I'll be home for a white Christmas, if only in my dreams.

Today was a rather sad day.


I woke up to the sound of my alarm this morning, same time as every day - 5:29 AM, and I shut it off after groggily thinking "Why is my alarm going? It's Saturday!"
Of course, it's not Saturday. It's Friday, December 3rd.


After shutting off my alarm, I promptly fell back asleep, and then woke up to my mom telling me to get up. By then it was 6:10, and I leave the house at 6:30 or 6:32 AM every day to walk/run to the bus stop. I usually end up running from my door, across Thomas Ridge Lane, down the empty streets to the main road, where the only other person at my stop is always there before me. And I'm usually just on time, or slightly late. It's just the way it is.


Despite my waking up late, I still managed to get out of the house, although I looked slightly less than put together.


I was perfectly on time today. I was a meter away from the stop when the bus pulled up. It's a good thing I leapt out the front door and continued on jogging all the way to the street. I might have actually missed that bus.

It wasn't too cold outside today, but as always Mrs. Collins, the bus driver, had the heat cranked up to an unbearable degree. As a Canadian living in Texas, I have scoffed at what Texans think 'cold' is, but I cannot help feeling smothered by the heat in the bus every morning. It's like an overly-warm blanket that is wrapped around every part of you. Unbearable. Mrs. Collins was also playing Christmas music.


I'm not normally opposed to Christmas music, but this morning, the songs grated against my eardrums. Somehow, when it's 20 degrees celsius outside, I cannot begin to stomach the songs that I always have associated with the snowy nights curled up by a warm fireplace while it snows outside. I especially cannot stand the song "White Christmas" or "I'll Be Home For Christmas", because those songs perfectly embody how I feel. Perfectly... except that I know that I can only dream of that snowy Christmas morning, and I can only dream of being home.


I'm so so sad. I was here for last Christmas, but I had only just moved; everything seemed like a vacation. But in 16 days, I'll have been here for a year, and I have no excuse to regard my stay here as a vacation.. It's astounding how much I wish I could go home. On those mornings on the bus, I can sometimes close my eyes and picture myself on a Calgary city bus, surrounded by diverse people I do not know, and sitting beside the one person I know very well. I only have those few minutes every morning where I can attempt to dream of such things before I'm interrupted.


There are only days left in the year 2010...
I can't help but feel relieved but also regretful.
Relieved because with every day that passes, I step closer to summer.
Regretful because as I'm wishing my days away, I know that after this year, everything will be different. The majority of my friends here will have graduated or gone back to their home countries (the sadness of being exchange students)... I will be a senior, and in another year, I'll be done with the penitentiary they call high school.
In truth, it's not that bad. I'm not generally disliked by anyone. I have friends, I'm sociable. I get great marks/grades. I just want so badly to get out. I guess it's true that attitude makes all the difference in the world.


Tomorrow, I'm volunteering at a bowling event for kids with special needs. It should be a good time. I hope it will be. I haven't volunteered in a while.


Lately, I've been reading more often that I have in months past. I've spent the past week on the Luxe series by Anna Godbersen. I read the first two a year or so ago, but only recently, I bought the entire, four part series (The Luxe, Rumors, Envy and Splendor). I loved every minute of it, except for the ending, which left a lot to be desired, in my opinion. Although the ending made sense with the characters' personalities, I don't think it should have ended that way. I had it all planned out in my head before I read the last few chapters. Not everyone would get their happy ending, but certainly more than had gotten a nice end in the book. Out of the four central characters, only one truly got a happy ending by the end of the book. I guess two more could have found their happy ending somewhere along their lifespan, but the ending didn't quite play out as I had wanted it to. As for Anna Godbersen's next series, Bright Young Things, set in the late 1920s, I am not sure yet if I will read it or not. If you've read it, tell me how it is! (:


Another thing happening lately is that I've been playing FreeRice very often. It's a website where, by answering questions right, you can donate rice to impoverished people around the world, for free. If you have a spare half hour, or 15 minutes, I'd say it's worth your time to try it.

That's all for now.

-Lauren

The Beginning

Hello all,
My name is Lauren, as you may or may not have seen on the sidebar.
I'm not new to blogging. I've been blogging (on and off) for the past few years. Ever since one of my newest and closest friends introduced me to the idea, I've been posting out random, haphazard blogs. Most of them have been pretty meaningless, and a lot of them were filled with emotion that no one but me could understand because I never explained fully what I was trying to say. I realize that while blogging is not entirely like a journal, and should maintain some of the fundamental social etiquettes that people use in public, I feel like it should be a space where I can rant to you all of my frustrations with everything and remark on the lovely things that happen, too. I'm going to be as honest as possible and if necessary, I am going to change names, but we'll get to that later.

On a different note, this is my first entry, and I feel like I should go in some meaningful direction.

You know when you've had a whole entire weekend to relax and do whatever you want, and then Sunday night rolls around, and you feel as if you should do your homework, but you don't really want to? That's me. Right here. So much so that I ended up making another blog instead of doing homework. I have no clue what homework I even have. I think I have to study for English. We're writing a rhetorical analysis essay on the Letter from Birmingham Jail tomorrow. I should definitely study for that, but I feel so relaxed right now that not even the prospect of essay-writing can arouse in me a sense of duty to do my work.

Okay, so I just finished reading the entire Letter From Birmingham Jail. Martin Luther King Jr, you were an amazing writer and orator, but I wish you kept everything a little more concise. And didn't use words like 'ekklesia'. I have no clue what that means. Paragraph 43 if anyone wants to see the actual context.
I hope that just reading it will suffice for studying. It took long enough..

Have you ever wished so much that you were somewhere else?
Have you ever wished to be that one special place all the time?
Have you ever wished it so much that you were sick of wishing for it?

If you've answered yes to any of the above, then you've probably moved or gone on an extended trip away from home. Or possibly, you feel just as if you don't fit in where you are, and know that there's a place that you like much better.

I wish I was home now, in the freezing cold weather, with snow up to my knees, and winter winds freezing everything right down to the tears in my eyes. I wish I was back at my old school, not studying another country's history and literature, and where I'm not constantly noticing the accents of people around me because it's different from my own. I wish I was back at my old house, where everytime I looked out my bedroom window, I saw the rooftop extending outwards underneath my window, just begging me to climb out and enjoy the breeze and view.
In other words, I wish I was not here.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate it here. I don't even dislike everything about this place. There are some really nice people, some nice places, some nice food, and some nice experiences I wouldn't have had if I hadn't moved. But.. it's not there. It's not home. The one year anniversary for me moving here is coming up in 22 days. I can't help but feel a little homesick.

-Lauren