Looking Back and Looking Ahead

My last post was at the numerical halfway point of summer. It also coincided, more or less, with the end of the classes I took at a community college, another good way to reckon a halfway point.

All through the first half of summer and the three weeks since, I had been (rather impatiently, as I have said before) looking forward to visiting my girlfriend in Florida, which is another way to divide the summer: the time counting down to my visit and the remaining summer after. I arrived in Florida as planned last Friday, and returned to Oak Park on Wednesday. It was so refreshing to spend some much-needed quality time with Naomi. We went to Disney World and the beach, visited her grandmother and her church, met some of her friends, and generally just had a good time. I was reminded again and again during my visit (which, in retrospect, ended all too quickly) of just how much of a blessing she is in my life. I am extremely grateful to Naomi’s parents for their hospitality and to Naomi herself for making arrangements and plans for our five days together.

I now have four weeks less one day remaining until I return to school. I will be working a decent amount for the next two weeks, and then two weeks from this Saturday I leave with my family for a vacation in Colorado. We will spend half a week in Steamboat Springs and then a couple days with my dad’s aunt in Denver. My family has vacationed in Colorado several times, most recently three or four years ago, and I am looking forward to going again. After that, I have half a week to pack and say good-bye to my friends at home, and then I am back at Wheaton on Thursday, August 21.

I am really looking forward to getting back to school. I have enjoyed hanging out with my family and my friends from home this summer, to be sure, with the particularly exciting example of my recent trip to Florida. But other than that, most of what I’ve been doing this summer has been extremely practical in nature – making money and fulfilling general education requirements. Important activities, but I am ready to get back to Wheaton and pursue activities that I personally care about and have meaning in their own right, like studying music and education and hanging out with all of my amazing friends and my amazing girlfriend. It truly is a wonderful place, and I am extremely grateful that I can call it my home.

This is Rubio, over and out.