The end of all ends....

Howdy ho!
With 22 days left and May gone before I could spell it, I still find myself in this strange "I don't know how to feel at all" mood where I'm a big mixture of sad, accomplished, happy, excited, really sad, and a lot of sad.
The days are ticking by and I feel like I'm watching everything get sucked into a whirlpool as my flight date gets closer and closer.

I wanted to do a quick update before I head off to Berlin. Next Wednesday, I'll be in Berlin to meet up with the 250 of us CBYX kids for the end meeting. I'm nervous and excited, and stoked about seeing Berlin. It'll be nice to see all of my exchange buddies, and I promise to take lots of pictures :)

In fact, I've challenged myself that for every day of June leading up to my departure, I'm going to take five pictures of things that I will miss/love and upload them here. I'll end up with 100 or so pictures, which should be quite enough to satisfy and inform you all, and keep good memories for myself.

If you want to know anything that's far into the future, I recently re-enrolled into Boise High School and will be graduating with the class of 2014. Today is the day that my class graduates, and I'm proud of them all! I'm not too jealous though, giving up a year of school for a year in Germany wasn't that hard of a decision ;)

I love everyone and I'm getting ants in my pants thinking about June 20th.

Tag, an dem ich meine Hause verlassen.
And the day that I will return home.

And last but not least, we had a fancy photo session together as a family, and I just wanted to share a few photos from that because they're so gorgeous! Thank you Kless's!!

Windy Rainy Days

Its getting cold again. These last two weeks have been those beautiful spring weeks where every tree blooms and people are on the beach and on their bikes and you question if winter was actually even real or not. 

And then it starts raining again. 

And then you realize that Germany is 30 days from being over. 

Or at least my Germany is. 

My dream like year is coming to an end no matter how hard I fight against it. 

Today I went on a run with my puppy dog, Arthos Barthos (I'm putting a picture here because why not I love this dog he's the best dog on earth)

This was in January, don't think that its snowing again. Seriously. If you have those thoughts, the snow will come back. 

Anyways, we were running and part of the track that I like to take goes through a tree nursery and is next to a meadow and today it was so windy that all the trees and bushes looked as if they were going to be rooted up and I stopped and let everything around me move and stayed still for a few minutes. 

Life will never stop moving. Not for you, not for me, not for the good times or the bad times. 

My life has moved this past year, more so than it every has. I thought I was pretty cool when I came to Germany, I thought I knew what was what. 

But I had no clue. 

And while I'm scared to go home, I'm ready for the challenge. I'm ready for my family, for Boise High, for the foothills, for my Nicko and for every part of it. 

But on the flippy side, I'm not ready to leave Germany. Not ready to leave my Barthos, or my Tommy man, or my parents...

Not ready to leave spending rainy mornings with Linda, drinking coffee and cuddling up. 

Not ready to leave the Elbe, or Hamburg, or anything. 

And unfortunately, I'll never be ready. 

I don't want to leave, I don't want to go home, but I want to go home. 

Thunder n' Lightning

Just some random Torey thoughts on a stormy night.

Faster and Faster and OHNO. WHAT ITS MAY.

Ohmygoodness. Where did the time go. It was October and then it was December and now its May.
Seriously.
I found myself laying in the middle of my back yard today thinking about now. Right now. I find myself so caught up in what has happened this year and what's going to happen when I get back that I have to stop myself every once in awhile, breathe, and think about now.
There is no such thing as tomorrow. There is only today. Today is the only day that you will ever live in.
So live it well!
This last weekend was another exciting one! I got to visit the Hamburg Hafengeburtstag festival, which is the birthday party for the Hamburg Harbor. It was super crowded, but really fun. You see all sorts of different types of people at such festivals in Hamburg, I love being in the mix. I also love schmalzkuchen and Russian sailors!

Woo! 
Und dann!! This last Sunday, I got a big surprise from my host dad, and got to fly in a small plane around Wedel!!! It was super fun and scary because the plane was a bit rickety, but I had an awesome time. I still love planes. They are so strange and cool. Seriously. 
Und dannnnnnnnn later that evening, I got to see the biggest cruise ship on Earth go by on the Elbe as it was leaving the Hafengeburtstag. Yep. The Queen Mary 2. 
It was gigantic. 

And awesome. 

I also got a special treat, and was asked to have my last blog post on the facebook page of ASSE, which was really cool!
I also love both my families a lot. I'm excited for these last few weeks and to be home. Its all quite emotional and troubling, but I feel so accomplished already. Explaining and describing my feelings is so hard to do. I just feel a lot of love for everyone and everything. That's basically all I can say!

I love the Kless's!

T minus 49 days....

About this time last year I had found out that I had won a full ride scholarship to do an exchange year in Germany. I had gotten an email from my host mom telling me that I'd be in Hamburg and that was just about it.
I found this all out a year ago. And I've been in Germany for nine and a half months.
I cringe everytime someone asks me how much time I have left and when I'm leaving.
June 20th. 49 days.
I remember when it was 300 days left. 200 days. 100 days felt like yesterday.
Coming to Germany was tough, but I always kept in mind that I was going to end up back in Boise anyways, so no matter what happened, I'd get through it.
But now, I'm quite anxious to go home because I know I can't simply hop back on a plane and come back here. Germany has become a part of me, or at least, I've become a part of Germany. This is my home, my life, and what I'm used to.
The changes that have occurred in myself may be subtle, but I feel like I've taken giant steps forward in not only my international social skills, but also in myself.
It doesn't sound like a big deal now because this is my home, but when I think about it, I dropped everything I had in Boise and moved all by myself in Germany.
I could be graduated and moved out of my house by now! My diploma is a simple sacrifice for a year in Germany. A year that has set direction to the rest of my life.
I'm rambling a bit, mostly because I've been thinking way too much about all of this these last few days. I decided this morning that with only 49 days left, I'll leaving skype and social media alone for awhile and be in the present as much as I possibly can.
Every time I talk to people about leaving all I get is "Das geht schnell"
And it really does go fast.
I mean heck! I've been in Germany for almost a year now!
A YEAR.
I'm excited to come home, excited to be in Boise...
I'm really really really not excited or happy to leave my host family. I try not to think about it too much because tears instantly touch me the second I think about life without them...
I am excited to wear all the clothes that I left at home.
And I'm excited to finish this journey, say that I accomplished more than I had set out to do or even imagined...
And I'm excited to move forward.
But for the time being, I'm going to stay in the present and be happy with my wonderful friends here, my amazing family, and the best dog on earth.
Watch out Boise, I'll be home sooner than you can say "Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei."
:D