Finals, Holidays

Testing an application I just got for the iPod Touch that will render my MacBook useless in one more capacity. Sorry, MB.

I got to talk to my best friend for a while via Skype today. She told me how the annual Christmas party among friends went, down to the tiniest detail, per my request. Masochistic on my part, I know. I wish they had videotaped it so I could on some level pretend I had been there with them. I'm going to come right out and say it now: I'm afraid of what this year's holiday season will be like. I haven't been in the States for Christmas in three years.

It will be strange not going to the habitual Christmas Eve mass in Riga, pressed tightly into pews between complete strangers because you're all trying to keep warm. It will be strange not walking through the month-long Christmas market in Old Town, laughing at the boar, moose, duck, horse meat sold in tins by that one weird guy. It will be strange not spending Christmas Eve with my cousin and her family, trying my best not to be involved in any bloodshed while roughhousing with their four kids. Strange not waking up at 4 AM Christmas morning to call family back in the States to wish them a happy Christmas while trying not to fall asleep again...

I feel like I should be excited, not complaining. If I even am complaining? But this major of a shift in activity and setting after an extended period of time is just plain unsettling.

I miss my friends. I miss being in Latvia. I miss Latvia in general. This could all just be a side-effect of the end of the school semester, but wow, does this ever suck.