Departure from Munich

All of these disorganized contemplations were originally written down at the end of August, just before I returned to the US:

Soon everything in my microcosmic splice of the world will change.

Sadly I must say good-bye to Ivanna and Nicole in Munich and my relatives in Zürich, but in the U.S. I will be closer to my immediate family and friends, as well as everyone from the program who has now begun repatriation. I take great comfort in knowing that Emily and I will never be far apart, despite the evil geography may inflict the year after next.

When I am back in Portland, I will…
- Take out graphic novels from the public and Reed library and read them voraciously
- Get anatomy and botany books from the library, sketch the images
- Buy a pack of Cloves
- Organize what stuff I want to keep and what I can spare
- Get my bike repaired, take it in for a tune-up and ride all over SE
- See Cecily, Jenifer, Sandra
- Go in for a yoga session at Yoga Pearl
- Eat at Blossoming Lotus
- Rent LOTS of movies, start up Netflix again
- Have my first legal US drink in a bar
- Visit all the places to which I feel so connected

Am I ready to sum up Munich yet? Not thoroughly, but I can start to process it all. Often I need to do this once I have left a place and gotten both physical and emotional distance from it. It’s certainly true (though no less pretentious) to claim that a year abroad can mature a person tremendously, but like everyone else, I did a lot of this in the last year of high school and first two years of college. This time, however, it’s been entirely my own doing. No boy has helped me learn what I wanted while I’ve been in Munich. If anything, perhaps I’ve seen a bit more clearly with P. and C. what dating is like when you don’t constantly see the person. My pacing is all sorts of messed up.