I am so so ready to come home for Christmas!
Today has been kind of off, and I'm not sure why. It was Friday but we had classes to make up for Monday in which we didn't (because of resting after Rome and Assisi), so that was kind of weird. I'm going to feel a little bit off for the rest of the semester, I think.
This weekend has been crammed with social activities already and it just hit the official weekend. On Wednesday night I ended up going to the Keller with some friends and getting a beer and talking, which was super fun.
The only way to get invited to things around here is to be with the people you want to be hanging out with later, because I'm not really in the crowd enough for people to come seek me out, so that's kind of aggravating, but it's just the way it is. The reason I got invited to the Keller was because I was eating dinner with Leslie, who then attracted a mass of other people to sit with us.
Last night I went to a bonfire for a little while which I got invited to by Maria Hughes, who's another super popular girl who I climbed up to the top of St. Peter's Dome with. I guess she took a liking to me because she invited me to come to the bonfire, but by the time I got down there she wasn't actually there (?), and neither were any of the other people who flocked to sit around me once she sat with me.
Instead I spent most of my time talking to Nathan, but also got introduced to Tim, a new Chinese foreign exchange student. I asked for an official opinion on whether or not I look Chinese, because I get lots of people telling me I look like I could be Korean, or Mongolian, or Japanese, or whatever. He said I did look Chinese, so I had my ethnicity confirmed, think of that!
Today I got up later than usual and missed breakfast before class (Clare brought me a roll from the mensa though, so my grumbling stomach was somewhat appeased), and went to classes, then after that I ended up at lunch for a really long time with Leslie and some other people.
After that Leslie and I went to go study for our quiz on Monday, but of course people came into the tea kitchen and she knew them by chance (they're visitors to the Kartause, but by some miracle it so happened that they knew her older brother when he went to Franciscan), and she talked to them a lot, and then after that some LCI students came in, and then after that in came Matt, who is Leslie's friend who is visiting the Kartause.
Matt, ironically, is the RC for Christendom College's campus in Rome. I asked him if he knew Matt Camp, and it turns out that he does! Small, small world...
After that, I went back to my room for a bit to get some quiet time with my head alone before going to get a burger with Sudie, because she had really wanted to get a hamburger in Scheibbs (which is a bus ride away).
Eventually I went downstairs to meet up with Sudie and it turns out it was just the two of us, but Sudie was trying to convince Nathan and Christian to come with us and neither of them wanted to (Nathan had papers to write, Christian wanted to take a nap). Sudie spent a ton of time trying to drag or guilt Christian along with us (Nathan was wise and ran off before she could get a hold of him) and then she was super disappointed when they wouldn't come.
So on our way to the bus stop, she decided she didn't want to go anymore, and then we went to grab kebabs instead, and then she got really upset and decided she didn't want to do that either, so I came back to the Kartause feeling like poor company indeed but also kind of disappointed that the boys didn't want to come with us, and I made soup for myself.
This last couple of weeks has been odd for me. I really, really want to be included in things and hang out with people, but at the same time I can tell I'm an introvert because there comes a certain point that if I'm not engrossed in my conversation with someone or the interaction doesn't seem meaningful or intelligent or I'm not having a lot of fun, I just need to come back to my room and be quiet for a while.
Either I need to be quiet or I need to think about the events that just happened, or talk to someone about what just happened and the little things I noticed during the social interaction. But at the same time that I really want quiet and I need to get my work done and I also haven't had much time to write or just relax and read unless it's late, I really really want to spend time with people and I'm excited that I have had invitations to go do things with people.
For example, I might be going to Ebensee in Austria to hike for just a day trip this weekend with Christian and Maria and some other people, but I might not (because they might forget that I said I was interested). I don't particularly feel like I'm in any of the "in" groups, but I also have been invited to do more things and that's been super exciting for me. Like I feel like my social life has been on the rise and as the semester ends I'm less and less inspired to get things done.
Last week I went swing dancing one evening and I think that I'm invited to go to the Keller again tomorrow night and maybe potentially more swing-dancing.
Philosophy has been killing my brain and I genuinely do not enjoy my medieval history class, mainly because Dr. Hass goes through things way too fast and is super abrupt if you ask him to clarify something or if you can't follow his stories quickly enough. He's a nice enough person but he's just not super good at handling a class.
Anyway, I'm super conflicted because I'm afraid that as soon as I leave the Kartause and go back to main campus, I'll lose the friendships and the camaraderie that has begun to develop here, and I won't ever get to talk to the people that I want to be better friends with ever again, because I only got invited because I was, well, "there".
I'm pretty sure I'll remain friends with Leslie and I'm super happy about that. About anyone else, I really have no clue.
But I still really want to come home....
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