sat drinking a nice little aperitif before dinner. helen’s cooking dodgy chicken (muuuh favourite!) and simon and i are sat around watching the day after tomorrow.

the rest of the family’s spread around the house. the grands came today as well.

we got a scooter out in the driveway, which ended in a tiff between me and simon. i guess if your acting like a child might as well go all the way?!

anyways time for another drink and some more food..

had a horrible nights sleep AGAIN. literally got a maximum of four hours. so instead of studying on the train, i think i’m gonna try to sleep so i’m not a grumpy little girl when i arrive up north.

anyways i’m all packed and need to head off to kings cross now, need to sort out a new railcard before the train leaves. let’s hope there’s not problems,  i don’t think Simon would be very happy if i missed the train (again).

mother’s day is today in England. so i figured i’d post a lovely little tribute to my mother.

as she’s going through a bit of a rough time right now, i wish i could be in dallas to cheer here up and give her the proper mother’s day treatment, but instead i’ll just have to send my love… even if she has an ipad..grr. jealous much?

love you mom

this ought to solve it..

went for a curry next to selfridges. then had a quick look around there. if my mother ever comes to london, correction WHEN she comes, she will die and go to heaven in their shoe section.

then we went to the pub literally around the corner from me and watched france beat england in the football game. shameful.

people say that home is where the heart is. but then comes the question you have to ask yourself, where is your heart? and the question i have to ask myself, can my heart be divided into several parts?

i struggle every time someone asks me where home is. “are you going home over the break?” i struggle because i don’t know what to answer. am i going home? where is home?

i felt ‘home’ in europe when my dad was over on this side of the pond. funny considering i’m choosing a whole continent as my home, why not just choose the world? after my dad left sweden and moved back to dallas, i lost a comfort. comfort knowing he was close, knowing i could go ‘home’ to him by a couple of hours on a flight.

texas isn’t home. it used to be, but not after my parents sold the house. there’s no familiarity in dallas anymore, a shopping mall does not constitute home. i don’t have any belongings there either, no pets, just my parents and a few friends. it has no pull, i have no desire to ever move back, visit but never live.

so then comes stockholm, is it home? more home than texas is to me at this point. more family, more belongings, more of my heart if that makes sense. it feels more familiar than texas, and that’s weird considering i lived the majority of my life up to this point in the states. there’s a slight pull to maybe sometime in the distant future, continue my life there.

then there’s london, which i would now say is home. my life is here. my friends, my belongings, my school, possibly my future, but most of all my heart and my comfortability. i feel comfort in London, comfort like i haven’t felt anywhere else. i feel an uncertainty and certainty at the same time. i feel like there’s so much i’ve seen and done, but there’s still so much i haven’t seen and done. i feel like i’ll never want to leave.

then i look at all three of the above options and none of them feel home. i don’t feel like i have a home anymore. i feel lost. i feel like a little girl in a big big world, lost on her own. i feel like i uprooted my life, and don’t know where to plant it anymore. sometimes i feel jealous of those who have never left their hometowns, because they don’t know any better, and they’re comfortable, they never need to worry about where home is or will be.

when a friend mentioned to me the study abroad option we have at regent’s i was apprehensive. why leave london? why uproot my life even more? why leave what i’ve started? i’m tired of starting over, making new friends, but never feeling satisfied. it just seemed so alien and stupid to me.

picture from Webster University Thailand

but then a part of me got thinking, im young and may never have this possibility ever again. what if im missing out on one of the greatest adventures in my life? so i looked into the choices we had, and thailand is what i would choose.

a semester abroad in thailand. where there’s sun, a beach, and the rent for a room for a term is what i pay for one month. meet new people, explore a new country with a new culture. i’ve been to thailand before, but i think i was a bit too young to fully appreciate it.

i think about going to thailand and i get super excited, but at the same time something inside of me churns and the tears want to flow. it is so hard to have two conflicting parts inside of me, i feel like im holding myself back but at the same time i’m not being held back from anything.

i want to go but i don’t want to leave.

it’s not as simple as it was, i can’t just say ‘im going to thailand’ like other people can.

if i go the fall semester, then i have to sort out housing after christmas when i get back to london. i have to figure out where i’m going to store all my things. where i’m going to spend the summer. where i’m going to spend christmas. when will i see my boyfriend? if i have a break do i go see my parents, my sister, or simon? what do i even bring with me to thailand? how am i going to afford all of this? what if i dont like it? what if i make no friends? how will i cope being in a bikini all the time? what if i dont adapt to the food? how am i mentally going to be able to handle being halfway across the world from all my different homes? what happens if i break down, then there will be NO-ONE. no one a flight away, no one. just me alone, and that frankly scares the shit out of me. there’s too many questions with too little answers.

then i think to myself, why not actually study hard for 2 1/2 more years, and then treat myself with a trip to thailand instead? is that what is fueling this? the want to travel to asia? i can do that later on in my life.

i’m so confused and so torn. torn in two directions and i don’t know which way to go.

they all go from tigers to cheetahs don’t they. i don’t think my fingers are enough to count the amount of “celebrities” cheat on their girlfriends/wives.

one after another the lies come out. so i’m wondering.. the little boys in england who really look up to the football ‘stars’ what will they become? cheaters?

its actually pouring it down outside. i haven’t seen rain this bad since i was living in texas. put one finger outside the window and your whole body is wet (not really but you get what i mean).

so now i’m sat here, debating weather i should actually do my hair for dinner or screw it, whilst playing around with my new digital photo frame

so the u.s. is out of the world cup. who am i going to root for now?

yesterday a couple of us went to a pub to watch the England vs. Germany game.. figured i’d try rooting for england instead..

however, they sucked equally as bad, if not worse than the u.s.

so tonight game on between brazil and chile.. let’s go brazzzers

oh and by the way.. anybody else thing it’s time for fifa to adopt some new rules, and make technology allowed for the refs? the amount of bad calls and goals that have been missed is stupid. stupid!

went around the city a bit more yesterday.

simon and i met up with my sister and we had a coffee with her at the top of kulturhuset in the sun! beautiful view.

then we wandered over to the city hall and had a look around. once again, beautiful!

we were meant to have lunch in the old city for from shellfish and whatnot, but of course they closed 20 minutes before we got there!!

so we opted for a not so great caesar salad, but we made up for it with some newly made ice cream cones and marvelous ice cream!

then we saw the royal palace, simon once again wasn’t happy with me being a tourist and making him take pictures.. ha!

we went to leif’s to watch the football, yay for USA and England!! and had some yummy rhubarb and raspberry pie

after we took a walk around the lakes here in råsunda, and enjoyed some more of the lovely weather!