i've been organizing and cleaning out my notebooks from my last year of college.
i think i just found one more of the many reasons that i made a C in astronomy class. or maybe it is not a reason at all. perhaps i would have made a C no matter what i choose to do during that precious hour and fifteen minutes of my life, which happened twice a week.
the class didn't dull my mind, it gave me time to simply record my days of an earlier time. . .

the following was written in the ballpark of one year after the occuring events. what had happened on the trains of suomi (finland for you amatuers)was happening once again in gen. ed. astronomy course at berry college. . .

"rain. it won't stop. just as steady as the train, so are the clear beads running across the window. i have just once again successfully boarded the correct train, my ride to a new destination. i am not sure that in my six months in the land of ice and snow did i ever find myself entering through the doors of a train feeling confident and carefree. anxious, nervous, and eventually relieved was more the pattern.
only once have i been in this situation with friends. . . a whim of a weekend trip to tallin, estonia. we caught the overnight train from joensuu to helsinki with all the essentials. plenty of "booze" (the endearing slang term we taught to our spanish friends)which is highly illegal on the trains, homemade board games and cards, sandwiches prepared by pablo and our tickets for the ferry we would be catching an hour after arriving in the city. but this time i am once again, alone.
the destination to which i am moving towards will be my last before i shut the door to the best experience of my life. how different this train ride is from the very first one of my semester abroad. unlike the first, i do not wake up every hour and expect to see the face of a friend beside me; i do not look out the windows and see for miles and miles a sea of white snow; i do wonder who i will make friends with or if i have made a mistake.
my thoughts passing with the rythym of the train, continually make full circle into the same confusion. this is not my last destination in finland. but it is the last NEW place i will visit. and even there, i find error.
i will very soon be returning "home"- back to the United States- a familiar place. a place where more often than not i understand the conversation around me. odd. what will it be like to know the language being spoken. i think i have found a pleasant comfort in the mystery. though i will be home, home itself is a new destination. this is not the first time i will be returning. though every return, just like every departure,unlocks a new world. i am confident that the 'home' i leave each time, becomes a new place with my return. i do not think that it is wrong to believe that perhaps it is not the adventure of leaving and finding a comfort in a new place that drives my soul to its deepest desire of traveling. but likewise, it is the equal joy felt when returning to a place once called home, its beautiful transition to something deeper and greater that can only be acknowledged after living outside its borders of constraint."

and that my friends did not help me answer even one question on my astronomy final. damn.

(props on the title to John Nashes character on A Beautiful Mind)