The mild weather reminded me that I was finally home. I was relieved to be home and I was on the new computer. And all of sudden, dad had something to tell me. And the next thing I heard was that grandpa passed away, two months ago and they did not tell me until now, because grandma told them not to disturb my already busy enough academic life. For a second, my mind went blank. I had full knowledge that grandpa's health had not been the greatest for the past few months, but I got so used to the fact that grandpa was always in hospital one time or another and I did not expect that my last visit to his house back in May would have been the last time I ever saw him. I could have gone to the hospital more often instead of going out the city just to see some stupid terra cotta warriors. I felt a little bit cheated, like I was not part of the family that deserves to know things in the first place. I wanted to grief when everybody else was greifing, not two months after. I wanted to call my grandma now but I could not find an appropriate way to consolidate her, after two months. Or should I even bother her at this critical time at all? It's not like my consolidation would compare to how she feels after losing the one she had been closest to for the past some 50 years. It could just make her more upset if she has been trying to move on. I feel really horrible for my grandma now, and as her favorite grandchild, I don't know what I am supposed to do. Why does she always have to be so considerate.  

So the vacation officially started the day before. Yet I have not been doing much thanks to the cold, rainy weather out here. The rain will continue on for at least the next 7 days according to weather.com, and that is 1/3 of my overal vacation time. 1/3!!! How pathetic. I ask myself what was wrong with me that I would decide to come home for vacation. Fine, it was an impulsive decision. I was at the time homesick for the grayish sky and many *mostly imaginary* benefits that I thought home would be able to offer. But I was wrong, and it hurts to realize that I now have to deal with reality.

So there, the intern position I had previously only been dreaming of was offered to me by my music instructor's wife, of whom I had been cooresponding fairly frequent with and whose son I had been giving college apps guidance to. She said it so casually, just name a department you want to intern at and let me know, I will put you in touch with people, they were mostly all my students.  I am so speechless now.

As the first week of this winter break approaches to an end, I am starting to reconsider whether home was really what I had been missing the entire time. I realize how closely my current lifestyle resembles that of my old one. Home alone, going out alone, walking in the rain alone, and occasional meetings with one person. Here I cease to become an outcast, who has no friends to call and cannot even claim a student discount despite my fully legit student identity. At school, I at least have classmates, and get to enjoy the sense of accomplishment derived from schoolwork from time to time. Life there is constantly occupied by project deadlines, tests, and sometimes, meeting varies intelligent or unintelligent but nonetheless important people and listening to them ranting over an industry on an exotic land, unlike now, when my mind, as if it were too on vacation, seriously lacks any types of stimulations. Nobody here recognizes me as an intelligent being or is willing to quit talking down to me. Maybe it wasn't home that I had missed so badly. Maybe it was just the one person from home, and apart from whom, there is really not much left.

Currently I'm on medication, and it makes my eyes so dry, dry dry dry. But I feel so refreshed. When I get back to school, it will be a new life.