Resolute.

One day all the snow in Kalamazoo just up and melted. This year I didn't get to go sledding. I did, however, discover new and old friendships, dance a whole hell of a lot, conspire, derive epic poems from our lives, capture some images, listen to my friends play beautiful and silly and loving music, bang on a drum, eat breakfast at the Blue Dolphin not once but twice, experience multiple slumber parties even at the age of 24, free wrestle until I couldn't anymore, and become reacquainted with a town I wasn't sure I loved anymore. I spent a lot of time at the new coffee shop Dino's, as well, and felt quite at home.

I met so many new, great folks and I am looking forward to developing even more meaningful friendships with them. Old friends are everything that poets say of them. How can a gal be so lucky to know so many talented, lovely, damn cool folks? Of course, no one's perfect but in my friends' faults I see the things I want to change about myself and if I can't change myself, I've got no right to tell them so, no?

My family was also amazing and frustrating and I am happy I stayed longer than I had intended. All of my friends from Mexico were saying, "How can you just leave your family if they want you to stay?" They were right, of course, another lesson from the south. One thing I've noticed among travelers is a disconnect, whether by necesity or choice or simply neglect, with their families. I don't want that and in fact, I consider it an abuse of the privilege of coming from a culture where youth are not expected anymore to maintain ties with their family, especially if they might compromise one's "freedom." Chale. If I'd listened to my own, selfish desire to take off, disregarding the folks who gave me a life and home, I never would have gotten to dance polka with my grandma. How silly I can be sometimes.

My last night in Michigan was spent with some truly incredible folks in a yurt on a farm in Bangor, MI, a very nice transition from the city to the solitude of traveling alone on the train. Thank God there was a guitar and the dinner was amazing, the poems and the stories and the smiles and the laughs and our dear little Forrest.

The train ride to Texas went surprisingly fast. Now I'm wondering if I need to find an even slower way to travel. Hitching, I suppose.

I did have a bit of time to think, though, and I'm getting close to a clear formulation of my resolutions for the new year. They involve a continuance of last year's theme "honesty," a new theme related to assertiveness or being very aware of exactly what I want and how to communicate it, and investment in people and places. Many other things, too.

Now I'm in Fort Worth, Texas with Angie, who I met and lived with in San Cristobal. We caught up on our ever-dramatic lives, ran around the FW Botanical Gardens, drank margaritas and rode bikes, played tag (normal and freeze) and danced- all in one night!