Changes, Day 46

As I sit here at 12:13 am after a twelve hour shift at aerie (and my eyes a little blurry) it slowly begins hitting me: today (or yesterday I suppose) was the last day of summer.

And while I enjoyed the hot humid nights, my almost running-every-night-attempts, taking walks to my neighbourhood starbucks, I can't believe that the majority of my summer days were spent here:


AND YET, I began to feel slightly sad as I walked out of the aerie doors tonight as the realization hit me that it will no longer be the place I spend the majority of my time. And THEN, a burst of excitment: my new home will be at UTSC, in a house on university campus. It's so funny to think of my ten-year-old self imagining the day I leave for university and it being a reality, ready to happen tomorrow.

Life happens quickly- we grow up, change happens. And even though I am secretly having a minor nervous heart attack at this very moment, I am so ready & so, so excited for what's yet to come.

Love Makes it all Worthwhile, Day 36

Love is in the AIR! My parents are off celebrating their twenty-second wedding anniversary and coincidentally enough, we spent our last summer holiday together at Christian Island where my parents had their honeymoon twenty two years ago.

There were tons of blackberry bushes around the island (my mother decided that blackberry picking was her new favourite pastime) and as a result we consumed blackberries for breakfast, lunch and dinner:

My sister and I enjoyed two days of body surfing in the tsunami-esque waves. I felt twelve again.

We spotted a beautiful owl (!),

Did lots of walking to beautiful, empty beaches around the island,

Black-berry picked some more,

And swam under the setting sun.

I move into university in a week and four days.....I'm getting really excited/nervous/still have a million trillion things to do. The fact that I still have to learn how to cook is a bit of an issue. My good friend Pona who came to London for a month to travel is living in the same house as me and our rooms are right beside each other. The fact that we're living together is a HUGE relief and I'm so excited that I get to spend the year living under the same roof as her!

I'm also so excited to start learning again, especially about something I'm really passionate about. It's weird to think that my life will take on another new chapter in just a week.

Thunder Beach! Day 20

We had a beautiful week at Thunder Beach, my favourite place in the world.

We literally sat on the beach all week, ate lots of yummy food, read books, swan in the crystal clear water and suntanned. I really can't complain.

Time, Day 6

I've realized this past year that, however cliche it may sound, time is precious. My time in England flew by me so quickly that I find myself questioning whether those seven months actually happened. Time, I've realized, goes by too quickly.

I was looking at some old baby photos that were stuffed in the back of my sister's closet. It was funny to look at them in chronological order, to watch as different versions of myself appeared before my eyes:

Time goes by and these big changes happen; we grow up, we get taller, we start walking, talking, going to school, making friends, falling in love. Isn't it funny that all of these things happen in small increments, that there's no precise moment we can say we feel older than three years before. It just continues to happen, this growing up, this change. It isn't until I looked back at these photos that I realized this; that each day we grow up a little more, learn something. I think that's why growing up scares me so much. I've hit a point where childhood no longer seems never ending. It has ended and the past will only continue to travel farther and farther away from me.

I've often struggled with not embracing things in the moment. I seem to be grateful for things long after they have passed me by. My uncle Andrew once told me to start living in the moment and though I've tried, it's harder than it sounds. But while I'm working on living in the moment, I'm going to try to at least slow down and embrace each day and everything it has to offer. I'm afraid I might miss something if I don't.

Cooling Off, Day 3