It doesn't take long...

Met up with a guy tonight. Don’t worry, I was smart about it – and we went to a very nice, très cher, restaurant. The bar-manager asked me to return on Monday to discuss getting a job (YEA!). I had a lovely time; it was wonderful to spend an evening having a few drinks with people my own age(ish – we all know I don’t like to act my technical age).

But I do feel like a baby here. Each summer I look at where I was the previous year and think of how much I’ve grown; and then I feel embarrassed because last summer I was convinced I acted so much more mature for my age. But I think this every single year – and in thinking it I convince myself that now I really am all grown up and act so much older. I’m clueless. I mean, I think this EACH YEAR. Maybe it’s just time to accept that I really am just a kid? I am naive and young (and am NOT one to normally admit to that) and in a foreign land with a strange language and I am alone. All this year when I thought I had everything figured out, I was just a child blinded by ambition being tolerated by amazing friends.

I do have to say thank you to all of you who have called so many times – to fill me in on how to live here and to make sure that I am, in fact, living. I have wonderful family and friends for which I am eternally grateful. I am also lost in a strange land. But, to cite the Alchemist, “this is not a strange land, it is a new one.”