some thanks i thinked

My belly is full of wine, pizza and water. After a small piece fell off, my laptop has started to send little shock waves of electricity into my upper thighs as I sit and type. There's soft lighting; CNN is on, reporting Obama's nobel peace prize win. To my left, there are unfinished postcards. To my right, there is a half-packed suitcase, clothes strewn atop, surrounded by various gifts for people back home which I have accumulated along the 10 day Central Vietnam trip. I am sitting on starchly-linened hotel bed, cross-legged, typing a new blog entry.

On my way home from DMZ bar (don't worry Dad, with 2 guys and 10 girls) I became stalked by two rather stickly little girls, probably around the age of ten. They handed me a hastily written, pre-prepared note in English about how they need money to go to school and get this by selling cards, which became apparent when a stack was shoved into my face. I don't usually buy things from kids on the street because the money doesn't necessarily go towards what they claim or to them in the first place. It may just go to some thug. Anyhow, I was slightly tipsy and feeling more than slightly emotional, so I tugged out 30,000 dong from my bra (classy, right?) and bought a card. They then, seeing that I had some cash to burn and seemed... easily persuadable, started chanting "cookies, cookies!!" and tugged me into the conveniently located convenience store right beside us. And what did I do? I bought them two boxes of cookies. And went back to the hotel and cried.

What I wonder most while on this term abroad is, how did I get so lucky to be born to my parents? To be born in the US? To go to college? To come to expect certain rights and ways of life? To be loved? Why me?

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That was last night, now this is the morning. I am completely freaking out on the inside because I can't find my notebook with ALL of my journals in it. FUCK. Hopefully, HOPEFULLY it is on the bus... If not, there goes my grade. Great.

In an attempt to push those thoughts to a far, out-of-reach corner of my mind, I will now relate some thoughts I've been having over the past couple of weeks.

Basically, I miss home. I miss the home I used to have... and I miss my home that I still have... my family. The funny thing is that back in the US, before going abroad, I was completely certain that I wanted to leave the country. For good. I was also a little tired of my family (sorry, family). That seems silly thinking about it now, but I really wanted to find my place, and I was certain it wasn't in America. I was also afraid of living a meaningless life, and at the time, to me, a meaningful life meant traveling. I would often complain to friends and family about how I felt so trapped and bored, that I needed to be "doing things with my life." Which to me at that time meant living abroad. And now that I'm doing just that, living in Vietnam, I've come to find that I complain about "needing structure, a daily routine, something to hold onto."

What I've come to realize is, traveling is fun (amazing actually) but I'm definitely not the trail-blazing, foreign-country inhabiting Ex-Pat I had come to invision myself becoming. I'm a dreamer, yes, but I'm also a homebody, and there's nothing wrong with that. What I'm also trying to say is, I am so sick and tired of living in every other time frame except the one I'm currently inhabiting.

My thoughts are really scattered right now... I'm gonna take a break.