Lots of shopping and socializing…I’ve bought a lot of clothes and stuff to bring back with me, hung out my brother yesterday (and we saw Cars, the latest Pixar flick–typical story, gorgeous animation, some good laughs) and hours and hours hanging out with Terry and Ryan last night, met Carol and Jason and Laura for lunch today and tagged along with them back to campus and spent a while chatting with Carol (my former advisor) in her office, spent a while wandering around in the searing heat (amazingly, Tokushima is humid to the point that Atlanta’s comparatively lesser humidity is drying my skin out) and taking photos of my alma mater, had dinner and threw around a frisbee in Piedmont Park with Laura, and came home. I’m spending all of tomorrow with Jenn (we’ll be seeing X-Men 3 at some point) in this area, and hopefully part of Thursday with her as well, and Thursday night with the orchestra dinner group at Bela’s house and Screen on the Green, and I need to call Miles soon to work out plans, and logistics, for Friday night. My parents have been shuttling me around a lot–it feels like high school all over again. I miss mobility.
I’ve accomplished most of the things on my list–there are still a few more things I need, though, like a trip to the DMV to try to straighten stuff out to enable me to get a Japanese license. This trip doesn’t feel like it’s rushing by, which is nice, but I’m over the hump and now only have 3 solid days left before I leave…I can’t believe it’ll be over so quickly. It felt wonderful to wander around Georgia Tech’s campus and Midtown today. I don’t know if I’ll get to edit and upload my photos, but at the very least I’ll burn them to a CD and bring them back to Japan with me to sort out.
I fell asleep for over an hour downstairs and am now trying to coerce myself to fall back asleep again. I’m honestly not sure if this whirlwind trip is going to leave me feeling recharged and ready to handle another long chunk of time in Japan, or if it’s going to make me even more homesick when I return. At this point, it’s hard to say, and it’s really not something I should dwell on–I just should keep my chin up and remember that there’s far more waiting for me than a disorganized and slightly messy apartment and poisonous centipedes and oppressive humidity and very little vegetarian food.
Okay, good night!