Cheers to temporary friends (keep reading to find out what that means)

I put photos of my room on Picasa.
http://picasaweb.google.com/brianacoles
It was finally clean enough to take pictures! Actually that's not true, it is always clean. If not from my compulsive organizing, just out of necessity. It's such a small space, and with it being so wet and muddy here, the floor is so dirty. Therefore, clothes or anything else you want to keep clean, cannot be thrown on the floor.

Upcoming Travels: I will be traveling to Oxford tomorrow with Jan and Stacy. We are still deciding what we want to do there.
Next weekend I will probably be going to London, where they celebrate St. Patrick's Day on Sunday.
On the weekend of March 20-23 I will be traveling to Paris!!!!! and hanging out with Brittney- who Martha introduced me to.

Another update about my future travels: I was offered a research position at Dartmouth in New Hampshire this summer. The research is part of the Medical School, and this particular laboratory focuses on Immunology and Microbiology. The job comes with great perks including a stipend and the program covers food, housing, plane ticket to and from, free GRE prep courses, and the opportunity to meet the Dartmouth Graduate School admissions officers. It is also nice because the program doesn't start until half way through the summer (while many started half way through May) so I will still have time to travel for a month after school gets out. It is very likely that I will accept, making this the ultimate year of travel.

After returning from my studies abroad, I will have seen at least 9 different countries where at least 6 different languages are spoken. Then I will be in Boise for, at most, two days before flying across the U.S. to the East Coast, where I have never been before. From what I've heard, this is a totally different atmosphere than the West Coast. I have never really been out of the West, besides my trip to Louisiana (the South is a culture shock in itself), so this opportunity is amazing. The program runs until nearly the end of the summer where I would fly home for a few days before returning to San Jose for my SENIOR year of college! This is a time of big change, and I feel as if I can hardly call Boise my home anymore. Sadly, I feel that it is more the place I "once" lived :(
Now, whatever bed I'm sleeping in for the time being is my home. After a week here, I was already calling my dorm-room in Hatfield "home."

I really haven't gotten homesick here. I miss family but I've been so busy that I'm never lonely so I don't really just sit around and think about what I'm missing in the States. It could also be that while many of the exchange students have lived with or within driving distance of their parents throughout college, I haven't lived near my mom or dad since I started college and even in high school I was very independent. Many of the students are sad because they missing their mother doing their laundry, or missing their cars or pets, while I just feel that is the stage of life we are in right now. College students are extremely nomadic, until we get our first jobs and start buying furniture. But maybe that's just me.

I realized (as most of you probably have as well) that I'm just kind of an odd person. When I explained my theory of temporary friends, I think I offended people here. I just realized that this is the twelfth in a long line of schools I've attended in the last 16 years including: Sand Castles, Koelsh, Taft, Middleton Heights, Middleton Middle School, Cole Valley Christian, Bishop Kelly, Boise High School, University of Idaho, San Jose State, Treasure Valley Community College (summer), and now University of Hertfordshire. In this time, I've realized that friends come and go. I made new friends at all the schools and I left friends too. Every new place I go, there will always be new people to meet, friends to be made. If I tried to maintain even one really good friend at each school, I would spend all my time trying to keep those friendships strong and would miss out on making new friends. I live in the now and was brutally honest with Jan and Stacy and told them that even though we are going through this life-changing experience together, I'll leave San Jose after graduating and probably not see them again. Even when we get back to San Jose, we won't be hanging out all the time like we do now. Needless to say, they were not pleased. So now it is everyone's favorite joke to say things like.. "So... I've got about three more months left on our friend contract," or "Hello, this is my temporary friend Briana. Briana this is my permanent friend Steve." So the lesson that you should take away from this is not to hold on to dear friends, but instead, just don't inform them that you don't plan to be friends in the future.