I just got back home from a weekend wedding in Columbus, Ohio.  I had a wonderful time.  It was great to see my college friends.  I flew in on Friday morning and out today, Sunday, in the afternoon.   I studied Bulgarian on the Friday morning flight.  Now that I've got two weeks until I move to Sofia, I feel like I've got to get the basics down.  I'd like to be able to buy food and cleaning supplies, understand directions and read street signs.  Then I landed in Columbus.

It's a strange thing to return to Columbus.  The airport really hasn't changed since I started flying in nine years ago when I started going to college--Wittenberg University.  There's a little bit more security and a couple of Starbucks but other than that it's the same.   So, at age 27, I got off the airplane cellphone in hand with a great leather purse and my laptop only to feel like I was 19 again.  Return does strange things to a person and it's even stranger to be met at the airport by the husband of one of your college sorority sisters. Strange and wonderful.

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That's the thing--it's the same people in the same city but we've all spent the last five years growing up.  More or less, we look the same from the outside so it's easy to forget that we haven't been going to classes or drinking cheap keg beer for years.  It's easy to fall back into college patterns as well.

We drank whiskey and coke, ate pizza and went out to a bar on Friday night and then met the other Wittenberg wedding guests for drinks before the 5:30pm wedding.  The wedding itself was at a lovely outdoor amphitheater but it was hot, hot, hot.  Luckily the programs were fans and there were buckets of chilled water.  It was worth it when the bride walked in wearing her grandmother's dress; she looked like she could have stepped straight out of a 1920's fashion magazine.

When I saw her all I could was smile (and try not to think about the sweat dripping down the back of my legs) when normally weddings terrify me.  This time it was different.   I've been really scared for myself recently about moving to Bulgaria, about not knowing the language, about missing my friends and my family, about what I am going to do next and about not knowing what this next year has in store for me.  And standing there watching her walk down the isle, I was reminded that this is what life is about.  It's okay to be scared.  The bride is facing the same kinds of fears and I can only imagine that she is scared about the same kinds of things.  These fears aren't mine alone (well maybe the ones about learning Bulgarian) but frankly there's always something new to be learned that takes works, requires a commitment and is scary at times.

So here she is--walking down the isle, committing herself to marriage and entering into a new stage in her life--and doing it with a smile on her face while I've been worrying for the last few weeks about giving my things away, moving to Bulgaria for a year and teaching English.   (What have I been thinking?!?)  Sure the move is serious and life altering but it's time.  After being at the wedding, It kind of makes me wish that there was a ceremony for something like this, something that helped me transition into this next stage of my life but in my case it's  not that easy. It's something that I am going to have to work out on my own over the next few weeks and months.

This said, I do owe the bride and my friends this weekend a huge thank-you: thanks for being willing to all get together for drinks before the wedding; thanks for letting me stay with you with each of you at different times over the past few years,; thanks for sharing your life stories with me and for reminding me how I fit into these even though I've been absent from many of these stories since graduation; thanks for your friendship and thanks for reminding me that even though I wont be in the states this next year that you'll be thinking of me and wishing me the best; and of course, thanks for putting up with me since freshman year--I know that I can be a difficult friend at times.

Finally, I think it's only fitting to end this post the same way one of my dearest friends last night said good-bye to me: I love you all the way around the world and back.  It's true--I think--distance and time do not matter as much we think that they do.  We've been saying it for years "I love you all the way around the world and back" but not until she said it to me last night as her goodbye did it really sink in.  Sure, I am moving half way around the world but I am not really leaving anyone behind; I am not losing anyone or anything.  I am just embarking on a new adventure and a new stage of my life.  I wish that there was a toast or a thank-you or a ceremony that could convey all of this but there's not so I hope that these words are able to convey a part of what I am thinking and feeling.

Oh and to my friends and family reading this post: I love each of you all the way around the world and back.