I couldn’t post this at the time I wrote it, but I hope you don’t mind.I’m currently sitting scrunched in the back of a van on my way back from visiting my family in Beatrice, Nebraska, for Thanksgiving. In the last couple of hours I have realized two very important things: classes start again tomorrow, and I don’t have my homework done. I suppose that for those of you who know me this doesn’t come as any surprise. Haha, I guess I could find it reassuring that some things never change? Anyway, I really love Thanksgiving, but not just for the food. Seeing friends and family again is always good. I was told all throughout high school that it was nice to have friends there, but it was okay to not keep contact because the friends you make for life are the ones you make in college. I see the validity of this in some ways, but I had the opportunity to hang out with a couple of my closer friends from high school over the break and I have to say that I had more fun with them than I’ve had in a long time. Not to say that I don’t enjoy the friends I’ve made in college or that they aren’t as important, because that is absolutely not true, but there is something nostalgic and ultimately unbeatable about spending time with people who you’ve known literally all of your life and shared everything with. I find it hard to match that kind history with the 1&½ years that I’ve known people at Bethel. It’s not that they’re not as great, just that history is much more powerful than I thought it might be at first, and frankly I’m okay with that. I look forward to making many more great memories with people here, but on the flipside, I miss the past. I suppose that’s only natural to some degree. As far as family goes I have to say that I appreciate mine (extended and immediate) more and more as the years go on. I hadn’t actually been up to my aunt and uncle’s farm for probably 6 or 7 years, and even though driving up there and coming back in one day means 6 hours of driving and probably not getting back to Bethel until around 9pm, I’m really happy that I went. Kansans tend to insult Nebraska and Nebraskans (is that right?) do the same to us as kind of a friendly rivalry, well, most of the time. In the past I’ve really disliked driving through here, as even coming from Kansas, one notices that there isn’t really a whole lot to see in Nebraska. We have kind of a brotherhood of bad scenery, as outsiders might see it, but I like it. Today I find Nebraska to feel very homely and peaceful; a nice break from the hustle and bustle of being at home and worrying about everything. Regardless of whether it’s Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, or Oklahoma I’m in, there’s something that I can’t describe that I truly love about the Midwest. Then again, maybe I can. It’s the people.