Goodbye Gainesville

So I'm at home. I got back yesterday early evening, after spending Friday homeless. Let me tell you, not having a house/apartment to go back to is just a crazy feeling. I drove aimlessly for a while, trying to figure out where I could go for free and occupy my time. I visited Spin Cycle and talked to Alisha for a bit. I went to Stacy's. I went to Pita Pit with Lamm. Cool thing happened there. I wasn't planning on going out to eat dinner, because I have roughly 30 dollars to my name right now. But Lamm called and said she would take me out dinner to as a going away present (hooray). I was kind of craving a tuna pita from Pita Pit, so we decided to go there. I met them, and Lamm and I walked in, while Joel stayed with Zoe (a long haired chihuahua) outside. we waited for a moment, and then began to order, but, alas, the cash register was frozen. They were trying to restart the computer and what not, but it wasn't working. Sooooooo, the manager gave us FREE pitas. HOORAY! So as it turns out, Lamm's treat ended up being free anyways.

Then I went to Dani's to get ready for my going away party. We got ready at her new apartment, and then we went over to Courtyards to finish getting everything together. People were slowly trickling in, and by 11:30 there were a ton of people there. It was really interesting because it was kind of a combination of the frisbee crowd and ELI people, but it worked out just fine. Naturally, beer pong was super popular, and people mingled at least some. Stacy and Laura ran the beer pong show for a little while, and Pav even played a game with one of my students, Diane. Meg and Pav dressed up like Koreans, and Stacy was the statue of liberty, which I LOVED. It was really fun, but very very sad at the same time. I cried three times in the course of the night, but I bucked up fairly well each time afterwards and really enjoyed my last night in Gainesville. One of my students, Alice, gave me a painting she did of a flower that is really quite pretty. I will definitely be bringing that to Korea to put up on my wall. I played lots of beer pong and got moderately drunk, and told Sarah and Nicki secrets about an ELI boy. I spoke a little bit of Spanish and a little bit of Korean and said bye to EVERYONE.

Saying goodbye to Nicki was particularly hard, as she is the one person I've known longer than pretty much ANYONE. What's crazy is I only dropped a couple tears when she actually left, but then a couple minutes later, when Alice gave me the painting, they noticed I looked a little down, and when I told them I had just said goodbye to one of my very best friends in the whole world, I started crying again. I went upstairs to put the painting with my stuff and I broke DOWN.

Regardless of the crying though, I don't think I would have wanted to have spent my last night in Gainesville doing anything else. Courtyards was my little party home, and it was only fitting that I sleep there that night.

The next morning, hungover as can be, I helped clean up Dani's apartment because they had to move out by noon. It was a little risky throwing a party the night before they had to check-out, but I would argue that it went really well.

Today I went shopping with Mom. I got a new LeSportSac tote, a coin purse, and this adorable sweater from the Gap.

Left & Leaving

Everything is packed. I sleep in my apartment for the last night tonight. After that, it's throw the sheets in the car, commencement, GOING AWAY PARTY, and home.

I leave for Korea in 11 days, people. I am just beginning to freak out. My Gainesville life is pretty much done-zo.

xoxo,
A

Success

So packing yesterday was not particularly successful, in the sense that I packed one tiny box full of clothing to offer my sister. My room is currently a big fat freaking mess. I did three loads of laundry yesterday, and one clean load is currently chillin on my bedroom floor right now. I'll have to take care of that soon. I did succeed in going through a bunch of my t-shirts and being pretty selective in the shirts I actually kept. Anything that could even be considered slightly too small or slightly too worn got tossed quickly into the salvation army/garbage piles respectively.

My closet is looking okay. I threw out two big bags of garbage yesterday, so slowly but surely I think I'm making my way to a cleaned up apartment. The hard part will prove to be the little things. The knick-knacks the pictures, the stupid shit I never really needed but have now.

Last night, unlike the daytime, was a complete success. I went with Ximena (a coworker at the ELI) to a party at a student's apartment. It was mostly a Spanish-speaking crowd and as they and I proceeded to drink, I was heckled increasingly to speak Spanish. By the end of the night, I was speaking pretty much freely, and it was received really well. I hate speaking Spanish to big groups of native speakers because I'm concerned that they are going to judge me and then correct every little thing and I won't be able to communicate because I'll just shut down. I think I'm so used to being in school where mistakes are bad, and they grade your spanish in a very real way, with As and Bs, and I'm really used to being pretty good in the classroom setting, that the prospect of having other native speakers listening terrifies me in a lot of ways. I ended up having a conversation about Spanish speakers and American mentalities and prejudices IN SPANISH. Victory.

Anyways, today I will be going to the mall. Gap is having a sale (30% off everything!!!) and I have a giftcard I'd like to use.

Also, I will hopefully start to put some things in boxes and shit.

Goodbye Gainesville. 5 days.

One week.

I have one week left in Gainesville (eight days to be exact, I suppose).

Tonight=last night at the atlantic

It's crazy how quickly everything is approaching. I am *very* slowly cleaning out my room. The problem is that as I get rid of things, I also continue to acquire more things that just complicate the moving out procedure. Slow but steady progress. That's where I'm at now. I've passed on some old frisbee stuff. Closet cleaning time is quickly approaching. I have cleats in there that are 3+ years old, which is gross. I have all sorts of things that I simply don't wear or don't like or forgot I had.

My motto is: if it hasn't been worn in the last 8 months (thusly, my winter clothers stay, otherwise it'd be three months), I don't need it.

We'll see how far I get with that. haha

xoxo,
A