70

This is my 70th post. I think that's kind of cool. They're not all great writing, and they're not all even interesting, but a lot has happened since my first post.

One of the things that's happened recently is that the year in Grenoble has turned into a semester. Everyone who I know reads this blog already knows this, because I don't think that via blog is the way to find out that someone's coming home six months earlier than originally planned (this is also why this news wasn't up before, because I wanted to tell people myself first). Now, I know there are people reading this blog that I don't know about, and if you wanted to leave a comment that'd be just ducky. Especially all of you over there on the East Coast.

Anyway, I'm flying home on December 24th (!) and coming back to UCSB for winter and spring quarters. Grenoble is a great place, and I really like it here (Alps! There are Alps! I mean, you walk around the corner and look up and there's just this great big MOUNTAIN there!), but a year away from family and SB is not the thing for me at the moment. There's no ocean here. Perhaps I'll come happily back for a year after college (there's a really cool program run by the French government that recruits native English speakers to come teach English in French schools for a year, so if I want to there's a way), and perhaps I made a bad decision and should have stayed for the year, but I did the best I could and I'm happy to be going back.

There are things I'm going to miss. I love the daily produce markets, and the cold, and Elsa. But wherever I go there will be things to miss. Here, I miss the ocean, and the sun, and smiling at people on the street. And the dogs, and running on the beach, and skating to school, and talking to my family whenever I want to, and CCS.

And Christmas is going to be really a lot of fun.