i'm back.

well, i'm back in oz. i ended up skipping sydney and heading straight to brisbane, where i spent a few days with lisa, a friend from scotland. she managed to keep me awake the entire first day and even cooked me a delicious dinner!... so i think jetlag has been pretty non-existent. the 3:30-4:30 am wakeup calls have more to do with the horrendous time difference with holland than still being on MN time :)

yesterday was move-in day... SO hot, humid and rainy. ugh. i opened up my boxes to find that a brand new pair of heels (worn once!) were covered in mold. it was pretty disgusting. but my room has been kate-ified, so i'm feeling a lot better now that i'm not living out of a suitcase. my hall consists almost entirely of aussie guys!

classes started today but i have the world's best schedule. no classes on mondays or fridays and my earliest class starts at 10! yeah, pretty amazing. i've spent the day finishing unpacking, running random errands and checking items off a monster to-do list.

it's both good and strange to be back. i thought i missed the boys while i was in MN, but it turns out that is only a fraction of how much i miss them now that i'm back. there are hardly any international students living in college this semester, so it feels really different than it did last semester.

as much as i love oz, it feels like my heart is stretched pretty far across the world at the moment. my grandpa is in the hospital after a major heart surgery, where he's been now since before i left for school. he's surrounded by family... so part of my heart is there. my very best friend for the past 6 months is in holland, so part of my heart is there. and everyday i can't stop thinking about tanzania and the kids at peace house. a very large part of my heart is there. this week at college is "red week." in other words, an event has been planned every single night so we can all go out and get wasted. it's definitely fun, but it doesn't fill my heart up like singing and dancing and pretending to play netball with the phs students did. i can't stop missing it.

hopefully once classes start and i settle into a routine, i'll become more content with just letting myself be fully here now. if nothing else, i have a break in july that i can go adventuring in :)

we got older and i should have known (don't you feel alive?) that i feel colder when i walk alone (oh but you'll survive). so i may as well ditch my dismay (bombs away). circle me and the needle moves gracefully back and forth. if my heart was a compass you'd be north. risk it all 'cause i'll catch you if you fall wherever you go. if my heart was a house you'd be home. --owl city

slow down

calm down

don't worry

don't hurry

trust the process. --alexandra stoddard