30 days ago I was blabbing on about how great everything is and how I never want to go home and yaddi-yaddi-yadda. Now I can still say traveling is great, and the world is beautiful, and I love my family. But every time we leave a hotel I want to chuck my suitcase straight out of the 27th floor window and into the traffic below. That’s not all I’d like to do, either. But I will spare you the complaints. The good news is Jack has returned from his trip back to the US.
I write to you from the train from Hiroshima to Kyoto in Japan. I have seen only one familiar face other than my parents and brother over the course of 90 days. Last night, a clerk at our hotel said “Good evening” in perfect English to us, and we all joked about inviting him up to the rooms to talk to us just to have someone new to converse with. In our situation, we all have had quite some time to reflect and do a lot of thinking. Which I believe has had different effects on all of us. Personally, it has only been a lengthy addition to opinions and passions that I began discovering over the past year while hiding away in the mountains. But I think I’m starting to get a better understanding of the “real” world, which hopefully will help me in the near future as I head to Whitman in the fall.
Regardless of all this time we have to reflect on the past and ponder the future, I still find myself thinking most of the time about the things that I miss, the things I wish I had or hadn’t packed in my bag, and the things I look forward to once I get home. The latter of the three changes daily as I am quite the daydreamer, and can spend an entire day thinking up what an entire day in the future might look like. The first two however, remain fairly constant.
What I miss:
I still miss my collection of boots enough to think about them every day. I think I have a problem.
I miss the wolves. I also think about them every day, and dream about them most nights.
I miss live music. I would love to take a one-night break to hear my best friends play hobbit songs in some warehouse-turned-venue in downtown Denver.
And I miss winter, the mountains, and driving in the cold.
What I wish I had brought with me:
Either one pair of boots or one pair of high-heeled shoes—my sneakers aren’t exactly classy.
Wool socks or something similar (simply for comfort purposes).
A decent jacket.
Anything that I wouldn’t mind throwing away so I could buy different things along the way.
I think that about sums it up for now. I will just have to manage for another 100 or so days with what I’ve got. I think it’s doable, though the seams of my suitcase may beg to differ. I’ll let you know what has changed in another 30 days!
