Today feels like the first day of real life to me. Even being in Elizabeth City for almost two weeks, I haven’t had to go to work or school, and even at church I feel like I just show up (compared to the amount of preparedness that usually goes into my mere existence at First Methodist or First Baptist).
I actually see tons of people at COA and Albemarle Music (some I’d prefer not to) and have to deal with “How was your trip… [five second of attentedness]… okay, can you restring my guitar?”
Not that it’s all bad or I’m a total pessimist. There are several people in both of the classes I had this morning that I’m looking forward to getting to know. I’ve had my Physics teacher before for another class and I’m glad to get to have him for an interesting course this time around and also the opportunity to redeem myself significantly in his eyes grade-wise. My Spanish professor is a gringo, which I was not expecting (seriously, who has a college Spanish course with Professor Turner?) but he seems pretty cool and that he really knows his stuff. Plus, like Raquel, Spanish isn’t his first language so he will understand where and why we get stuck (and I might actually be in the top tier of Spanish knowledge in this particular section of the course, which makes me a lot more confident).
Then there’s work. The guys didn’t screw anything up too bad while I was gone (especially amazing since nobody- myself included- thought I was ever coming back). I trained my padawans well. And besides that, if anything does go wrong, I can just blame it on Colin and John because they’re not there. And I blame stuff on Colin at home, so nothing new. Andrew and Riley are both really chill to work with, and have good bubbles. It’s important to have equivalently timed and massed bubbles. Even better, I don’t have a key or an alarm code anymore so if there’s an emergency, Riley has to come instead of me (sweet!) and to top it all off, Linda and Barbara are still so excited I’m back in Elizabeth City and at the store that they’re still hugging me when I walk in the door. Who else has a boss that hugs them when they walk in the door?
While the routine has started again, I can finally feel a difference in my attitude toward people, my thoughts and words about and during class and work, and opportunities I see and am more likely to act upon, to the point that my general fruit fears are giving way more to “stamina” fears in that regard, and I’m believing that whole “Call” to be here despite my emotions about it (see next post for more about “Calls”), and to the point that I feel purposeful rather than habitual, even as easily as I fall into life pouring over textbooks and cost/profit charts (which is a whole different blog entry and culture shock).
Mrs. Boyer would put a gigantic X through that whole last paragraph run-on sentence and tell me to start here.
