Ancient History

I have just read over all the old posts in my blog, starting from day one at this place. When did I change so much? What has happened? I was so much younger when I came here, so much more naive and immature and bubbly. But it's not that I've changed for the worst. It has just been two long, hard years. The sorrows of the world and of life are much closer and more real than they were before. My emotional range has expanded. My ability to articulate myself has grown. I have learned to be professional, learned how to be taken seriously, learned how to handle myself with dignity. I am not naive, and I am not necessarily bubbly anymore. But I am happy. Maybe I seem more serious now, but I am also happier now because it is not a superficial happiness anymore. I am not an empty optimist anymore. I know what I have to be deeply happy about now and how to properly appreciate it, and I know what I can realistically look forward to in the future. I am not necessarily an optimist now because I think that so many good things will happen to me in life, I am an optimist because now I know that I can handle all things, good and bad, and that I will always be okay.

I feel like an entirely different person than the girl who wrote those earlier posts. I find it hard to even imagine myself like that anymore.

I've just finished my practice exams this week and they went okay. Real exams are coming up on me far too fast. Real exams mean the end of my time here, a time that just doesn't seem like it will ever happen. It's unfathomable.

I'm not even sure exactly how to update this blog anymore. My life is so complex, so nuanced. The everyday things that I do sound boring on paper (I guess) but that's because the important things in my life are the relationships, the small things, the intangibles. That's what makes my life so interesting and they are simply too hard to explain.

But if you want the standard life update: the weather is crap, like usual. The food is even worse than usual and I fear I may die of malnutrition before I graduate. My room is a mess because my two first years came back from Ski Week and threw their crap everywhere. I had a debate with Raine today and realized that I am actually, strangely enough, pro-whaling in a lot of cases. I started choreographing a line dance for the American show, it is going to be hilarious to have Norwegians and Italians and Latinos line dancing. I'm also starting to learn Colombian cumbia, another dance for the show that involves me wearing one of those big layered skirts and holding the ends of the skirt out and waving it around and stuff, haha. I'm practicing some piano. Tomorrow I'm going to Dale for a Norwegian youth music competition. Juanma and three other second years are coming on Thursday and I can't wait to see them. The production of the Vagina Monologues that I have organized is on Thursday as well, and I will be freaking out in dres rehearsals all week because not only am I organizing, I'm also performing. My roommates are surviving a day at a time and we are drinking far too much coffee and not eating enough real food. I am constantly tired and mentally exhausted at the moment, people have been trying my patience a lot this week.

That's all I can think of. I guess there's actually a lot going on. I don't know, I don't really think about it anymore. I just wake up in the morning and try and live through the day just like any other normal person, just like a person who doesn't go to a crazy international school in the middle of nowhere in Norway.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

I've figured out that blogging helps me sleep. It must, seeing as the only posts I really put up are very late at night when I'm still awake and restless.

I've not even been back on campus for a week, and it already feels like a lifetime. It's so easy to fall back into this lifestyle, it's so easy to enjoy it and understand it and fit into it.

I needed to go home, it made me a much happier and well-adjusted person back here at college. That's what home is good for, giving me perspective and getting my head on straight. And it fulfilled that purpose brilliantly this time. It made me realize what was important, made me remember where I came from.

Uruguay helped as well. Seeing ten of my second years, all normal, happy, mature, intelligent people. People that I respect and people that I truly enjoy. It was wonderful. Afternoons spent lounging on the beach, licuados at seaside cafes, ventures around the city, nights spent dancing to Uruguayan cumbia, and good conversations over dinners that lasted til way past midnight, just laughing and talking while the last lights of the city went out. It made me realize in yet another way what was really important in life, what kind of person I wanted to be at this college, and what kind of person I wanted to be after it.

Heartbreaking to leave both places, but also hopeful. Hopeful because I learned so much over the past month, hopeful because I will see all of the people I had to leave behind again, hopeful because I finally feel like my optimistic, in control, determined, happy self again. Hopeful because the past month was a turning point, a point to shake myself out of the slump that was last term, a point to regain everything that is simply me again. As my roommate puts it, I finally have my "inner serenity" back.

This posting didn't make me sleepy. It made me pensive. In a good way, but in an insomniac kind of way as well. Too bad.

I'm home.

Sitting in my yellow room. Listening to some emotional La Oreja de Van Gogh, seeing as I now own 45 of their songs. Obsession much?

I'm surrounded by shoes. Pretty shoes, but shoes that I have a feeling won't hold up very well in Norway. I'm not sure if jeweled Grecian sandals and sequined high heels were really made for the slush and snow of Flekke. Oh well.

I'm enjoying home. I'm enjoying the United States. I'm enjoying capitalism and the good things that immigration has done for the variety of restaurants in my city. Translation: I'm enjoying having privacy and speaking regular English and driving and buying things and going out to Mexican/Greek/Italian restaurants.

Being alone is highly underrated. Y es quiza cual es me matanza porque pienso tanto, pero esto es como es. It is something I miss at college, the feeling of being anonymous. It's nice to be able to lose myself in the world for a little while sometimes.

Usually college life seems very small when I'm back home. This time it seems big. Maybe because I miss them more now than I did last year, maybe because I care so much more this year. Cuido tanto. Maybe because real things happened at college this term, it wasn't just my frozen paradise on the side of the fjord. Estaba mucho mas. Maybe it's because I have a lot more to look forward going back to this time. I'm looking forward to enjoying the moments I still have at college, to the people I still have, and to the time I'll have after college. La vie boheme awaits in Paris and it seems to be exactly what I need.

I officially have a chance of getting into at least two universities because two applications have finally been delivered. Only four more to go. Ha. I sound like an insane person in all of them, essays all about how strange I am and everything, but maybe that will work out well for me. At least I'm being honest. Yale/Dartmouth/etc. will know exactly who they're getting if they decide to take me.

Nothing more. I'll enjoy my comfortable bed, my huge closet, coffee with my sister, dinner with my parents, driving in my car, and singing in the shower for two more weeks. And then I'll enjoy getting a tan on a Uruguayan beach and sweating my butt off on the streets of Montevideo.

Life is funny.

Si no sabes que la significaba entonces no te importa mucho, verdad? Quizas no puedo decir algo que cuidas. Soy tonto como ese, obviamente.

Snowflakes.

Why posting suddenly? Maybe because it's far too late and I should have been asleep far too long ago. Maybe because I'm not going to sleep because I have far too much to think about. Not that I'm writing all of that here, but at least this gives me something to do.

I seem to have spent a lot of this term always wishing I was somewhere else, "somewhere" being in a different place or a different time. I've recently been in contact with a lot of people from my "other life", the one I had before coming here. I've also planned a lot into the future, giving myself a lot to look forward to. These two things have combined to make me feel very useless in the present, to make me unhappy. Of course there are other things because the present time is by no means perfect, but I've not made it any better with all my wishing and hoping and simply not living. So maybe because this Thursday was Thanksgiving and I didn't get to celebrate, I'm thinking of all the thinks I'm actually thankful for.

I live with my three best friends. They're like sisters. We take care of each other, we cook for each other, we cry to each other, we cuddle, we watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathons. They wake me up every morning and I hug them all goodnight every night. They've become such a part of me that sometimes I'm not sure where I end and where they begin. I could not have been any luckier.

And they are one part of me. The other two parts I will get to be with very, very soon. And although I wish I could bring all three together, although I wish I could have Norway and home and some of my 2nd years all together, it's good that I can't. If I could, then I would never be able to appreciate what all parts mean to me because I would never have a chance to miss any of them.

It is beautiful now. It is the right kind of cold, with the right kind of perfect snow on the ground. It's almost Christmas. It's the time when I feel like drinking coffee and watching movies and bundling up to go play in the snow. It's a season full of moments. Heavily-laden seconds or minutes that pass too quickly but that are so blissful that they almost bring me to tears. And I know there are many more to come like this. I just wish I could hold on to this grateful feeling for longer.

Like I said, it's not like everything is suddenly so good. This term has been hard. People have been difficult. I've given up on some, and wish I was ready to give up on others but haven't figured out how to. I have too much work. I have to think about "my future", whatever that really means. Everything is not entirely better.

But big snowflakes and powdery fluff everywhere have a way of covering over all the unhappiness and filling in all the holes so that it seems like, at least for now, everything is beautiful and pristine and worthwhile once again :)

I have a to-do list posted to my window and it is sitting here staring at me. Nothing has been checked off of it yet. Just when I think I've finished something or accomplished something, I realize it's only a very small part of everything that has to get done.

I did finish my university essay though. And I'm actually happy with it. I'm happy with something I wrote about myself. That doesn't generally happen.

Maria, the lovely Israeli roommate, is now playing some depressing Damien Rice on repeat and Katherine is asleep on the couch and the rain is sprinkling away outside. There are dirty dishes everywhere and incense burning and the air has a Sunday feeling, that feeling of just waiting for something to start or something to begin. But it's only Saturday.

I can't wait to be in London. Somewhere alive, moving. Not stagnant, like here.

Living the lie

Rainy, rainy, rainy. Permanent puddles. Too much stress. Too little food. And too little sleep. But lots of Raine, which is good.

I don't really, honestly care about many people on this campus. Is that bad? Does anyone here actually care about each other? Aside from the fact that we can all go to class, go to parties, have fun together, laugh every once in awhile...it doesn't really mean anything, does it? How many of these people do you care about independent from this campus?

I can think of about five.

And you know what? I'm alright with that now. Much better to have those five than to fake all my relationships like so many other people on this campus. Much more depressing to live in a false impression of this place than to accept it for what it is, yeah?

Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End

End of summer, beginning of school. End of some relationships, beginning of others.

Midnight on a Sunday, about a month into the school year. It was time to get around to this blog anyway, it just so happens to be a convenient thing to do right now when I can't sleep and don't feel particularly social. I often wonder why I even write in a blog, why I write my personal thoughts down for others to see...and I think that it's easier to write in this blog than it is to write in a journal because, when others see this, it validates it somehow. It gives my writing purpose. So although I still keep about 5 journals at one time, this blog feels more real, more useful.

But all of that is not the point. The point is, I have begun settling in to life back here at college again, yet this time with another set of completely new people. 100 new first years. Of course, my co-years are all back, but even the dynamic in my year has changed, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. It took an entire year to figure out who was worth my time here, who was interesting and intelligent and honest. But that year was so worth it if that's what it took to find all the people that I have now. I appreciate many of the people in my year much more now.

The first years are interesting. It's strange to look at them, they seem so young and green and vernal (hey, remember that word, Dad?). I keep wondering if I was ever like they are now, and I know that the answer is of course I was like that, but it just seems unfathomable. I'm not exactly sure how my second years put up with us so much when we were new. Some of the first years are extremely nice additions to this campus and I adore some of them already. They have a lot of growing up to do, but it's so nice to see that people have such potential. Others are difficult, and if I let that get to me, it would ruin this campus for me. Unfortunately, some of it has been getting to me and I've been spending a lot of time being angry and frustrated, and that hasn't been so nice. I want that to change.

It's hard to realize, still, that I had to say goodbye to 100 people in order to get these 100 new people. It's both wonderful and terrible at the same time. I miss them. I miss last year. I miss a lot of things. And all the nostalgia is doing nothing for my happiness in the present. It's all a bit frustrating. But at the same time, if I hadn't given up some people, I would have never gained some. Like my new roommates...Maria (Israel) and Kathrine (Ecuador) are absolutely everything I could have asked for. And by some stroke of amazing luck, Raine and I are in the same room and we're so close by now it's almost scary. And then to have those new two walk in the door...I swear it felt like we were all sisters from the first day that we met. It's so lovely to know that the people that matter the most here are never too far away.

So now it all seems to be about work. Working on meeting people, working on friendships, working on schoolwork, working on patience, working on understanding, working on universities, working on balance. Working on everything. I just hope that it's all worth it.

I just hope that the beginnings I am experiencing now fill up enough space in my heart to compensate for the endings I have endured.