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 :)