I've been home a little over twenty-four hours and I've already started looking for a glamourous means of escape. All I can seem to write, think, or talk about revolves around being somewhere different and exciting. I yearn to learn about streets I've never stood on, taste foods I've never even heard of, and bury my feet in the sand of some beach I've never been to. And strangely enough, I long for the familiar destinations at the same time. I can't wait to scoff at Fenway wearing a Yankee hat and carry lobster back to my aunt's house straight from the ocean for dinner. I want another perfect June day downtown at North Avenue beach where time seems to stop. But after all that, or even in between, I want to go.
It's too late to stop this.
I already know everything there is to know about a work/study visa in Australia. I've already told, not asked, my parents that I'll be doing that for at least the first month of next summer. I can't decide if I want to try and go somewhere urban and take a summer class or two, or if I'd want to work as a farmhand at a ranch in the outback. Two completely different experiences to mull over as the year goes by, I guess. I haven't stopped to even ask myself the question of, why on earth would I want to spend the first month of my summer waking up at dawn in the middle of nowhere to harvest fruit. The more I think about this, I'll probably end up somewhere more.. Denise- urban, by a beach and with an internet connection.
I don't really know what I expect to get from all of this.
I've never tried something new because I thought it was going to make me a better person in the end. As much as I like to plan obsessively, I have never sat down and thought that doing x would lead to y. I didn't think that in my desperation to get away from Round Lake for a little while and enjoy the east coast last summer would make me that much happier to come home and fall in love with the Chicago all over again.
<3
