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so the other week i realized that the freshers here were still in middle school when i first started at CC.

that should pretty much sum up how i feel about life at the moment.

birthday came and went. we pretended it was my 21st, got dressed up and headed to a beautiful bar on the river. got lots of free drinks, which is always good.

spent a few days at stradbroke island over easter. went on the worst dive of my life (lost contacts, not enough weight, then too much weight, lost buddy, gagging into my reg, skipping the second dive due to insane sea sickness), but enjoyed some amazing star gazing and beaches. also randomly had my tarot cards read at a hilarious little market, where i was told that i would live happily ever after and have eternal sunshine. those were a lot better than aaron's; she was told that her mom would die, she'd break both her legs and lose her job. hahaha.

classes are busy and pretty pointless. they're really easy, but it's hard to stay interested in topics that have absolutely no relevance to the real world and/or are covering topics i learned in fourth grade. "what is a noun" was honestly one of the lectures in my class. college life is wearing me down--lots of stupid drama and teenage angst.

i suppose i should've known that there would be no way to top the past year. i mean tanzania, fiji, director of edina's tennis program, spending some amazing time with a beautiful boy, being with incredible friends 24/7, working at an aquarium, germany, holland... yeah, definitely impossible to beat a year like that. just makes it that much harder to come crashing back to reality: dumb classes, obnoxious, immature, self-centered people, and trying not to get peer pressured into destroying my liver every weekend. i honestly do not believe the people who thought college was the best years of their life.

my flawless plan of studying abroad for a year won't be happening anymore, so now i'm just busy trying to find a nice apartment and get the heck out of college/university as fast as i can, all while filling out worksheets about commas and semicolons and reading about sociological theories from decades ago. i'm also trying to wrap my head around the fact that i'll be in the same city for an entire 3 years in a row. it just seems so... boring. confined. uninspired. take your pick.

i would happily give up drinking champagne at fancy bars and meal plans for going back to our electricity-free huts in fiji or the massive bug infested guest houses at peace house. it's unfortunate that volunteer programs in cool places are so ridiculously expensive. if i won the lottery, i think i'd just head back to africa or someplace else and volunteer forever. if the whole lottery thing doesn't work out, maybe i'll just pull an "into the wild" and head into the middle of nowhere... minus the deathly shrooms/dying in an abandoned school bus part, of course.

and oh yeah: i signed up for college choir and attended a hillsong church service, which was a bit ridiculous. we skyped with an entire congregation and people read the bible off their iphones. and there was a worshipping mosh pit on stage. over 43000 people attended a hillsong easter service, just to give you a sense of how big it is.

just remember: not all who wander are lost.

splashing through the sand bar, talking by the campfire, it's the simple things in life like when and where. we didn't have no internet... sippin' whiskey out the bottle, not thinking about tomorrow, singing sweet home alabama... catchin' walleye from the dock, watchin' the waves roll off the rocks, [he]'ll forever hold a spot inside my soul. we'd blister in the sun, we couldn't wait for night to come to hit that sand and play some rock 'n' roll. --kid rock

if you hold on to the handle, she said, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. but it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you. --storypeople