Megabus, etc

Snow Day!!

(written yesterday--not able to publish till today)

Right now I'm sitting on the Megabus across the aisle from Kyle and Elizabeth, heading to D.C. from Charlotte. It's been too long since I've written. Eliz and I will be staying with dear, dear friends Justin and Erin in D.C.. This will be the second time seeing them this month after almost two years (!) having flown by without a reunion. We'll also hopefully see my cousin Marlie in NYC, whom I haven't seen since her sister Sarah's wedding two and a half years ago.

I think I woke up the other day, suddenly conscious of the fact that it's been four years since I was a senior in college. This time four years ago I was running a lot, listening to Guster and the Shins, taking night photos in black and white, pulling almost all-nighters finishing papers the morning they were due. That was an emotional semester. I thought the decisions leading up to and during college--where to go, what to study, which professors and classes to choose, where/if to study abroad--were the most important ones I would make in my life, but I've seen that the few years after graduating have been laden with as or more weighty decisions.

I've been thinking a lot about more travels this year. Having a hard time narrowing down which countries I'd be interested in living in and what to do there, if I'd be able to go at all (volunteering with a medical group = attractive, but can be expensive...); I've definitely thought about Nicaragua again (I felt like I left my heart there when I was coming back) or another C. American place (ummmm, Alice is going to be in Costa Rica this spring! It'd be so fun to be near her), Chile's been calling me for a while now; Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador also sound amazing. Europe is also attractive, for a few reasons. A Holland visit would be quite lekker this year. French-speaking countries are appealing to me these days, too--why not? India--I've wanted to go there for a long time, but I think it'll be a little while longer till that comes to pass.

It's been a really lovely winter so far: dinner parties, new friends, trips to Asheville, Columbia, and Ohio, some stellar conversations, bike rides and broccoli nabbing, my first white Christmas, time with my family, fireside reading sessions, and getting snowed in. (By the way, I love that there are still little piles of snow in various street corners of Greenville--little molecules of snow trying to protect each other from the warm rain and air.)