It's August now, and time still passes as indifferently as before. I still look back and wonder where the time has gone, wonder how I managed to fit so much life into a time that passed in almost the blink of the eye of hindsight. From December to April I looked back on four quickly passing months of my second semester of college. And now I look back on four quickly passing months of my first summer break of college. What have I done in this time? I've been to three different countries, entertained two sets of friends, and moved once. And now, with only two weeks until the start of a new school year, I can look back on it as more or less complete.
I didn't know, until two days out, whether I would even be traveling with the Army this summer. After finding out in June that I would likely NOT be going to Angola as I'd assumed since winter of last year, I spent weeks wondering just what my fate would in fact be. As it turns out, I was fated to go to Romania. I spent just under a month living in Romania with twelve other cadets and our two cadre officers. During the week we stayed at a hotel in a city called Buzau teaching English to Romanian paratroopers and special forces soldiers. On the weekends, we were able to make ventures beyond the city limits of Buzau, spending a few nights in Bucharest, a night in Brasov near one of the so-called "Dracula's Castles" and a few nights in Constanta, a beach city on the shores of the Black Sea. The experience was not so kind to me at the time as I had hoped it would be. I had a crash course on Army travel, and learned a lot about what I don't like about soldiers- the stereotypical crude male. But, tempered by the soft brush of memory, the experience has become much prettier as the little annoyances fade into oblivion and the better memories of travel and companionship and new experiences take the fore.
I flew back to Florida briefly for a quick stop at the old house, where Galen met me. Shortly thereafter, the two of us flew out to San Diego to meet up with the rest of the family for our every-so-often Tolsma family reunion. We spent the weekend in a nice hotel seeing aunts, uncles, and cousins we hadn't seen in months to years. It would have been a very pleasant experience had it not be for the robbery. My computer, my mom's computer, and most of the other small electronics in the room, were stolen from my mom's and my hotel room the last night at the resort. Our wallets, with all our IDs, were stolen with only a day to spare before our flight out to Korea. It was a bit of a nuisance procuring new military IDs, and the information lost on my computer particularly will never, ever be recovered. But we've learned to move on, to learn from the experience, and to trust in God's providence to get us through the experience.
Living in Korea is going to be a different experience than anywhere we've ever lived, and this move has proved different from any move this family has ever gone through. For me in particular, this move is represents the first move in which I am uninvolved, the first move where I don't feel as though the destination is "home." These few weeks have been a limbo phase for all of us. Waiting for our household goods, waiting for our car, it's hard for my parents and brothers to make this house home so far. And waiting for college, it's hard to me to be patient to get back to the life that I'm beginning to make for myself, to friends and classes, dorm rooms and cafeteria food, my wonderful boyfriend and the Army. Good things and bad, I'm looking forward to it all and am ready to get back to my life again, to unpack my dorm room, to get myself settled, and to drive my loyal PT Cruiser again. Four months down, I've made it to August. Where has the time gone?
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