Going Crazy Adriane and I just finished watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I must agree with the guys who decided on its 8 Academy Awards, I was impressed. It's interesting to realize how an environment can affect you, or how people in an environment can perceive you, especially when it is isolated and/or esoteric. I was talking with Adriane with how sometimes we feel like this in our specific situations in Japan. Not that I'm comparing Japan to a mental institution, mind you, but the way we perceive our situations here. This week has been pretty crazy. 9 hours on Monday, 12 hours on Tuesday 9 hours today, 12 tomorrow, Saturday morning tutoring...the list goes on. And that doesn't include the evening planning that goes into these lessons. Anyway, I don't say this to complain, but to give the background for how easy it is to forget that a whole other world exists outside of this place. I feel like those at home and residing in other parts of the world right now are like ghosts, or, as is much joked about, "phantoms." Do these people really exist? Am I making them up in my head? Will I go back to America to something I don't really know? Believe it or not, these kinds of things plague my dreams at night. It doesn't help that since being in Japan, my parents sold their house and moved to one that they built, my dad's parents sold their farm and moved to a condo, and my grandmother died, which required that my family sell my mom's parents' double, which they just did last Friday. Every time I think of "home" I have to evaluate whether or not what I'm imagining actually exists. The three places in which I grew up are now gone. How will I pick up life when I get back? Who will remain my friend? Who will not? There is much to be seen, and I know I can't figure it out by imagining it. It will just be. Eventually, time will tell, and it will all just be.