turnips and meat stuffing

change always surprises me. thanksgiving snuck up on me this year and as with anything that lacks a long excitement-filled count down period, it passed almost like any other day. don't get me wrong, it was nice to sit around with my family and catch up, but mostly it just reinforced my feeling that everything around me is changing at an ever accelerating pace as I continue to age. Sometimes I feel like the world should just stand still, in time and pose, while I get older and figure everything out. "little" michael, as we continue to call him, wasn't around this year because he joined the air force and is down in Florida training. my brother owns a condo now and when asked what he wants for Christmas, he said decorations for his house. tim and chris are both renting houses and dan will probably move in with chris after he graduates. my sis and tory are applying to college. Are my memories just so vivid? why does it feel like it was just yesterday that we were crawling around in Nana's family room pretending to be zoo animals or serving fake food to all the grown ups from our restaurant?

I still feel like my own life is like the marble I used to drop into the funnel of the marble works; it starts off going slowly around the wide rim of the funnel and gets faster and faster as it spins towards the bottom. again, the change is good, really good. it's just surprising. i keep making decisions that are keeping me on track (for what, i don't know exactly) or perhaps I'm not making decisions consciously so much as going along with what comes. Doing research is a good example. I asked one of my econ professors if she knew of any internships related to econ that I could look into for the summer. she told me she knew the director of the research center at uconn was looking for workers at the moment, sent me to him with a great recommendation, and the next thing I know I'm learning all about connecticut's healthcare system and contacting doctors' and dentists' associations and tracking down data sources. It all just sort of happened.

Sweden seems less real to me than my past trips. brazil, mexico, spain, peru- all were embarked on with the main purpose of serving God. Sweden is for study abroad, for me to travel and "see the world". It almost feels selfish, and perhaps that is why it still seems so abstract. it's also longer. really i get a little freaked out just thinking about it. i know i'll enjoy it but that it will also be hard. i also know that every time I come home, home tastes that much sweeter. when i arrived home from peru, i asked myself why i'm always in such a rush to leave. if this spring semester wasn't the best time, school speaking, to study abroad, i would've seriously considered pushing it back a little further because I've so enjoyed being home these last few months.

i think the change outside me just feels that much bigger because the change in my life seems so big. change used to be gradual. the story might vary a little from time to time, but it always had the same characters and same basic plot. now it has new characters (whom i am very thankful for) and new story lines, and the protagonist keeps running off to a new setting every few months. it is good that everyone else's worlds are changing and growing too- just hard to take it all in sometimes.

we still have turnips and meat stuffing every thanksgiving because my grandpa liked them. he died when i was seven. i can understand why nana still wants to have them tho (aside from the fact that a few of us have developed a taste for them), amidst the change in life, it's nice to keep some little things constant- i think it's calming to the human soul.