Sigh...

Sigh............

Is it bad that one of the only things I can think about right now is how much I'd like to fast-forward my life 8 months, to late July, so I can have the experience of going home?

It's hard to put into words, but it's just such a strange feeling being here.  I love it and I hate it at the same time.  I know that I'm supposed to be having the time of my life, and I'm having fun and all, but....it's not THAT amazing.  At this moment I have almost zero motivation to travel, almost zero motivation to see anything....If left to my own devices I might not do anything at all.  And all this time all I can think about is how badly I want the year to be over, not so much because I want to go home, but because I want to know what it's going to feel like to leave this place and finally go home.  I want to be able to appreciate home in a different light.  To feel like a stranger in my own hometown.  I want to know what it's going to feel like when the plane touches down in Seattle and I realize that it's over.  How amazing that's going to be!

And I hate the fact that I'm having those thoughts and feelings because I know that I should be out there enjoying this year and sucking every bit of the marrow out of it and just having the time of my life.....but I just can't seem to really do that right now and I don't know why.  I wanted to fall in love with Germany this year, but instead I've fallen in love with home.  There's nothing that will make you appreciate your life, your friends, your family, your university more than leaving all of them behind. 

I guess I'm just worried that I'm going to wake up someday soon and it will be July and the year will be over and I'll realize that I spent the whole 11 months wishing I was at home.  I'm afraid my German won't be any better, that I won't have made a lot of German friends that I'll get to stay in contact with over here, and that when all is said and done I'll feel like I wasted the year.  That I'll live with the haunting feeling that if I had only just bucked up, sucked it up, and gotten out there, I might have had the year of my life and now it's over and there isn't a second chance.

I've said it before, but it's just as true now as it was then:  this is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.