Scene Five: Winter Break

("There's no such thing as small change." "When was you last time you did something for the first time?" "Breathe." The four walls of my childhood bedroom welcome me back with words of comfort and encouragement. Snuggled beneath one of those soft, tan hotel blankets, I read by light of an orange and purple lava lamp.)

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In stark contrast to the break-neck pace of Dartmouth life, being home grants me such leisure time that I am able to sit down and read. True, I read the book assigned by my ASB (Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy by John Bowe), but I can actually read it. In the past months, I've fallen into the norm of speed-reading everything, even personal correspondence, because my time constraints allow me nothing else. Free time, how refreshing.
I've been knitting. No, really! Knitting. I knit a hat. I knit a scarf, too. Last week I learned how to crochet (which I've wanted to do for years). Since, I've completed three scarves. They'll come in handy when my plane lands in a frigid, January Boston- unless I gift them away. I may do that instead.
In three days I will be nineteen. Ancient.
In five days my house will roar with the hordes here to celebrate my birth.
In seventeen days I fly back to snow, schedules, and.. what? Surprises. If I've learned anything from my first term at Dartmouth (beyond the fact that the colon is the large intestine, that political science is more political than it is scientific, and that انا بارد can mean a lot more than "I'm cold"), it's that every day is an adventure of epic proportions. I can't wait to turn the page and see what happens next.