Ahhhhhh...Home!

You guessed it, dear readers,

I'm home! After an extremely hectic few weeks of studying, writing essays, and, finally, taking final exams, I am done with my first year of university. My parents came down to start packing towards the end of finals week, and when exams were over we spent several hours packing the rest of my belongings, mostly clothes. My parents ran off to a storage locker while I cleaned and vacuumed the room and returned my key, finishing up the last bits and bobs of checking out of the dormitory for the summer.

At last my parents whisked me away to a charming artists' colony in Indiana for a lovely dinner before retreating to a cabin in the hills of an Indiana state park for a day and and two nights. It was their idea to let me relax another day out of civilization before returning home to my beloved suburb, as well as a precaution against stormy weather. We had a wonderful time relaxing, going to a rather unique mushroom festival, and taking a mile hike down and up a winding path in the hills in the rain and mud. I proceeded to take two consecutive naps after returning to the cabin. I had gotten only seven hours of sleep over the past two and a half days or so and was utterly exhausted.

Our room was really one of four in our cabin, and looked rather more like a rustic hotel room with quite dim lighting, perfect for catching up on some much-needed sleep or for encouraging tourists to get out of their rooms and enjoy natural lighting. We enjoyed a bit of both. There was no television, and I chose to keep my cell phone off and my laptop firmly secured in the trunk of our car the entire time. [Of course, look at me back on my laptop now! I guess I couldn't stay away forever]. It was really just a wonderful escape into some beautiful scenery. One of the nights, a country singer performed live in the restaurant of the hotel's lodge. Mercifully, for me at least, he didn't just play country. He had a lovely voice, but country music is so not my ideal genre.

Overall, it was a wonderful experience. I got to enjoy the company of my parents in a nicely "secluded" area, though the cabins were rather close together and very near the lodge. We came home today, thanks to my dad's six hours of driving, in time to celebrate a lovely Mother's Day Dinner with my brother, who was home the whole time.

I will be back in the swing of blogging soon. I'm not entirely sure what sort of posts will be up in the near future, as I've been thinking of nothing but final exam and semester grades for the past several days, but I promise that I will keep up with regular posts.

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!

xEsther