week one: flaming cheetos and root beer cans are my only friend

homesickness is a funny thing i think. leaving home even if its only for a couple years feels strange.

because 1. there are so many things to explore. there's people to meet, all this new knowledge at your fingertips and there's nothing stopping you now from going out to grab it but yourself, and there's new sights to see, new feelings to feel. it's impossible to imagine colors you've never seen before, and now it feels like they're all here and you're chasing after them the best you can and everything's grown to become nothing but an overwhelming blur of colors you've never heard of before.

2. you never really realized before how little prepared you were to deal with everything. the feelings, your financial state, awful wifi (like seriously, why), working out shower routines with your roommate, taping up pictures in your bedroom in a weak attempt to make it yours, the conversations with the war veterans in the airports when your flights delayed, all the perspectives of everyone else and all their backgrounds being mushed together into this one place where you're meant to live together for a while.

3. finding out just how young you are and how little you actually know in the grand scheme of things is very grounding. maybe you got comments growing up, "you'll understand when you're older," but then you get older and you understand nothing.

and in the middle of all this newness there's always that invisible string that keeps you tied to your home and sometimes it accidentally pulls at your gut and drags you backwards a bit. sometimes it hurts.

when does this "older" thing happen even, when do you get to the point where you understand even a smidgen of the universe to the point where you can feel emotionally stable and not start panicking standing in the middle of a brand new town all by yourself with no one you know? has anyone made it to that point? where are they so they can give us all a visit and show us how to make it through the day without tripping and falling into a wall??

_ _ _

in other news, I've finally found a new job, classes are going well, no one's gotten murdered, I've got cheesy little planet + stars + spaceship stickers all over my room and a thriving cactus I dragged all the way to my new bedroom, and I even managed to make friends. i'd call this first week of all this a success so far

I guess a person is  t e c h n i c a l l y  supposed to introduce themselves at the beginning of something, but hello!!! to sum all that this is up; i'm kelsey, i'm like 4 years old at this point, and i recently took a plane to exchange schools in a new place to take classes and try to experience a little more of the world. am i actually going to survive until the end of this? will i ever get decent pictures of the campus to show?? will i ever get my sleeping schedule in order? ?   ?      ?

well kids, find out on the next installment of "Help, I Am A Child & Don't Understand How To Fill Out Tax Forms"