Woke up for the first time and the animals were gone

"I skipped work today….I don't know why" from the beginning of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind...when he randomly got on a train to Montauk and fortuitous events began to take hold. I should watch this movie yet again tonight...

I had the best intentions of going into town this morning to talk to my association’s accountant. I wanted to make sure all our financial information and reporting to the American organization was in order. However, when I woke up with the light across my bed like the seasons changing on the East Coast where I have lived my entire life, I lost my motivation.

I have been homesick for the Fall and Winter on the East Coast. The rains have stopped and the skies are cold and dark here. Sometimes you can pretend that you are in the U.S. and I think about my gray room in my parents’ house, my job at the bookstore, the lake where I go running, my friends. I will be so grateful to see the leaves changing colors in VA next year, in the backyard with a mug of coffee in hand. I will grateful just to be able to drink out of one of my favorite mugs again. I will make Susan Taylor go on a road trip to VA tech, to the mountains, with me.

It’s almost Thanksgiving and then comes Christmas and the New Year. In Cape Verde, most all of us PCV’s get together for the holidays. The overwhelming amount of people combined with sunny warm weather makes it easy to forget what time of year it is. I never thought I’d miss cold weather, I always cursed it in the U.S. but it is such a comforting thing to sit by a fire in your favorite sweatshirt.

My parents are coming in January. While I am a bit anxious about how they will perceive the country, I am looking forward to showing them the country I have been living in for over a year. I can’t wait to walk them up the crumbling staircase to my roof where I have to go to get service on my cell phone. The sky is full of lazy rolling, green mountains.

It is an America day, for reading and staying inside...it's out of my control, it's the weather...