Home

Hey y'all. I hope all of you made it home okay. I miss all of you already...Arabic words keep slipping into my head "Mish kwayyis" "itfaddal" so on and so forth...and I have to check myself 'cause no one will get what I'm saying. After my abrupt departure from outside customs...I hate long goodbyes, and so, emotionally, I just needed to go, I sat alone in the US Airways terminal, and I think it finally hit me that it was really fully and truly over...and I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I just felt like curling up and sleeping or somehow numbing myself so that I wouldn't feel the disconnect from people and places I care about so much.

So it's been kind of a tough two days...but it's really good to be back with my family, and to talk with my girlfriend...both have been really understanding. I've been showing my family my pictures, all of my pictures, which takes a long time, and that's been a really good way to kind of begin the whole re-entry process, running through all these memories again. I'm also doing a lot of journaling...and I decided to get on the ball with a lot of you and start reading From Beirut to Jerusalem. So I feel like the whole processing thing is going well. It's just hard...

Home...is with the people I love, and so, while I am home, in one sense of the word, a little bit of home is scattered across the country and the world with each of you. If I never said it, or maybe just didn't say it enough, let me say how much being in community with each of you this past semester meant to me...I feel like we were more like the ideal of the body of Christ than anything I've ever been a part of before...which makes these days feel like amputation.

Anyway, so that's me these days. I'm excited for Christmas with my family...we decorated our tree last night. How's life for the rest of you?