New Years Day

I began the New Year the same way I spent its eve: quietly, and at home. Several friends had invited me to parties, but with my face still slightly swollen from wisdom teeth surgery (okay, okay—I look like I have a bad case of gout in one cheek). Plus, Twizzlers go badly with stitches, and I’m told a mixture of alcohol and Vicodin is even worse. So, home it was.

I find that there’s always plenty of excitement at home, in its own domestic flavour. Chris is eyeing my Vicodin pills and wondering how much they’ll bring on the Goshen High School black market (my job in all this would be “to tough out the pain”), which makes me feel slightly illicit any time I pop a pill down the hatch. Kind of like Dr. House. As for the Amoxycillin that I’m supposed to down three times daily, the only cure for the nausea seems to be throwing open a window and gasping a huge lungful of icy January air, which works wonderfully to calm my stomach but has the opposite effect on any family members nearby. I can only keep asking for mercy; this antibiotic has not made friends with my tummy.
I have progressed nicely from yoghurt and ice cream on Day One, to soup and ramen yesterday, to bread and eggs today, and I think I’ll be doing fine by the end of the week. Perhaps I’ll even be able to brush my back molars properly (oh please-please-please…).

I thought it might be nicer to spread the About Me parts over a few posts rather than jamming it down everyone’s throat like a massive unwanted mouthful of fruitcake, especially since most readers know me personally anyway.

Here are two lists that I put together to kind of showcase likes and dislikes in a slightly less mundane format. The holidays are always awash in lists of things: New Year’s resolutions, presents that need to be returned, and Christmas wish lists. This is slightly more study-abroad themed, I think. With pictures!

Top 10 Things I Will Miss about Home*

1. My cat, Ashley.
2. The view from my window.
3. Tea. We drink a lot of it. This lovely little teapot was a present from Michael for my birthday, and it has single-handedly quadrupled my tea consumption. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get used to all the coffee.
4. Wal-Mart. The cheap, one-stop, have-everything stores get kicked around in the media, but it’s only after it’s gone that you realise your shopping trip now take you to eight different shops, all spread across town.
5. Sushi. Rarely found in anywhere near the Mediterranean. *sniffle*
6. Not really having to dress up. You, Italian fashion, with your towering heels and barefaced snob branding, you utterly terrify me.
7. Cooking in my own kitchen. Autonomy is sweet. Once I hit the Galliani kitchen, I’ll be the newbie who knows nothing about food—NOTHING, I tell you!
8. My church. It’s the best ever.
9. My sexy V-ball pens. I’m stocking up.
10. My bookshelf. Although I’m the incredibly grateful owner of an Amazon Kindle, I’m going to miss my books terribly. You can’t arrange Kindle books by colour…

* I have not included people on this list, because they are not things, in my view, but I will miss most all the people I love!

Things I will not miss about home (a much shorter list):

1. The dog. Sorry, puppy, but ever since you replaced me when I went to college, things have never been completely right between us. Besides, you drool on my socks. Look, even now, there you are asleep on my pile of clean laundry.
2. Allergies. Let’s face it, we just have one animal too many. The transition to a one-cat house will do me quite a bit of good, I think.
3. Doing housework. (Kidding! Kidding!)
4. The drinking age. For goodness’ sake, I only ever want to drink a little wine and once in a while pick up some interesting liqueurs for cooking. It will be nice to have the freedom to order a glass of Chianti without feeling like I’m flouting the law.

Now, to end—why am I doing a blog? Well, more polished than MSN, more thorough than Facebook, it’s the best way to let everyone know “What did I do today?” on a regular basis, since you can skip the boring parts and read whenever you feel like it. Plus, those hey-I’m-abroad e-mails always feel so artificial and rushed, always so text-light and image-heavy. Then you get to spend your day unclogging your inbox that they’ve jammed with enormous high-res photos of blurry, overexposed tourist attractions.

I was never huge on photography anyway.

Looking forward to my next post! Until next time.