I recently found out that I probably have to be out of my apartment before I actually get home. This was upsetting and kind of stressful, but I'd just gotten to be sort of OK with it when I got an e-mail from a coworker letting me know that she and another close friend are quitting. I guess I didn't REALLY expect to come home from 3 months of travelling and find my life exactly the way I left it, but I'm only now starting to appreciate how different it will be. I won't live in the same place or with the same people. I won't have classes to go to, or the easy justification of "I'm still in school" to explain why I have no idea what to do with my life. I won't work with the same group, I won't have the same schedule, I will also (most surreally) have a book to promote. I was thinking about all of this while hanging my laundry on the terrace and I didn't feel as panicked about it as I probably should.
I think that I'm ok with the prospect of all of this change, largely because I won't be returning home the same person. Morocco (and the people I've met or gotten to know better in Morocco) has already begun to have some pretty strong effects on my personality. I'm calmer. I'm generally less concerned about things I can't control. I'm spending less time hiding behind my laptop and more time interacting with people (though I still do plenty of hiding behind my laptop, particularly when it's for the slightly more socially acceptable excuse of watching YouTube videos with my friends.) We have just under a month left and then I have another month of travel with my best friend in Burkina Faso. So maybe my life will be wholly unrecognizable once I'm back in Seattle, but, إن شاء الله, so will I. After all, I suspect that might be why I came here in the first place.
Now it is time for rooftop aerobics with my host sister and then dinner. Currently, I'm for sure not sitting in bed eating nutella with a spoon because that would just be silly and I am much too dignified for that. (Lie.)
(see Zoe's post about pre-dinner hunger and you'll understand.)
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