CHANGE.

BEFORE



AFTER

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Change. That's pretty much what my whole year has been about. I woke up one day almost a month ago and realized, "Man, it's been a full year!" Yes it has. A lot has happened since that day last year when I decided to move here and pretty much turn my life upside down, inside out.

To commemorate my first year here, I decided to chop most of my hair off. It was, to say the least, kind of liberating. Change and [at least some semblance of] freedom has been what my past year has been.

It has been a year. A year away from friends, family, familiarity. My heart still aches time to time from the longing, but it has been a little bearable lately with family and a few new friends and acquaintances (most of whom have no idea how much impact they've made on me in the short time that I've known them).

And old friends have been great through this whole thing. A part of me still feels a lot connected to my "old" life, thanks to them. I still miss the parties at home, the Sarah's sessions, the conversations over coffee and chocolate cake, Starbucks and Chocolate Kiss. No new hangout or experience can top those.

I look back at my year and I can't help but wonder how the people back home are. How do they look like now, what have they been up to. You just don't get past stuff like that, no matter how long you've spent away from home or no matter how time has numbed you [in a way].

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It's October. Halloween month, birthday month (What a perfect combination those two make in a sentence. Enough to send shivers down my spine. Harhar.)I still have no idea how to spend my birthday--it is, after all, a crappy Monday. Maybe we'll just go for a nice quiet dinner. Maybe I'll go to the city. I definitely don't want a beatdown via the Capoeira roda (maybe they won't know, maybe I'll skip class, harhar). There definitely won't be a big basagan party--at least not in my honor. Maybe I should just sleep it off. I don't know.
(Somewhere inside my head, someone starts singing, I just don't know what to do with myself.....)


22 days left to think about it.