The radiator is at 7 until bedtime.

Ok so it's my birthday now. It's 0:04 in Moldova so it's already November 11th here. Not sure what my mood is like this evening. I feel silly for even writing here now as it's been extremely rare in the last few months for me to write anything at all, so writing something now seems a little anti-climactic as far as blogs go. I've had a busy few months of being more stressed out than I was actually busy. I was doing law school applications (writing statements and resume, etcetera) and dealing with work stuff which is still being dealt with. It's hard to be motivated when it's so much easier watching youtube laying under a blanket in my warm living room, but it's been a struggle I've worked to overcome in these last few months. My birthday this year is going to be like really quiet and peaceful, I think. I plan to stay inside all day and sleep until I want to. Maybe I will do some big cleaning (packing stuff up) or maybe I will bake something festive. As for evening, I doubt anything exciting will happen as it is a Tuesday and it is Moldova. The birthday excitement will be combined with goodbye sadness in a couple weeks when I throw myself a birthday/farewell party at a restaurant in town for 25 people who sort of shaped my life out here. I wish I could invite everyone- the ladies who work in the store across the street, the kids from the newspaper who I don't really talk to anymore, every woman who has ever taken my aerobics class, the children who play outside my apartment and their parents, my laundry lady, the boys around town who always say hi to me because we may have had a conversation once, but I don't want to overdo it with this celebration. It's bittersweet enough as is, my leaving, and I'm still not quite sure how to handle all my goodbyes out here. I want to give everyone something from me, and my plan was to take a ton of photos with people and then print them and give as little memories of me, but now that I'm camera-less that plan is sort of hard to do.

No, I think I feel sad tonight. I feel sad because it's my birthday, I'm not super excited about it, I'm alone, and I'm bored. 24 is a pretty uneventful age to be, but I hope it'll be a year of developments. This year I will be accepted and rejected from law schools and figuring out where I will be living potentially for a large part of my adult life. It will be a year of family and Roxanne, as I will be living with my parents for a majority of 24, and hopefully Roxanne will be coming with me wherever I go for law school. It will be a year of pulling heartstrings as I'm sure I can't even begin to imagine how painful missing people here will be from over there. I'm going to miss the nuances I hate about living here, and pine after the things and people I love who I will be leaving behind. I think 24 is going to have its ups and downs like any year, but these will be that much more dramatic and intense as real things are going to be happening in my life what with the big move back to America and then to a new city where I could potentially be on my own again, knowing no one, depending on where I end up.

Anyways, Happy Birthday to me. It's been a good year, and a great couple years in Moldova. I don't regret too much (regrets: LSAT, lost camera, can't think of another one but I'm sure there's a couple more) and I have a feeling that this coming year I'll have even less to regret as I return to my natural habitat.