Boom shaka laka/missing home? (what.)

Okay, so today wasn't nearly as productive as I wanted it to be. I honestly don't really know what I spent the first half of my day doing. I spent a couple hours in the evening hanging out with my flatmates and cooking dinner (carb overload! pasta with meat sauce and mashed potatoes). I also decided I wanted to be in my leotard, so I did crunches in my leotard and danced around to JT and Destiny's Child while sipping Bailey's with milk and nibbling on mashed potatoes and talking to friends online. Yeah, that's your studious daughter/granddaughter/niece/cousin/friend/etc hard at work. Skillz.

BUT THEN I wrote 955 words of my essay in an hour and a half. Boom shaka laka. I decided I'm going to leave it for the night because it's more important that I sleep soon over stay up the night and have an entirely unproductive day tomorrow. Also, my brain might explode if I think about the impact of contemporary Italian women's changing lives and the impact it has on family relationships. Explode.

I'm in a bit of a philosophical mood though. That's why I decided to blog twice in one day.


I'm getting so excited to come home. It's a little disappointing that I have to wait a week longer than I had originally intended in order to do Australia. But, as my friend and future roommate Andrea said (who's leaving Palma - in Spain - tomorrow to travel Europe for 3ish weeks), "Rachel, why are our lives fake?...that's the good kind of stress my friend - I have so much awesome in my future I can't handle it!" so I suppose complaining that I have to spend another week in beautiful New Zealand and Australia isn't too bad if that's the worst I've got.

And I have another month (plus a day) here so I can't even write my "this is what I've learned, how I've grown" type blogs. I have yet to travel solo and finish uni and watch my bank account diminish before my own eyes. (At least I'll be watching it diminish because of said awesome future.) But I do feel like I have changed. I feel less high-strung than I usually do around this time in the States. I feel stressed that I haven't figured out a thing about Australia yet, and that I have schoolwork still looming over my head even though it is mid-June, but overall not too bad. I hope some of this laid-back sticks with me when I come home, but not all of it. This lack of studiousness needs to end when I start classes again or I am going to be in deep trouble.

That's as much as I'm going to say about feeling like I'm changing. I look forward to noticing things about American culture that I never noticed before when I return home, though.

I will not lie. These past few days I have experienced extreme - not homesickness - but an extreme desire to be home with my friends and family that I hold so dear. What is the phrase? Distance makes the heart grow fonder? Anyway, maybe it's that it is dark and dreary here. It rains a lot and gets dark around 5:15pm. It's exam period so fun is less to be had and I've basically only seen my flatmates the past couple days. And to be perfectly honest, the more of a desire I have to be home, the more I get easily annoyed with things others say. I'd go into details but.. I'm not going to. (This isn't to say that I don't like my flatmates by the way, I do, I just miss my friends from home a lot.) Most IES people are leaving in just over two weeks, and I have over a month. (This is a problem that isn't actually a problem.)

Also, since it's June, I'm reminded of the things I'm missing out on at home: sun, lakes, laughing with friends, going out to lunch at local places in Minneapolis, biking/walking around, working (aka having an income), helping my grandparents around their houses, being there at family gatherings, music concerts, home-cooked meals that require no effort on my part on occasion, the 4th of July, watching SYTYCD with friends instead of alone in my room at 2am.. just a little nostalgic about home. If you are reading this, I promise I probably miss you at this exact moment in time.

But New Zealand is still amazing. As a country, it remains the most beautiful place I've been. Bright green rolling hills contrasted with blue skies and mountains in the distance and seeing and smelling the ocean everyday and palm trees all make me happy. Auckland is a great city - though I still hold fierce pride and love for Minneapolis and always will - and it has a lot to offer international students. It is located in the beautiful North Island and has more hills than I thought a city could ever fit within its limits. And no worries, I am still having a wonderful time abroad (well, I will be once academics start to wrap up and I can do fun things instead of academia) and am taking in as much of this experience as I possibly can. :) It would just be EVEN better if I could either fly home a week earlier, or have everyone I love come visit. SO jealous of the international students whose families are able to come visit at the end of the semester.

This is a really cute cover of a song that I really like :)