T-6 days.

Somehow, my time in Denmark is five short days away from being over. Its a sort of phenomenon that I both can and cannot believe.  I'll be quite sad to leave my little brother Lennart, sad to leave my host parents, the really sweet friends I've made, and of course sad to leave the Jack Russell terrier puppy that I get to hang out with all the time.. but I'm excited to go home. I've talked to some people who sound like they would rather die than return home, and especially with the weather being so wonderful these days, I understand where they're coming from. But I guess they don't have as awesome people to get excited about returning home to as I do.

Now, please don't get me wrong. If I could spend a summer in Copenhagen, I would be ecstatic. And talking to my host parents at dinner tonight I said something about how I just don't feel like I'm actually leaving. I feel sort of like I'm finishing up school and now I get to reap the benefits of summer with the friends and people that I've persevered the semester with.  To my comment about feeling like I should be staying all summer, my host mom said, "Well.. you could." I laughed and reminded her of my job up at Eagle Ridge.  She said I could bring the campers down over and sleep out in the neighbors tent that I've slept in before.  I said I'd talk to Kelly about it. But one thing that surprised me about my host dad's response was that.. there was none. Usually when I tease them about how I'm just gonna have to stay forever, he'll have a dramatic and sarcastic comeback about how he "Hopes to God not," to counter. And I suddenly realized.. whoa. They're going to miss me. And I'm going to miss them. I thought about all the car rides home we take from different family outings, and how Lennart will lean his head on my shoulder, nod off, and spent the rest of the car ride snoozing in my lap. Or if he's feeling energetic that night instead, he'll spend a large part of the time trying to lick me. I think I prefer the first occurrence.

And I thought about peeling potatoes with Anne Marie as she told me her opinion about this or that, and challenged me to think for myself about whatever we would discuss.  She is eternally a devil's advocate, and as frustrating as it is sometimes that I can never get her to agree with me, I have benefited greatly from someone challenging my ideas and making me think more deeply about why I have the opinions that I do.  I'll miss Jan's constant sarcastic pokes and prods that at first I had no idea how to handle since they seemed to be never ending and I had no idea if he was really joking or not. But then slowly realizing that the more he made fun of me, the more comfortable he felt with me, and the more comfortable I felt with him. One night this week when I had pulled an all nighter one night and had gotten about an hour of sleep the night before that, I was walking around like a zombie and he asked, "are you ok?" I told him yeah, just really tired. While I half expected a joke about how, "yeah I sure look it," or some other Danish humor nudge, instead he just smiled and winked, and agreed that an early bedtime would be good.

While a big part of me wants to figure out ok.. who am I now? How am I different? How will this experience shape my future? I feel like that might feel good initially for closure and for my own liking to tie a neat little bow around things and say alright well that was that. But I've discovered that if you're doing it right, you should never feel the need to wrap things up in a nice little box and put them on a shelf labeled "life experiences," or something. battery about to die on computer. will finish in a second ;)