i promise you, this relates.

i'm currently sitting in a dark room. my bedroom light bulb blew earlier today and the repairman won't get my entry in the "fix it, bitte" book until tomorrow. so i'm sitting in the dark, listening to the rain softly hit the tin shutters outside my open window and watching the occasional light show the alps are providing.

i think this is the most calm my heart has been in quite some time.

i'm feeling oddly content. "oddly" because my stomach is mad at me for forgetting to go grocery shopping today and my brain is attempting to illicit stress by trying to remind me of pages unwritten with impending due dates.

and yet i'm content. i've spent the past two hours looking at the film photography of a few artists i really admire and reading interviews about why they do what they do. looking at their work and seeing their obvious undying dedication to a supposedly dying art brings me a strange sense of fulfillment. almost as if i can see clearly why it is that i've picked photographyto be so fond of myself.

i didn't start writing this with a self revelation in mind. i only knew i was experiencing one of those soft moments in time the need to be recorded before the flood gates break in, and you're once again drowning in the mundane, having completely forgotten your rare respite.

yesterday, while in my "poetry and painting: the american frontier" class i sat in a chair against the back wall, because all the tables were full, very visibly fighting sleep. to gain the upper hand in that futile battle i started doodling on a blank page i had already titled "this relates." i haven't doodled in an academic setting since AP classes in high school. before long my pictures turned into paragraphs of confessions, things i hadn't yet taken the time to realize about myself.

it may not seem to make much sense now, but i promise you, this relates.

some things: tuesday addition.

here are some things (i figured i haven't done this in a while, so i thought it was time to do it again. also i'm procrastinating):
i need a hair cut so badly that it's a very good thing i don't own a pair of scissors and that i'm not willing to buy any for the short while i have left, otherwise i definitely would have cut it myself by now. so instead i either pin my bangs back the second i wake up or spend the entire day pushing them out of my face like some lost emo girl who managed to escape '06 (or is that still a thing these days? i'm so out of the loop)

i have roughly 30-45 pages worth of papers to write in the next four weeks. ahhhhhh!
as a direct result of that crippling number, i have just cleaned my room. it hasn't looked this good since... my german midterm.

my brother comes home in one week. another ahhhh!

i finished a really good book today, and it's making me want to reread all the books i fell in love with a few years ago instead of reading what i'm being assigned. i realize that's not particularly interesting, but that's the sort of thing we specialize here in maria-land. you're welcome.

also, i feel the need to once again thank my mom for my kindle. i got one for christmas, something i'd never even considered asking for, but it's become such a life savor. i can't tell you how many times i've had to wait across town for my bus to make it's rounds on it's 15-30 minute route and instead of being forced to pull my hair out of boredom, i've been able to open my kindle and choose from 150 books to read. ooh technology, you have my heart.

speaking of buses... kinda... there was a man standing at my bus stop today who was just chillin with his pants around his ankles. just standing there. like that's a normal thing for a 60 year old man to be doing. and it was not normal. luckily he had the foresight to wear a long shirt today. which is so strange to me, because he didn't even have the whereabouts to pull his pants back up. no worries though, i used one of my few but highly coveted super powers, avoiding eye contact of any sort, to spare myself from viewing anything too awkward.

while you're here want to see some incredibly awkward pictures of me? okay!

why i let rakel take such pictures is beyond me. why i don't delete them... is a whole other question.

other things... oh, i only have a month left here. not that that's a HUGE FREAKING DEAL or anything. i'm aware we already went through this a few days ago but i'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. as i have my internal struggle between wishing that time would simultaneously hurry and stop, time is playing coy and pretending not to notice, moving on like nothing is wrong. oh time, you respecter of no man. i admire you for that.

lets end on a good note shall we? so, at least three times a week i go to bed around midnight and wake up before 8 AM. i knew when i moved over here that i would change and grow in ways that i couldn't even imagine, but i had no idea it was going to fix the unfixable. if you would have told me that i was going to have to move to europe to fix my sleep schedule i would have started harboring a severely dysfunctional circadian rhythm loooong ago.

so. it's been... a few hours. i should probably start on that paper, eh?
wah.

preemptive walk down memory lane.

i'm kind of at a loss here, guys. part of me has been feeling compelled to write in here for a good few weeks while the another part of me has been absolutely forbidding it. i only have a month left with time picking up speed each day, turning my mind into the very definition of conflict and confusion and therefore not really conducive for writing others would want to read (as you're about to find out).

i have so many things i'm looking forward to at home, like being reunited with my brother after a very long two years and a few exciting trips with people i have been really, really missing. but at the same time thinking about leaving this place makes me feel like frantically running around the city clinging to every surface possible.

i don't want to leave. i don't feel ready to say goodbye yet. there's so much i haven't seen, felt or eaten and to think of leaving before doing all that makes me feel like i'm never going to have an opportunity to.

but even beyond all that, i don't want to leave the people i've met here. guys, i've been so lucky. the branch here is full of such loving and giving members. if my belief in the christ-like nature that our church tries to instill in it's members was ever called to question, these people have more than validated it. i can't even imagine having to say goodbye to the missionary couple here, they've been like my european grandparents, always giving me a handshake and a hug every time they see me. not to mention the other friendships i've forged with the young single adults. every single one of them have been such a blessing in my life. to think that the time is coming where i won't get to see them every sunday, monday and thursday, or truthfully maybe ever again, is something i am having a hard time wrapping my head around. they've become such an anchor in my daily life that there is definitely going to be a gaping hole there once i leave.

i'm really going to miss planning elaborate trips that somehow end up happening. i'm going to miss friday night's dinner and a movie every weekend. i'm going to miss waiting for an extra 12-25 minutes at sillpark for my bus after FHE/JAE just so we can talk a little while longer. i'm going to miss watching ping pong games that seem to go on forever but always end up in consuming and infectious laughter. i'm just all around gong to miss getting to hang out with such amazing diverse people.

when i first signed up to come here i thought only of the experiences i was going to have, but i completely forgot to factor in the people who i was bound to care for way too much for my own good. 

  

i'm really going to miss these guys.