20 days

Time, which appeared to be moving ever so slowly throughout most of the summer, appears to have finally crept up on me. Today is the 20 day point. 20 days from Oxford. 20 days away from reaching the goal I set myself two long years ago. 20 days until I find out for myself if I can truly hack it in another country on my own for more than a month. We shall see. Ok, so enough of this extreme sappiness. As you can probably imagine, I am extremely excited. Except I don't like to talk about the fact that I am excited (because that would entail sharing feelings...bleh), so I gave recently been accused of displaying extreme apathy. Don't worry, as the days dwindle down into the single digits, I will display more than enough excitement. And nervousness. And irritation (mainly due to the fact that I have to fit my life into a suitcase).

On the home front, things are as normal as ever. It has hit everyone that this is a transition year within our group, the dynamics of which will never entirely be the same again. Two of us are leaving abroad. Two are finishing up their final year at the local community college, and yet another two are transferring to Towson and Stevenson. The rest are continuing on with life as normal, whether here in Laurel or at their college town, but are faced with the realization that things will be different. As a result, our group spends almost every night hanging out, doing what we usually do (which, upon reflection, is not really anything at all). However, the past is dredged up more often than usual and a nostalgic atmosphere generally prevails over everything we do. Some are more upset than others, though I think this is mostly because we all have realized that we are getting older (practically ancient at 20, right?) and starting to go our separate ways.

I'm not upset, mostly because I am excited for the change. It will be interesting to see whether or not the years pans out as planned. Whatever happens, it will most definitely be interesting.
Mostly everyone...except for myself, of course, and Christina, who hates us and never hangs out :)