HiBAiSHi

I spent a lot of time coming back from Stockholm. The bus to Vasteras. The flight to Stansted. The easyBus to Baker St. The 205 to Mile End. Dinner at 2am and further packing. The walk down my five story flat with 25 kg bags in each arm. The District to Victoria with those same bags. The Gatwick Express. The flight to Charlotte. The fact that my flight got “rescheduled” and it was impossible to get the direct flight to San Diego. The flight to Vegas. The flight to San Diego. Stupid US Airways. At least they didn’t lose my bag.

On the way to Charlotte I met this guy sitting next to me who was struggling to fall asleep on the plane as well. Right before he landed he introduced himself and I found out that not only was he a Marshall Scholar working on his PhD, he also found spare time to produce music. He described himself as a cross between Chali2na from Jurassic 5 (whom he met as an undergraduate at Wake) and Sage Francis. Yep, broke the don’t compare white people and black people rule. Whoops.

There are elements of San Diego food that I have missed, especially now that I don’t feel nearly as poor. Korean food, Santana’s, In-n-Out, not to mention a good home cooked meal for once. Of course, it’s the conversations that make the meals: my nice, quiet high school friends now have stories of what it’s like to live surrounded by drug dealers or share their experiences of trying absinthe after Thanksgiving and why you really should be careful if you’re taking a flaming shot so you don’t burn your face or the nearby table. Also, you realize how important it is to watch what you drink because even boys can be roofie’d when they venture into a gay bar. Oh, and World of Warcraft. I hate World of Warcraft, so much.

We watched the Duke game the other day, and I skipped the first half of the second half because we were up by so much, only to find out that the score was tied. I thought Henderson was incredibly clutch, slashing twice for easy buckets and then again for an assisted three to Singler during crunch time. A good sign for our team. Of course, Scheyer was pretty much the opposite of clutch and despite conflicting reports from TBL and TBZ, I still feel like Scheyer’s taken a huge step backward since last year and really needs to shoot to pull his weight because he really has no other discernible skills. I’d rather have King out there for his size and his touch from outside than Scheyer’s bricks. Blah. Our athletic intensity really carried over to the soccer field the next day, and despite our horrible conditioning we were stride for stride with UCLA crew boys. I know, so intense. Don’t laugh, I’m really sore today.

Finally, I really couldn’t wait to see Juno. It was easily the cutest movie I’ve seen in a long time. That’s a compliment, even if I shouldn’t use the word “cutest” to describe a great movie. Despite an awkward beginning that tried too hard to be “wizard” and some narration from Ellen Page that didn’t actually fit that well, I thought it was great. The soundtrack fit the movie perfectly and the trailer didn’t give away any of Michael Cera’s best moments in the movie. Babies are swell, especially ones named Panda.

I’ll be in Snowbird the next couple of days, and I’ll try to make sure I know how to get a job in the upcoming semester as well as finish my work. To sum up my semester, I went an entire 12 weeks without a problem set and only spent two total hours taking exams (half an hour of that was an oral exam too). I met great people from England, from Europe, and even one from Africa. I went through ten countries, eight European capitals. My favorite city was Vienna, which is beautiful. My favorite experience was Madrid, which lasts all night. I managed to get as far South as Casablanca, as far North as Oslo, as far West as Tangier, as far East as Stockholm. And everywhere in between.