Everybody is Leaving

The course here in Finland has come to an end. Almost everyone has left. The dorms are eerily silent. The only thing you can here is the sound of the washing machines washing my clothes. This is the 4th time I have washed my purple UW shorts without wearing them. Ever since I left them in a locker in a Helsinki hostel after swimming for four days without giving them time to dry out, they have been impregnated with an unremovable funk that has rendered them unwearable.

I am sitting at the computers where I would often check my email between classes or more often than not during class. Things feel sort of normal, but also completely not. There is no one here. Downstairs in the cafeteria there is food in the hot trays waiting under the lamps for students that will never come. It's as if the lady working there cooked for everyone today not remembering that everyone was leaving today. I think she made chicken nuggets. They look delicious.

I am once again fasting. I missed my fast day this Wednesday because we had the end of the year dinner where I piled my plate high with several pounds of food and then finished it off with some apple pastry and delcious vanilla icecream, so now I have to fast today. To make matters worse, I was up eating candy last night until 1am which means I have to wait until 1am before I eat tonight. And most likely around 1am I will be too tired to even want to eat, which will kill all the excitement I've been building up all day about eating in the first place. Either way it will be good, though. Or I will be asleep.

On Sunday I will go to Russia. I will take a bus that takes over 8 hours and then I will be in St. Petersburg with absolutely no idea what I am going to do or where I am going to go. It will be great. I will be lonely. It's hard to underestimate the heart-crushing loneliness that can be experience after spending three weeks with the same people every day, always having people to hang out with and activities to do, always swimming and walking around town and getting icecream. But it will be good for me. I need this loneliness. Mabye it will help me figure out what I want to do. Maybe it will make me buy a plane ticket to Africa. Or maybe it will make me go to Mongolia and lose my mind.

The only thing I have really been thinking about all day is Chipotle. I want to eat Chipotle so bad right now. But there is no Chipotle in Finland. In fact, there is only one Chipotle on this side of the water and it's in London. And I'm not going to London. Though I did just check flights.

But I better go now. Bo and Mike are about to get on a bus to Helsinki where they will eventually catch flights to the US. I have to play floor hockey at 4pm with the Finns and also do my situps and pullups for the day. And fast. And go the post office. And clean my room. And bask in beautiful loneliness.