Thursday, January 16, 2014

Vacation, on my own

I am so glad it's vacation. I am calling for a moment of silence here to celebrate:

------------------

No but really this is awesome. I have been off school for about a week now, and not much has happened since then. Hung out with some friends, watched a whole lot of movies, ate a hamburger...

Most of my friends have split for wherever in the world they call home, their next vacation destination. And today I realized that for the past month or more I have been absolutely surrounded, almost 24 hours a day, with friends. Between the Flagship office, hanging out at Craft Beer, and meeting up with people for meals, this entire semester has just been constant face time with my awesome awesome classmates. I think that today was the most time I have spent on my own in weeks, and it's only been like 20 hours.

It's coming as sort of a shock to me. I used to spend all sorts of time on my own. I would just like walk around and go places and study and eat, just all on my own, for like days. I never found it strange until today, when suddenly my usual pals have left, and my life has swung back to its polar opposite. Its like this recent past has put the farther past into better perspective, but all that does is leaves me here in the present, wishing for either my friends back by my side or the independence that I used to be able enjoy.

This is a good thing though. It's time for everyone to go and take care of themselves, take a break. That's true for me, for sure. My apartment is a filthy mess, I'm moving out in the middle of February, and I've got a half-read novel that needs my attention. I'm melancholy, but I get it. And I cannot wait for the next time that we can all be reunited--that goes to everyone: my classmates, my family, and friends back home. Now that it's vacation and I'm without a set schedule, I am feeling more deeply the fact that time stretches on for a long long time, and that we really do have a lot of time, and I have faith that during my personal little slice of eternity, we will meet again, and it will be wonderful.

But for now, I'll be missing you, yes, I do mean you, my dear friend. Thanks for reading, peace and love ~

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The coldest shower of all

So i'm going to tell you the story of the worst shower ever, which involves three funny and unrelated occurrences, and goes like this:

Most showers here have little tiny gas powered water heaters, not so much different that the water heaters in the states, save for the fact that these are like 1/5 the size, much smaller. Another funny thing about most showers here is that they all seem to include heat lamps, so that when you turn the shower off, you aren't freezing cold. Great idea! It really does help. But in my case, they heat lamp seems to run the same circuit as the electric fan, so if the ceiling fan isn't running, you can't use the heat lamp. And the last and final thing about showering is that in order to have a clean dry towel, you must launder and dry it (duh), except there are no electric clothes dryers here, and all your stuff must be hang-dryed. Some drying are inside, and some including mine are outside.

Now, these things are all part of a normal bathroom/shower situation, but recently all of these things seemed to take a turn for the worse, turning my shower into the worst shower ever. First, I like to take pretty hot showers, especially when it is cold outside; the problem is that it makes the hot water run out in just a few minutes, we're talking like 8 minutes if you're lucky. On top of that, the electric ceiling fan broke: no more heat lamp! Lastly, on one particularly windy day, I forgot to place a clip on the drying wrack to hold my towel in place. To my dismay, the next time I went to go look for my towel, it was hanging off the edge of someone else's drying rack two stories below me.

So cut to me, on a particularly cold night running to hot water up on high in the shower, conditioner in my hair, and suddenly the hot water just totally runs out, and there is no heat lamp or towel. I was SO unhappy, it was a pretty comical moment. It was so inconvenient, it was almost like I had never even considered how wonderful instant hot water is back in the states. Obviously I just bit the bullet and finished up, but it sucked! haha SO anyways, all my people who are stateside, go enjoy a hot shower and run your electric clothes dryer, and think of me and how jealous I am ;)