Parent Visits

Not much on the internship front this week again (I'm promised that things get more interesting next week) so I'm going to blog about something else instead. Parent's Weekend!

It's a little bit of a tradition for my parents to come visit me on Parent's Weekend. I know that usually it's just the freshmen that have anyone come visit them, but it also has to be said that most students here get the opportunity to go home more than twice a semester. There have been some semesters where I only had the chance to go home once. So this is their chance to get out of the city for a weekend and see me.

Lame as it may be, I quite enjoy it when they come up. We always go out to eat as soon as they get here, we always go to the comedian the school has lined up. And we always go to the football game, which is always a blow-out over a no name school (although Miami-Ohio is slightly more memorable than some past games).

This year, my aunt and older brother traveled with them (it was the first time my brother had ever been up here) and my cousin and her two kids came over to see me as well for the game and dinner afterword. It was, in a word, lovely. And it made me remember why I live such a charmed life.

My family is amazing. There are over 50 family members (that I can name and see at least somewhat regularly) who live within 20-30 minutes of my house in Dallas (with the exception of my grandma, aunt and cousin, who live 2 hours away in East Texas). We're all very tight, we have massive family game nights, we look out for each others' kids, we have big garage sales, we help each other move in to new houses. It's something I've always missed since I moved to Missouri. It's quite difficult to leave such a tight-knit community and travel "afar". But looking from the outside, I've seen what I had. The best thing I can compare it to is realizing I loved my home state. It was only after I got to Missouri I realized Texas was the best state in the Union (I may be a bit biased).

And, with the realization that it's still such a heavy toll to live so far away comes another, more grievous one. I'm planning on moving to New Zealand in less than a year. Probably about half a year. There aren't any spring and summer breaks in the real world. There won't be any going home to visit. It's going to be one of the harder things I think I'll ever have to do in my entire life, to live so far away from that connection for so long. Skype is a wonderful tool, but it's still artificial, and I doubt that anyone can disagree with me when I say that face to face contact contains so much more in the way of communication and emotion.

When I leave, I'll be opening a gulf between myself and my family. Not one of anger or dissapointment, but literally a gulf. Of all the things weighing on my mind about my decision, that is the greatest. And it's the one I'm the least decided on. Good thing I have all the time in the world to work it out...