day 18

wednesday 26 may 2010 paris to stockholm

with great anticipation, i left beauvais for skavsta. nevermind that beauvais is just about the world's worst airport in my books. i was going to be in stockholm again! with my friends! ironically, i joked that i was going to stockholm to say goodbye, and it did seem like that. having left before christmas last year when most of my friends were going home for christmas, only to return after epiphany, i was going home for good. it was a rushed few days, also because i'd scheduled my last exam to be 6 weeks before the actual date so i could leave in time to begin final semester at my home uni, i wasn't privy to (many) pre-christmas / farewell parties. thankfully, the opportunity to be in stockholm again, when most of my friends were still there, was one i grabbed the moment i could.

gotta love college livin'. this very comfortable room was home for 3 nights and i'm immensely grateful for the time i'd with A. she's pure sunshine and light, goodness radiates from her being and if she wasn't such an angel, i'd be wriggling in self-loathing next to her. but she's by far one of my favourite people in stockholm, someone i'm so happy i got 'bonus' time with. we'd long h2hs into the night and i appreciated how she gave me so much space. she was busy revising for finals so i tried to make myself scarce, but it was nice to go home to her at night and girl talk until we drifted off to dreamland.

nothing like being back in stockholm! it was such an amazing home-coming of sorts. it felt as if i'd never left and the past 6 months back home didn't happen. almost like i'd blinked and when i opened my eyes, the snow was gone and the grass was green, having left when the place was knee-deep in snow. well, maybe ankle-deep if you're tall, but i'm not very :) plus to see all my friends again, oh wow, that was something else. like time froze and nothing had changed, which is weird seeing how everyone had gotten on with their lives, and i sort of hadn't. and it was only when i was back in stockholm that i truly began missing the friends who'd gone home after fall semester. perhaps because my memories of them was concentrated in stockholm, i couldn't go to lappis without trying to peek into A.Mc's corridor, or think of how the last time i was at tidemann's i was with N. which made the presence of those who'd stayed for spring semester all the more valuable and it was surreal, in a good way, to be back in our little eramus kid family fold.

also, gula villan was my first stop after dinner at professorslingan the lappis pub and there's something magical about the yellow house at almost midnight. the sky never really fades to black during the swedish summer. it just turned an elegant navy and being back on the gula villan balcony, where i spent my first night out 10 months ago, doing exactly the same thing i.e. cheek-to-jowl with erasmus kids, chugging cider and trying to be heard above the din - nothing quite shouts home-coming like that :)