Only One month (or 1/3 of the trip) remains

It's hard to believe, but in exactly one month from now, I will be home. I'm not quite ready to go yet. We still have one more exciting trip planned next week. Plus, I know that once I return, I will have a million and one things to get done. Between my return and graduation (only a month apart), I have to study and prepare for my teacher certification test and Teach For America's Summer Institute, in addition to packing up my apartment and preparing to move to Houston. And in the meantime, I'll have dozens of people to see (and cook for!)! Needless to say, I'm enjoying the peace and quiet while I can! But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally miss a few things from home, so I thought I'd dedicate today's blogs to those things I miss.

I'm often surprised by the things I miss, really. I obviously miss my friends and family, but usually it's the little things I miss about them. For instance, I miss my mom calling me back 3 times after we've hung up the phone because she forgot to tell me something. I miss hearing my sister call me "sissy" (or "homeskillet", whichever she's in the mood to say). I miss hearing my Dad's laugh and him saying "Hey Sarah!", followed by a kiss on the head, when I've come home after being at school for awhile. I miss hearing Emily and Lindsey walk into the apartment and yell "Hey!" Sometimes I even miss Justin calling us when he knows we're in the middle of watching 24 and he's not supposed to call!! I miss dinners with The Clique, and choking on my food when one of the girls decides to tell me some shocking story. I miss seeing Katie Wiley on campus and yelling, KATIE WILEY!! There's tons more of little things I miss about people, but it'd take all day to write them. So, I'll move on to just listing things that I've come to miss, in no particular order:

1. Breakfast (Ok, this one might be in order). For all the great food here, the Europeans sure do know how to ruin breakfast. No eggs. No pancakes. No bacon. No grits. No danishes. NO biscuits. I'm actually lucky in that I get to eat cereal for breakfast. Most families only offer bread (hard bread) and coffee. When I'm home, it's not like a cook a big breakfast every morning; I usually have cereal or a poptart. On weekends, however, or when I'm in the mood, I'll sometimes cook a big breakfast with my roommates, and it's wonderful!

2. I really miss dancing around the living room, singing showtunes with Em. I can kind of dance in the privacy of my own room here, but I have my headphones on, not speakers, so it feels a bit silly. And I can't sing out loud as there's usually other people on my floor, and they probably wouldn't appreciate it. The first night I'm back in Auburn, we're going to go through the whole Chicago soundtrack, followed by Hairspray. Then maybe Dreamgirls and Rent.

3. A washer and dryer!!!!!!!!! My hands get so chapped when I wash my clothes. Then I have to hang them over the heater and wait a day or two for them to dry. I can't do many clothes at once, so I feel like I'm doing laundry every other day. Plus, I never feel like my clothes are getting clean . . .I never realized what a luxury a washer and dryer are.

4. I miss having a logical cell phone plan with reception inside my apartment! I don't think I've explained the Italian cell phone plans, so I'll do that briefly now. The Italians think it's silly to be charged twice for calls like we are. I had never thought of this until now. When I call someone, minutes are deducted from my phone and theirs, so it's like getting charged twice. Or really, two people are getting charged for the same thing. My phone here has free incoming calls, but I pay for outgoing calls. So I have to pay for every call I make! There are no free minutes after 7 (they think it's silly we can't call when we want - which we can, just not for free). I pay for every call, no matter when. And reception here is terrible.

5. My pillow. The pillow I have (and from what I can tell, the type of pillow in most houses) is very thin. I actually have to fold my pillow over once to make it the size of my pillows back home.

6. My music. I have a little MP3 player that can hold only 109 songs. I'm getting a bit sick of these 109 songs to say the least. Not to mention that somehow one of favorite songs (You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban) cut off when it downloaded. I don't understand how the entire CD loaded fine, with the exception of that one song. Whatever. I'll be ready to hear something different.

7. A burger from Niffer's.

8. Mexican food from Laredo's.

9. Driving down College Street and seeing Samford Hall. Actually, I miss that after only being away from Auburn for a week.

10. Having a kitchen! I'm incredibly spoiled since I never have to cook all the delicious food I eat, although, I actually really enjoy cooking, and I miss it! BUT, it is nice to have a kitchen where I can store food that I like, and prepare snacks, etc. It will also be nice to return to my house/apartment where I can get on my own eating schedule again. I've fully adjusted to the schedule here, but sometimes I'd like to change it up a bit. For instance, at home, there are nights when I'm just not that hungry. Maybe I had a big lunch, or a late snack. On those nights, I just cook a small dinner, or maybe have a large snack instead of dinner. That's not really an option here. I'm fed by the family, and I don't want to be rude and turn down food. So even when I'm not hungry, I almost always feel like I have to eat. If I turn down any or seem to not be hungry, Aurelio always asked me what I ate that afternoon. He can just tell when I've had a large dolce (sweet) late in the day!

11. A heater! I actually have a heater here in my room, but I can't control it, and it takes forever to heat up. It'll be nice to be in control of my own surroundings again and not have to rely on someone else to turn on my heat! (or once I'm home, my air conditioning)

12. Carpet! I'm always walking around in socks because no one has carpet here, which makes it quite cold in the winter. I don't know what it's like in the summer. The upside of no carpet is that I don't ever get those little electrical shocks in the winter because there's no friction between my body and the carpet.

13. Sadly, I do miss American TV. They have quite a bit of it over here. I'll blog soon about it, but I miss being able to veg out in front of the TV and watch something. Thankfully, with the writer's strike, I haven't missed any of my programs, except Project Runway (and no body better tell me how it ends either!!). Bravo runs marathons of it all the time, though, so I should be able to catch up. All my other shows start up again the week I get back, and I'll only miss three episodes of Dancing With the Stars. (So I watch a bit of TV - so what??). I even miss dumb reruns sometimes, though. On my MP3 player, I have the Rembrandts "I'll Be There For You" (Theme song from Friends), and whenever I listen to it, I feel like I'm back in my apartment. I can see myself sitting on the couch, and then the song comes on, and Emily comes out of her room and sits down. And I look at her and say "Aren't you supposed to be studying". "Yeah, I'm taking a break. I thought you were studying." "Yeah, I decided I was done." And then we watch an episode of Friends that we've already seen about 6 times. I guess this is really #13 and 14: TV and distracting Emily from studying/being distracted from studying.

14. Knowing all the news and what's going on in the states. The way the news cycle works in the online arena is this: Newspapers are traditionally updated in the mornings, around lunchtime, then late in the afternoon. Really big (meaning tragic) news is updated more frequently. Because of the time difference, the only news I read is that which is updated in the morning (which really means the stuff that was written the day before for that morning's paper, and then anything that might have happened overnight, which isn't much). I miss the afternoon and evening updates, which is really frustrating sometimes.

15. Sometimes I miss going to the movies.

16. Having the option to stay in my pajamas all day. I can't really go upstairs to dinner in my pajamas here. Jeans and a sweatshirt is OK, but pajamas? Uh, no.

Ok. That's probably most of the things I miss right there. I hope you don't read it and think I'm desperately waiting to be home. Like I said in my little disclaimer, I'm not yet ready, but I occasionally miss things, and these are those things.