lucy in the sky with diamonds

Heathrow Airport is providing a grey, damp, unattractive people-filled background to the last hour of my semester abroad. It's kind of anticlimactic given how much has happened, especially in these last 3 weeks. Either way, I'm so excited to get home that I'm not really sure I grasp that this trip is ending yet-- maybe it'll hit me in a few days when I go to take the nonexistent Omaha subway, or when I'm craving some tapas, or have to pay for something with dollar bills. Probably not though; I think I'll just let this pass.

Anyway, I got to the airport fairly early, and although my computer is near-death (22 minutes remaining, hmm...), I figured this might be an ideal time to look back on everything for my last blog entry.

My last week in Barcelona was enjoyable but insane. I made a list of all the favorite spots I wanted to make it back to before leaving, but wasn't able to get them all in given the frenzy of finals and the photo show. I did get to spend a lot of time with my friends though, and was glad about that. On the night before everyone's flights out of Barcelona, we all went to dinner to celebrate, but once there no one was really in a celebrating mood. Actually everyone was crying except me. I felt kind of strange about that, because normally I'm the perpetual weeper, but I just didn't have it in me. I wanted everyone to know that I was sad to be leaving too, but I just couldn't cry! I'm still trying to decide if that means I finally grew up and don't cry every 10 seconds anymore, or if ... nope, I guess that's probably what it means.

Everything after Barcelona was a whirlwind, and there's no way I could get it all out on paper (actually I did, in my journal, but that is for me to know about and maybe show my grandkids so they'll know that old Grams Tara did some crazy shit back in the day)-- but I'll abridge:

My trip started out in Athens, where my friend Danny and I spent some time wandering around the streets, dining 'neath the Acropolis and asking the age-old question: ferrel cats or toothless old women? We still didn't know by the time I left for Santorini, where I met up with Lucy and some of the other Bologna gals. We had a magical time (I think it was me and Lucy's 6th honeymoon...7th?), swimming and taking a tour of hte volcano and watching beautiful sunsets. All very pretty. After that I headed back to Athens by myself, where I spent another four days seeing the important sights, making a daytrip to Delphi, fending off The Phantom Masturbator of the national park (by nailing him in the face with a bottle of apple Fanta. If you want to hear that story, I will tell it to you but probably not in the public domain). Those first couple days by myself were kind of tough, but I ended up really liking the independent travel thing, and made friends on days that I didn't feel like being alone. After Athens, I flew to Vienna, which is my new favorite city. The entire time I was there, I couldn't escape the feeling that I lived there in a past life. I am getting all nostalgic just thinking about that beautiful, beautiful place. The best two things that I did in Vienna were to go to see The Merry Widow at the state opera house, and to rent a bike which I subsequently got lost on. I stopped in a restaurant and asked if the owner could point out where we were on my map, and her response was, 'Ohh, dear, you're not on this map anymore. You'd be here--' and pointed to a spot about 5 inches away from the edge of the map. Whoops. It took me about 3 hours to find my way back to the city, but it was fun and exciting and I got to see a lot of the pretty towns that surrounded the city. After Vienna was Berlin, where I met up with my dearest, darlingest housemate Nick Lamm. We had a grand old time kicking it in the former Nazi and Communist capital, and saw some good stuff.

Is this detailed enough? Not detailed enough? This whole semester I've had this feeling that everything which going abroad entails is a little cliche, and keeping a blog to document my inner and outer change just feels so...tacky sometimes! AND my computer is dying now!

SO, last points:

I don't think you're tacky for reading this. I'm just tacky for being typical.
This semester was life-changing, but also not life-changing, and it was wonderful and beautiful and amazing but also terrible and ugly. Ohh life. Hello.
I'm sad to be leaving everything that habit has made me love this semester BUT
SOOOOO excited to get back to my family and friends and those God Blessed States of Murrica that are just bursting with pride and love and joy.

Enough feeling words, time to fly.

Love,
Tara

PS- No time for pictures today. Check up on facebook later.