The one thing cigarettes are good for: waking you up at 2:30 in the morning when you have an Italian exam at 1:30 in the afternoon, and you didn't start studying until oh, 11.

Yeah, way to procrastinate.

Tear drop 2:33 AM of Sarah

It's snowing! Yay!

Tear drop 12:55 PM of Sarah

Oh my god I am so pissed off. The idiot girl who took the ENTIRE REAR END off my sister's car, and doesn't have the insurance to pay for it got off, and got the case thrown out of court, because the judge showed up an hour and a half late and the ONE witness who showed up (after three were subpoened) fucked up his facts. So my sister's almost died, our car, and nothing is going to happen.

Tear drop 5:38 PM of Sarah

Being able to leave school for ten days was wonderful - I was finally able to take a break from the pell-mell stress that has been flowing for months on end, and just breathe. I was able to see people that I have dreamed about, talked with, and thought about for four months. It was heaven, it was perfect, it was everything I had wanted it to be... but it wasn't.

Alpharetta doesn't really feel like home anymore. When Sara dropped me off at my house Wednesday evening, I walked up the steps thinking that I was going to my parents house to visit my family. Not my house, but my parents house. My stuff is divided between two rooms - the basement, and my old room, and my old room has a new bed in it. My old room does not contain the memories and the feelings that were once so safe and protected there. Instead, they are floating out somewhere, trying to find a place to be pinned down. The only times I felt at home this weekend were when I was in Jason's basement, or driving in my car. Somehow, Jason's basement retained all that was sacred about it, and the people in it only served to make it feel more natural, more friendly.

For my essay class, I had to write about where my home was, and after having lived in so many different places, I wrote about being a nomad and not having a true home. In it, I wrote that when you leave a place, all of your memories and your grand moments get swept up and washed away, and belong to other people. In every other place I've lived, I've been able to return and realize that it was not my home - I no longer existed there. I knew the place, but it did not contain me in it. Alpharetta is different.

I suppose that I can only truly define my home by the people I am with, and the comfort that I can find in them. I felt more natural in Chandler's dorm than I did inside the walls of my own house. I felt more natural sitting on Jason's couch laughing than I did sitting at my kitchen table with my family. And before, I said that it was perfect, but it wasn't, and it can't be perfect because we have all changed. In four months, we have evolved so much, yet we have stayed the same. We tried to incorporate our new lives and experiences in with our old loves and lives, and though it worked, you could sense the trying that was there. Like Adam has said, you can't go home again. You can revisit your memories and your moments in your head, but that's all that they will ever be: memories and moments. And like Daniel has said, being home reinforced exactly how much I miss and love you all. I like being able to do nothing or everything, and feel perfectly at ease with the people I'm around. At school, I have fake friends who couldn't care less what I did or whom I did it with, but there, in my car and in Jason's basement, people care, and people love.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, I always lose my point when I sit down to write something out, but I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I see both peoples points, but I'm confused. I love and miss you all, but do I love and miss you all as you once were, or as we are now, or all of it mixed up together. Can we take something that was so potent for seven months and keep it burning, keep it bright? I hope so. This vacation showed me that no matter what has happened to change us, we can still be "us" together, and that's what I really miss the most. The camaraderie, the jokes, being called a slut, the Hulk hands, Smash Brothers, and South Park uncut.

I can't wait to return, and be able to spend a whole month with all of you. Two weeks, mes amis, two weeks.

Tear drop 12:43 AM of Sarah