I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Feeling a little homesick today. I'm not really sure what I'm missing exactly, the city, my family, having someone to see every morning and every night....I guess it's a little bit of everything. It's hard for me to justify my love for working internationally when I feel homesick. It makes me wonder if I'm really cut out to work somewhere so far away, and if that's really what I want to do. I love languages, I love learning about other cultures, and I love being able to help solve problems in any way that I can. I just wish I was able to take my whole family with me.

I miss the certainty I had before I graduated, the fact that I had a job and that I knew how to go wherever I needed to go. I miss my family. I miss walking to the park with the kids I babysat for.

 I miss my DOG. I miss looking out my window at the sailboats on Lake Michigan and eating the lunch special with my boyfriend at our favorite sushi place. I miss talking about the constitution with my dad on Sunday afternoons, watching crappy tv with my mom, and laughing with my brother about everything.  I know I was supposed to come here, and overall I'm really happy with the decision that I made, but being in a new place is hard.

I know this is normal, I've been keeping relatively busy but sometimes you just remember what you're missing. Moving is hard, whether it's across the globe or just a 3 hour drive away. I have people here who are just as close as family, but I'm missing the ones I left behind. Last night was fun, I got to spend it with one of my best friends that I've known ever since I was born. I love being able to see her on a daily basis and Madison really is a great place to live. I'm happy here about 98% of the time, the other 2% consist of worrying about finding work/getting work done and missing people. 

I guess it doesn't help that the boyfriend-guy has been back at school now for a few weeks. I knew things would get harder once he left, but after three years I'm also fairly used to this whole long-distance thing. I guess this is the first time I've had to make such a huge life transition since we've been together. The title of this blog is "Forever Wandering", and I do have this love of travel and wandering to new places, but do I want to be wandering around forever? It's something I'm going to have to think about anyway.

мальчик читает!

This is my old Greek workbook:

All that messy little kid Greek scribble? I used to know what that means. Not that it was anything brilliant, I'm sure it was something that I thought was hilarious like "I'm going to the bar to drink five beers" or "Kostos ate six goats"...something like that. The point is, I've forgotten all of it. Granted, as you read further on you get to pages with "I don't know what's going on" written in French in the margins, maybe that's where my Greek lessons started to falter. I quit Greek class. I hated it. It was on Thursday nights after my piano lesson and I was tired and cold and I sat next to this Albanian woman who thought I was adorable and looooved talking to me about Albania. Finally, after faking sick several Thursdays in a row, I think I convinced my parents that I was NOT interested in returning to Greek school. Now...I wish I hadn't.

I'm good at languages. It's my thing, I get them. I speak French and German, and I took a little Italian in undergrad. Language learning has played a big part in my career path. I want to work in international relations, and eventually the United States Foreign Service so I can use what I've learned to help people. Had someone told me that enduring that cold, cheese-smelling classroom for a few more months would significantly impact my career later in life, I'm sure I would have stayed. I had no idea at the time. Nobody knew what I wanted to be. In a college interview when asked if I was interested in taking any particular foreign language, I said "Yes, Swedish, Norwegian, and Russian..maybe Swahili if possible". My dad, trying to ease the shock-factor, explained to the interviewer in words that I think still fit me quite well. "My daughter sees foreign languages as a buffet, she can take as much as she wants from each platter." It's true.

I'm worried though. I feel like as I get older that serving spoon is getting heavier and heavier and now there's a giant sneeze-guard in the way, making it harder for me to grasp the dishes.What if this talent is only useful for a couple of years more? What if once I turn 25 my gift for foreign languages disappears? So, I'm learning Russian. And it's hard! I figure I might as well do something productive while I'm waiting for my graduate school life to start, so I'm picking up another one. So far I can only say things like "He is eating an apple" (он ест яблоко!), but it's a start. The grammar is very confusing to me, it's unlike anything I've previously learned. I'm sure my studies in Russian will provide a few more blog posts.