Life Highlights: Feeling Homesick & Christmas Cheer

Bought a few new winter coats just in time for the cold - but I still need some gloves and a nice winter hat!

At the end of this month (in 23 days, to be exact!) I will be going home to Oregon for a week! It's to combine a huge Thanksgiving-Christmas-New-Year's-Grandpa's-and-Mom's-Birthday-Bash, as I will be unable to go home on any of these actual dates.

These past few days I've been feeling particularly home sick (and sick sick), so I'm looking forward to this visit more than ever.  Shane visiting me this past weekend has made me miss all my friends from university (and California in general) - my "home part 2".  This is especially so with this nasty fall weather that's here to stay all week (extremely rainy and cold - a mere 27°F on Friday?!) versus balmy 70°F and sunny that's always in So Cal.  And of course, my friends and family back in my "home home" of Oregon are always missed.  I am looking forward to seeing Annaliese, Todd, my grandparents, and my mom again!

It's weird because in college I definitely didn't feel that homesick.  I had plenty of new things to do and keep me busy - at most I remember feeling a bit wistful for the starry night sky my freshman year of college.  However, other than that I honestly wasn't homesick all that much.  So it's a novel experience to feel homesick on the other side of the country - one that I'm not extremely happy about, but an experience that I think will be valuable all the same.  That isn't to say I haven't felt homesick before, but it's been almost seven years since I last have (when I was fifteen and in the Middle East).

Other than that, I've been determined to get myself in the "festive mood" this month rather than next, as my Christmas will be at the beginning of December! So in honour of that, I listened to the Nutcracker tonight along with watching all the festive-themed GMM episodes.

The latest news aside from this is that I have been obsessed with a new soup I found at Dean & Deluca (by far my weak point for monetary "splurges" for eating out) and I am about to begin a new novel - The Brothers Karamazov, in honour of the fact I didn't end up reading it during what would've been my senior spring semester of Torrey.  So I'm looking forward to an excellent read in time for the holiday season!