He was obviously the Brown grad in a room of Yale Law grads - he had frizzy hair and a wrinkled jacket.
The return journey was much smoother (I took the train the whole way) and I spent last night playing Speed Scrabble with Annie, her friend Heather and Cutter, and then fell into bed exhausted and arose this morning to go sampling at Whole Foods and do work and have dinner with some old friends of my grandparents who very kindly drove up from Connecticut. Now I am trying to finish my book on Brazilian infant death (it is just as depressing as it sounds, but also incredibly interesting and well-written) so I can write a paper on it tomorrow, and still have time to lay out my thesis and create a title page.
Oh, and I made two new icons from the same picture. But this one is my new default. Pretty!
In Haifa it rained, and I took a bath as an antidote to the cold and wet and then stood by my wall-length window wrapped up in towels, letting the thunder soaked air wash in with the blue and yellow lights of the city. Calm. Yesterday I received an Ayurvedic massage: hot stones placed beneath my palms and between my toes, and warm oil pouring on my forehead and into my hair.
Only two days left. We spent so long in Jerusalem, over a week, it felt like we had moved in. Now we are rushing, discarding whole cities as not worth the small time that remains to us.
***
As a short note on another topic, yes I have been paying attention to Sharon's illness and we have been discussing it, and no I did not cause him to fall ill, nor did I kill the pope. I just have bad timing. People here are very worked up - though less now than when it first happened. People are adjusting. I've learned more about Sharon than I ever knew before - he was a very marginal politician, villified for his role in earlier wars. Now he is the national father figure, and almost everyone we've talked to says this is a terrible tragedy for Israel (there are some dissenters on both the right and the left). I've decided I better stop traveling, at least to countries with elderly leaders.
On Mount Zion today a man attached himself to us and took me up a flight of stairs to see the room the Crusaders built where they decided the Last Supper took place. A large, stone room. My tour guide said it was the pesach room, having assured himself that I was a good Jewish girl and would care more for Jewish references than Christian (when he saw us he tried to speak Hebrew, and told us astounded that he was sure I was Israeli. I got the same two days ago, only in Arabic - I have an all-purpose complexion in this part of the world). He asked if we were Conservative Jews and I said I do not practice, and my family is Reform. He looked very disappointed, but said I should still marry a Jewish boy. I shrugged. "You are Jewish from your mother and father?" he said and I shook my head, "No, just my father." "Oh, then you are not really Jewish." I smiled a little, wryly, and shook my head. I am always being told this by the men who most want me to be Jewish. He exclaimed, "But you look so Jewish! So Israeli!" as if I could not have inherited the genetic material from my father.
At lunch in Zion Square, the pedestrian shopping mall at the heart of modern West Jerusalem, Doug said everything is about identity here. Ours, and other people's. Our cab driver/tour guide this morning was Druze, a mysterious sect who live in northern Israel and do not tell anyone anything about their religion or its practices. It's the first thing we ask any taxi driver. Where are you from? (meaning, who are you?) Identity is foregrounded here in dress and because in a couple hours it will be Shabbat and practicing Jews will not be able to drive or turn a light on or off or answer the phone, and because identity politics have consequences here. Jerusalem asks you to choose, to define yourself.
This is true, but it is also too easy. It lets America, it lets us, off the hook. As if we aren't asked to define ourselves at home. As if we don't use dress and language and skin color to judge other people in relation to ourselves. We are more subtle about it (our hats are less interesting), and perhaps our markers are less important (that is the myth anyway, the American ideal), but also we are so steeped in our own class/race/ethnicity markers and judgments we don't even notice. The identities offered here are different than the ones offered at home, so we re-evaluate ourselves, but it doesn't mean that our identities are not incredibly important at home, they are just engrained. Beyond thought.
We ask our cab drivers where they are from, because here we don't know how else to tell. Robin points out that women with covered hair could be any number of things; we don't know what motivates them, because they all look the same to us. We would have to ask. We wonder. But my guess is an Israeli would know. The identity markers make sense to them, and matter or don't matter the way identity markers in the US, anyway, matter or don't matter.
These are slightly extreme arguments. The truth, I imagine, lies somewhere in between. But my sun has been swallowed, for good this time, and I think I am going to go inside.
Today was beautiful, warm and bright. I walked the ramparts of the old city and sat cross-legged in a niche where someone would have poured out boiling oil once, and thought about religion and what I believe, and what the value of belief is in a city where people kill for it over and over again.
Yesterday a trip, to the Roman ruins of Caesarea on the ocean. I knelt in the sand and picked out sea shells, and pictured the marble walls rising around me, the cracked mosaic floors shining and new.
Tuesday another day in the Old City, climbing up to the Temple Mount, where the Jews say the world began, and the Muslims built a gold dome over the place Mohammed ascended to Heaven. The walled hill is calm and quiet, green trees and little boys playing soccer and girls in headscarves ignoring the tourists as they lean close to one another.
It feels as if we have been here for a much longer time than five days. I have crossed and recrossed the Old City. I know the turning of the streets now, and recognize the merchants in the Arab souk, each with their own variation of the same wares.
The temptation is always to add one more thing, another story, another detail. What is worth including and what has to be left out, always, those empty imagined spaces?
(My uncle, who is a photographer, has a daily photo blog where you can see glimpses of our trip - and me! - at http://www.dougplummer.blogs.com/daily/. Go look, marvel.)
I cannot write about Yad Vashem, but I have to, for the same reasons I had to go. I walked over railroad tracks and listened to survivor's stories and pressed hands to my body, to my chest and the planes of my face, trying to hold something against the onslaught. Trying to remember that I was there, and alive. My throat was tight and torn through all the rooms, but I only cried at the end, at liberation, a release (the simultaneous discovery that there was nothing left to live for).
Outside was bright and warm, the mountain hall opening to a magnificent view over the hills of Jerusalem, clear air and green trees and pale stone houses in the distance. Life goes on. My hands still tremble with the pain I took in there, the pain we absorb and hold as surety against the future. (Only it is happening now, still, it is always happening somewhere, and we remember the past but we forget the present.)
I knew I couldn't write anything coherent about this. There are many more things to say, but I can't say them right now.
I have resolutions, but they are all from before: Finish my thesis, graduate, find a place to live after graduation and don't starve.
Traveling with my family is a very different experience. Yesterday we got off the plane, collected our baggage and waited twenty minutes inside an airport shuttle which eventually delivered us to our hotel in Jerusalem. Our rooms were not ready, though it was 6 pm, because of the sabbath, and we were invited to wait in the lobby. Instead we went to have dinner, ending up in a very nice French restaurant in the famous King David hotel across the street. A 100+ dollar meal (which I did not pay for, obviously) later, we returned to the hotel, where fifteen minutes later I was in my own room, which a double bed, a television and a private bathroom. I took a shower and then slept for 11 hours.
I say all this by way of comparison, because I keep thinking of my arrival in Sarajevo this summer, after an all-night train trip. I had no local money, and thus was unable to take the trolley, or a cab (though I could not afford a cab anyway). Instead I walked a mile or a mile and a half, with my back pack, into the city, where I found one of the two youth hostels. They gave us Turkish coffee, took our money, and then told us we had to wait two hours: our beds were still occupied. I sat in the dirty common area, staring dazedly into space, until they offered me my bed, a lower bunk in a dormitory of twelve. I hit my head when I lay down, and napped uneasily while everyone around me woke up.
So when the rest of my family talks about how everything we've done has gone wrong, I smile and shrug and go along. It could be worse.
Today was our first real day in Israel, and the first day of 2006. We walked through the Old City with a second cousin, Ezra, who is a born again Jew (my words, not his). He answered questions when I put them to him, but otherwise avoided talking to me. We could not touch, not even in greeting or goodbye.
We went to the Western Wall, the only remnant of the Jewish Second Temple, built a very, very long time ago. Also called the Wailing Wall, it is the most sacred place in Judaism. A divider separates men and women. Ezra said all the women he knew preferred it that way, and would not feel comfortable praying where men could see them. He doesn't know very many women, or only a certain kind. I walked down, threading between the older women, their rocking bodies integral to their prayers, and mothers herding children, and tourists. In the crevices of the wall, people leave their prayers, folded up on little scraps of paper. I saw a scrap of notebook paper, clear blue lines which will always make me think of the first day of school.
After, we walked back through the Arab street markets, windy stone roads. Everyone keeps comparing it to Venice, and now I think Dubrovnik; all old walled stone cities feel the same to us, their lack of cars, their narrow high straight walls and shuttered windows, and their reach back into a past, any past.
EDIT: The Second Temple was not, as I originally stated, built by King Salomon. He built the First Temple.
In other news, my tickets to Israel are booked, and I was right that the San Francisco thing would work out, because I'm now flying back into SF, and then I'll have to buy a one-way ticket back to Portland, but that's only $135 - so I'll get to be in California for four or five days. I'll probably spend a couple days, and hopefully visit Ashley in Santa Cruz (with Lily there too). Hurrah.
I turned in my essay, and tomorrow will turn in what I have for my thesis - incomplete (at the most I have about half of what I will have in total) and imperfect, but much more coherent than it was at the beginning of the semester, and on some track, I think.
Last night I dreamt I got a second job painting reproductions for an art history class. I was supposed to just copy from one grid to another - they kept telling me how easy it was - but I kept doing it wrong, the lines not fitting where they should, and erasing, and I was late and the class was watching as my hands failed, again and again.
Maybe if I sleep my head will stop hurting.
On Thanksgiving we went to Philadelphia to my step-grandfather's daughter's house - or should I say, gorgeous apartment. She has the second floor of a building right in downtown Philly, with fourteen foot ceilings, a beautiful kitchen, huge windows, not to mention the biggest and comfiest bed I have ever seen. It made me want to be grown-up and have money (though it didn't make me want it enough to go into consulting, which is probably the only way I could get from where I am to there). Margot, whose house it was, and her sister Rebecca made a really great meal and we all overate, of course, and dozed in the car on the way home and were generally very content.
I feel very lucky and thankful, for all of this and more:
Tonight Laura and I are going to see Bright Eyes, and Feist is opening - I think it should be a great concert.
Next Friday is my twenty-first birthday.
...and saving the best for last, I am definitely going to Israel over winter break. Elly is not sure whether she'll be able to come, but hopefully she will - and Robin, Doug and I are going for sure. Wow! I can hardly wrap my mind around it, but I'm so, so excited.
The only problem (and this is not a complaint, just me trying to figure out how things are going to work) is that I really need to go to San Francisco over winter break to do research for my thesis - and I'm not sure how that is going to happen now. I'll be getting back mid-January, so I'd still have time, but not a lot of time - and flying to San Francisco for a couple days seems silly, not to mention I'm not sure I'll have the money. But this is a small problem and I'm sure it will work itself out somehow - more importantly, I'm going to Israel!
Right now I am going to go help Michael bring the Christmas tree inside, and then I'm going to 1) try to do homework or 2) more likely read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
- Mood:cheerful
I bought Harry Potter on Sunday - Rawaan and I went to town (by which I mean "Florence") to get it and then I took a train to Rome to catch my plane. I finished the book before I even boarded the plane to London. Loved it. Too lazy to cut for spoilers, but generally very satisfied with the book, despite the emotional upheavals.
I'm not sure what to do with this journal, since 1) it was meant to be for London, and now I am back for good, and 2) my paid account is expiring this week, and I'm broke. So in case I never make another entry, let me finish on a note about London.
Yesterday morning I took the train from Gatwick, where I slept Sunday night, into King's Cross. I had tea across from the British Library, and walked down Euston Road as I have so many times before, enjoying the familiarity, saying goodbye. I turned on Woburn, a block from my dorm, and was suddenly confronted by how much had changed while I was gone. The steps of St. Pancras Parish Church, a large white church on the corner of Euston and Woburn, were covered with flowers, notes, poems. Goodbyes. I walked slowly past, reading people's notes of sympathy, their declarations of strength, their letters to their loved ones gone. A sharp, clear pain on that sunny morning. Half a block later the street was blocked off around Tavistock Square. I had to go around. In Russell Square, police from other towns were stationed, trying to answer questions though they didn't know their own way around. More flowers in the square, set carefully around the lawn.
In one morning I had more conversations with random Londoners than I had in the whole semester. I spent twenty minutes talking to a policewoman. I chatted with the receptionist at the office when I picked up my luggage. I talked to the cab driver, to a sweet old woman on the bus. Maybe it was because I looked so overwhelmed, sleepless and surrounded by enormous bags, but maybe it was something more - people aware of those near them, the strangers they pass every day, on the street, on the bus. People reaching out to one another.
London was different, but it wasn't defeated at all. The cab drove down through Bloomsbury, Soho, Mayfair, and everywhere crowds of people, going about their lives. I can't wait to go back.
Today we're going to the sea.
The night before last I realized I have to seriously revise my thesis. The mother of my family was Cuban, and one of my characters was going to translate from Spanish. Only I don't know Spanish. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and suddenly I thought, Haiti. Granted I know nothing about Haiti or Haitian literature, and my French is practically nonexistent, but practically is better than completely, and I can just see myself halfway through the year realizing there is no way I can write about Spanish translation or do justice to a woman who spent the first years of her life speaking Spanish, and have to scrap the whole thing... So better to do it now. I've been reading about Haiti online. Revolutions and skin gradations. U.S. intervention, of course. They say when a star falls someone dies. The most well-known Haitian author at the moment is Edwidge Danticat, who got her MFA at Brown. A good sign? I am going to immerse myself in the public library's Subject: Haiti file when I get home. Between little girl play sessions. And big kid play sessions. And cooking.
- Mood:calm
I am overeating. Yesterday we had gelato three times. This was not planned, but when someone offers gelato, it would be rude to refuse, wouldn't it?
We went to the Pinocchio Park in Collodi, where the writer of Pinocchio lived as a child and the name of which is borrowed. The park is an enormous garden, trails leading through the story of Pinocchio (which I am sadly ignorant of, remembering only Jiminy Cricket and the Blue Fairy and the whale), turning around a bend to encounter a marvelous bronze statue of a cat, eyeing you fiercely, a tall white house with a fairy inside, an enormous whale mouth spouting water, whose teeth you can climb over and in between, and a pirate ship, a dark cave of glimmering treasure. Between and around wild roses and olive trees and little wooden bridges, the effect completely enchanting.
Rawaan just woke up from a nap. The pancakes did us in.
- Mood:content
We spent the day in Florence, paying too much to sit at a cafe, browsing in bookshops and drooling over paper (though not literally drooling). And writing of course! We did sit and write, so it wasn't a total waste of a day. We also had gelato, not as good as the gelato of yesterday though (avocado!)
We arrived back to news of the London bombings. It shook me more than September 11 in some ways, it feels closer to home. The Picadilly line, and Tavistock Square. I've adopted those places. I heard myself say "I live a block away from there," even though I don't, anymore. It hasn't been long. I find myself nervous about taking the tube two more times, to get into and out of town to collect my bags. What a horrible feeling to have. What a horrible place for this to happen - not that it's okay anywhere, but London is the most multicultural city in the world. Why target it? Why do anything like this, ever? Who is it helping?
- Mood:sad
I'm in Italy. I had a freshly backed crostini for breakfast and bread with ricotta cheese.
I just spent three weeks travelling around incredibly beautiful, interesting countries and meeting very cool people.
And after all this... I get to go home!
I'm going home! July 23rd-ish to August 20th-ish, I will be back in Oregon! It's literally been a year, but I'm finally going home, to my house, which is still mine, and my amazing little sisters, and my lovely parents, and my friends, and my teashops, and my library and my parks and my car (not that I can afford gas, but the point is, it's there! yes!)
I owe my family so very much. Thank you, thank you, to everyone who made this summer possible.
Now I'm going to go write. Time to focus, and work. Oh, I'm so happy!
- Mood:ecstatic
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