Procession

I felt like an adult tonight. It was perversely fleeting, five hours of incredibly enriching interchanges, of which I actually took part and held my own in surrounded by several PhDs. My dinner with my high school Russian teacher somehow blossomed into so much more of an affair than I'd expected. In the end it was him and I, his Belgian wife, my friend Joy, another kid I remotely knew from school years back, this boy's sister, the sister's Italian boyfriend, the sister's Dutch housemate, and my teacher's nieces visiting from Belgium. For me the petulant introvert, the crowd introduced so much more stress than I was expecting, though I was flattered to be included in such a group. Its funny, it very definitely takes me a while to get comfortable in a setting like that. For the first hour or so I mostly listened, interjected with sober polite comments if questioned, but yea, for the most part, passive. My first adult dinner party...aww. I got kinda confused etiquette wise, but fell back on the old Pretty Woman technique, just copy the people next to you. Was very careful to sit up straight (posture my ass...that shit is painful on a stool) and do nice things like put a napkin in my lap. And then I realized, like most times I'm completely over my head, that I can actually handle it. I can deal. So I starting listening, and chatting, and thinking, and smiling, and genuinely enjoyed myself. I was sitting next to the Dutch boy. He is a PhD student in Philosophy, just here in the States to finish his thesis. At one point he turned to me, and asked whether I actually knew the people everyone was talking about. I laughed, and admitted that I didn't, but just really liked watching people's expressions and body language. This launched a half hour long discussion about people watching, sitting in cafes and sketching, etc. Maybe this whole adult thing isn't such a croc after all. I think that's a big part of me, I really like being over my head, and having to deal. Everything really meaningful I've ever been involved in has been the hardest possible route to the destination, the most outlandish activity, the most farfetched schemes. Basically, hard leaves it mark. At times I just sat back and listened to conversations going on in three and four languages around me, remembering how much I love to just listen, to let words flow over me, even if I can't understand a single word. But then I realized I was picking up quite a bizarre amount of Dutch, bizarre if only for the fact that I have absolutely no background in Germanic languages, but intriguing none the less. Weird. But very very cool. And then as I got up to head home from College Park, of course I failed to find Route One, so ended up a good half hour out of my way the opposite direction. I really do have a fairly decent sense of direction, just not when I'm driving around suburbia. So much for semi-perceived wisdom. Oh well.

In other less philosophical ramblings, I must figure out a way to stop being so heinously bitchy to good friend's new girlfriend. Being so does definitely help me maintain any sort of non-jealous existential relationship. Note to self: Stop it. Now. Damn it.

Four more days to freedom in the West. Oh how I'm looking forward to this next adventure, even with the anticipated ass kicking it entails. May there be many more intriguing graduate students, thought provoking evenings, and not having to refuse wine when I'm offered.