Greetings

So, apparently I am mostly back from the dead...sorta.  Maybe.

It has been a rather insane summer.  I spent the time before I went to Torrey Cambridge frantically finishing up the coursework that I didn't finish before the end of the semester.  I did in fact get everything done necessary to official graduate, so that was good.  Then I went off to England.  That was AMAZING.  I truly love that country.  I did lots of wandering all over central Cambridge, which is a lovely city.  I was part of an amazing group, which among other things planned a real-time game of Mafia (alas, it was never executed).  I also got hooked on Dr. Who because a group of us watched the latest season (or is it only half a season...I'm fuzzy on that).  After Cambridge, I spent a lovely ten days in London with Rachael and Leah in a very small hotel room in a delightful hotel (the owners were a Serbian family, and they were really nice).  We also took a whirlwind visit to Paris (got on a train at some ridiculously early hour and came back on the last train the next day).  That was an interesting adventure.  The train left early enough that the tube wasn't running, so we figured we'd take the bus to the train station.  The only problem with that plan was that the website that we were looking at for the bus schedule failed to tell us that the bus stop closest to us was out of service.  Thus ensued a period running around London at some ridiculously early hour trying desperately to find some way to get to the train station before our train left without us.  That was...interesting.  Paris was amazing.  We had originally planned on going up the Eiffel Tower on our first day, but we ended up going the second day.  It turned out that was a change for the better.  While we were at the top of the tower, we got to watch a proposal (and the security freaking out at the friend who set it all up before the couple arrived).  That was really amazing.  When I got back from England, I was home for a couple of days and then left again, this time for Supai.  And now we get to a tale of Sarah's stupidity.  I thought about taking my asthma meds with me to Supai, but thought "Nah, I'll be fine."  Famous last words.  We were waiting in line for the helicopter when my allergies started bothering me.  Apparently it has been far too long since I've been around alfalfa.  Since I didn't have any of my meds with me, allergies led to asthma flaring up, which then led to bronchitis.  Or so I thought.  I went to the doctor and got antibiotics and thought that was that.  I was back in the next week because I wasn't getting any better.  And then the next week, this time armed with a chest x-ray.  At that point I found out that I had viral pneumonia.  That suddenly made sense of why I wasn't getting better like I should have been.  Happily, it is the walking sort of pneumonia, not the ICU sort.  Apparently, if it had been bacterial pneumonia and my lungs were in the shape that they are in, I would be in the ICU.  fun. Anyway, that is my summer so far.  Right now I am basically on bed rest for at least another week (hence the pleas for ideas of things to do on facebook).

I gotta say, I miss you guys a lot.  It has been really hard transitioning back into life at home knowing that this isn't just for the summer, but for reals this time.  It still feels a bit surreal.  It's hard because although I know this is where I am supposed to be for now, I have no idea how long that will be the case, or what comes next.  

One thing that has been interesting about being sick is that I have been watching a lot of movies in my quest to stay relatively immobile without dying of boredom.  There are so many broken things in our culture, and yet some of the stories that Hollywood tells are deeply true.  Most often they seem to be a strange mixture of both.  People are desperately searching for answers, but have no idea where to look.  It is interesting to see how Hollywood tries to answer questions about the value of human life, about love, about what it means to grow up, about honor, about family, about justice, and about so many other deep questions.  I think what has surprised me most is how, in the midst of chaos and bad morals and brokenness, so often the deeper story and the answers it gives is spot on.

Anyway, that is my ramble for now.
~Sarah