I’ve now been in Lipnica for a week, and I’m surprised at the difference between this week and the week I spent here in May 2000. There was such a hectic feel to it because there was so much I wanted to do, so many people I wanted to see, so much food I wanted to eat. And so that meant very little sleep — at no point did I ever do what I’m doing now, and that’s simply to take it easy, to think, “I could go to Quattro and see a few people, or I could just rest this evening.” At this point, seemingly all the time in the world stretches before me. I know that suddenly it will be Christmas, then suddenly time for the matura, and by then, I’ll know what I’m doing: it’ll either be time to leave for good, or be time to go back to the States for a few weeks.

This evening I read some old journal entries — from June, July, and August 1999 (i.e., my departure from Lipnica) and May 2000 (i.e., my return). It makes me feel really good to think that I did something about all that. I wanted to come back, and I did just that. I have this ever-so-small fear lurking, though, that I’m just putting off the inevitable, that eventually I’ll have to face again the same thing I did in 1999. But for now, that’s so far from my mind, so far from my reality, that it feels like I’m just writing those words because I feel like I should.

One thing I forgot to write about: Tuesday I played volleyball with the teachers and had quite a good time. I played fairly well, and it was an overall rewarding experience. Hopefully, it will be a weekly deal like it was when I was here last. Strangely, though, I played as good or better than I ever had here, and that after two volleyball-less years.

Today I had a fairly good lesson with 4A — no, a great lesson with them. It was fairly boring, I thought: just a bunch of information on the blackboard that I explained and they wrote in their notes. Yet everyone was totally quiet through most of lesson, and they were even attentive. It was such a change from 4C. I’d love to hug them all and say, “Thank you! You make my decision to come back here worth everything I gave up to do so.”