Was it all a dream?

I just spent five months in Germany.

In a few short hours, my family is going to come pick me up, we're going to do some touristing and meet up with relatives, and then it's back home for the summer.  Three long lazy months later, back to college.  Good old normal college life, with friends and fun classes and things happening.

The past semester is a blur.  I feel like I just got here, and just started figuring things out and feeling comfortable with the language and meeting people and just getting myself organized.  It feels like only a week or so ago that our jetlagged group was dragged down to the city center to register.  We were all so confused and tired and had so much paperwork thron at us, while starting our class of people who all already knew each other.  Not to mention buying food, cooking food, buying cooking implements, laundry detergent, etc., etc. 

And now it's over.  Just like that.  Like a dream.  A break from reality that does not quite make sense, but you simply accept it.  That seems to go on forever until suddenly it is over.  And once it is over, it is relegated to some dusy corner of memory with all the other odd but useless bits.  Because none of it ever actually happened. 

I could wake up in my bed at home and find that the whole past year never happened, that I need to get ready for fall semester of sophomore year, and that there is still time to do things differently.  How, I am not sure.  Switch my program, make it a full year in Austria.  Spend less time with certain people.  Or maybe more time - maybe if I had been more careful, none of it would have happened (I have not posted anything here about the shitstorm of last semester.  Just think Rent without the AIDS.  Well, metaphorical AIDS.  And no musical numbers either.)

Only time doesn't work like that.  In the words of Die Aertzte "Du hast nur dies eine Leben/Wenn's vorbei ist, ist's vorbei."  You just have this one life, and when it's passed, then it is past.  Memories stack up on each other, and there is no way to go back and change them. Everything is forever.

Yes, I did have sort of a mental crisis here.  A few of them actually.

But I got better.

That's another funny thing.  I got better just as I am about to leave, even though I don't know why.  Probably just positive attitude change from the prospect of seeing my family again.  After all, this place and time caused me so many problems, it's not like it would turn around and fix any for me, would it?

It is a dream because I don't feel any different upon waking.  Real life changes you.  Dreams don't. 

Getting a bit wishy-washy here, so I'll post again when I figure out what I'm actually trying to say.