Back to School?

Last time this year, I was packing up my stuff at the Crackhouse and getting ready to move back down the street to my home at Boston College. Today, I’m sitting in my little beach house in the South Pacific, taking a break after doing a few loads of laundry by hand (mostly ankle-length skirts and formal puletasis), watching my new lizard friend skitter around the living room and hoping the huge crab from the bathroom doesn’t make another appearance, at least until Jackie comes home. Woah. Ok, so my life has changed a lot.

I went from shorts and tanktops, jeans and boots and my fleece and rainboots, to long skirts, puletasis, lavalavas (like a sarong), and nothing but flipflops (even, now, when hiking). I went from being a student for the last 16 years of my life to suddenly being a teacher. People look at me as if I’m a grown up (as if!). My little beach house is gorgeous, right on the beach and in the corner of the jungle, but there’s no TV or internet, and an hour of phone calls back to the states has left me minute-less and cut off from the outside world. It’s Sunday, which, here, is a day of rest. I told a friend that today, saying Sunday’s are boring. He asked, oh, nothing’s open on Sundays? Well, no. “Everything” is open…. It’s just that “everything” is a couple of less-than 7-11 sized stores, and I already spent $10 on mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce yesterday, so I’m cut off for a bit.

I don’t really think I can explain what it’s like living here to anyone… there are so many little, strange, crazy things that I find out every day. At this point, I’m not even shocked anymore. And, mostly, I love it. It’s where I want to be, and it’s what I want to be doing. This, in every way, is the adventure I signed up for, the crazy thing I wanted to do after my 4 amazing years in college. I live on a tiny island in the South Pacific. I’m teaching high school… like, actual high school students, every day, for a year. I’m meeting new people, and learning a million things everyday, about the island, life, and myself. It’s so cool.

But every once in a while, it hits me that I should be heading back to Boston right now. This has been an awesome vacation, but, oops, time to go back! And then I realize that, no, that part of my life is over… I won’t be going back to Boston anymore. I’ll never again go to BC where I lived in a dorm nicknamed “the hotel”, ate cooked to order meals at Lower, and had to walk a total of 5 minutes to see any one of my best friends, the people who, now, are spread out around Boston, New York, Miami, New Jersey, California, Arizona, Europe, and a million other places. And then I miss my old life like crazy.

Even then, though, I don’t really wish I was back in Boston, back in the Gate, back at MA’s (well, ok, maybe back at MA’s…). Mostly, I just wish all my friends were here in my tiny beach house with me, watching the lizard, freaking out about the crab (they move so weirdly! Yech!), and enjoying the view.

Moral of the story: I miss everyone, and love everyone very much. Now, come visit!!! It’s only 4 plane rides away…