The Elk Encounter

I've seen elk before. My family frequents national parks, so somewhere along the way, standing across a river or a pond or a field, I've seen elk. Sure, they're big and impressive, but nothing - nothing - is like seeing an elk up close.

We had two days of cleaning at camp, and breakfast was at 9:30, so it was definitely necessary to celebrate the extra hour and a half of morning. The night between these days, we went to the Grizzly Rose. It was pretty fantastic. I love nightclubs in  general, and this was something I'd never experienced before: line dancing, two stepping, people twirling and moving. I'm used to the typical hip-hop/electronica scene, but this was so much more: a country western Saloon. We headed home late, and it was quiet the eventful night, complete with vomit, 24-hour doughnut shops, and bumming cigs from stoners at a gas station. So we're driving 285 at 1:30 in the morning. My car is full, and three people are dozing off as myself and the last are deep in conversation. There aren't many cars on the road: one would pass by in the opposite direction every five minutes or so, but on my side, I was the only one.

National Geographic tells me elk are 4-5 feet at the shoulder. That's at the shoulder. His neck, head, antlers: that's all above that. I'm 5'3". And my little sedan? That's shorter than me.

Twenty feet in front of me, and there he was, standing in the lane next to mine. If he was in my lane, I could have seen him sooner, I could have slowed down, even stopped... but in the lane next to me, in the dark, he was invisible. It was just his silhouette, but I could see his legs clearly. They were already in my lane, but he took a step back- and I froze. A second later, the beast was behind me. His hoofs were at most two feet from my tire. His head must have been hanging over my car. I had never, ever seen a beast of that size.

I went crazy. My car had almost been totaled. I had almost died. I had almost died with the four other people in my car- and yet I had survived. The elk grew bigger in my mind, the more I ran and ran that image through my head. By the time we arrived back at camp, I was laughing hysterically, completely out of control. That was the scariest thing to ever happen to me on the road. That was The Elk Encounter.

Update

I barely posted at all this summer, and I haven't posted anything since moving to DC and starting school at a new institution, so it's time for an update.

I always struggle in a new place. Within a day of moving here, I felt like I was always alone, while others were already spending time with friends, going out, and having fun.  It was the same feeling I had a year ago when starting CU: I spent at least two months crying almost daily and resisting a depressive relapse.  It was the same feeling I had four years ago, my sophomore year of highschool, when I moved to Colorado and struggled with the most severe and longest-lasting episode of adjustment depression of my life. It was the same feeling of loneliness, helplessness, incompetence.  I began to wonder how many times I'd have to feel this way, whether there would ever come a day when I'd be comfortable talking to someone I don't yet know. I began to wonder: "why me?"; what can I do differently, and why does it never work?; no matter how much I try, I'm still alone, and other are not.  I began to get jealous. I felt bitter towards everyone around me. I began to hate humanity, and I began to hate God.

Then, slowly, things began to clear up. I still feel like I don't have quite as many acquaintances as others, I still have nothing to do on weekend nights, and I still eat most of my meals alone, but things are better. My floor is amazing, and I've begun hanging out with the people on my floor. I've met people at the dining hall and in my classes. I've even spent time with people I met on the internet. I initiated conversations with people I don't know and approached people I've already met. I still have a long way to go, I have a long way to go even to catch up to where 90% of people around me are, but I've made a much better start than I did last year, and I feel much better.

I love this school. I couldn't have possibly made a better decision in transferring. There is much more of a sense of community. Half my floor, for example, are people who lived on this floor last year! Everyone on my floor is so nice, and we spend a lot of time together. We have meals together, we study together, we have floor-soccer and other floor events, and not only do people actually come, but almost everyone comes!  The school is smaller, so the sense of community goes beyond just the floor. At lunch today, I ran into someone on the way to the dining hall, I ran into two kids from my floor and two people from my philosophy class while getting food, I ran into three people I know on the way out of the dining room.

The people here are really, really cool.  Everyone has awesome dreams and goals, and it's really inspirational to live in an environment with such amazing people.  Everyone here cares about the world and what's going on.  The lobby has free newspapers which run out because so many people read them.  In the floor lobby, our TV is usually turned to CNN.  We discuss politics, passionately, arguing into the middle of the night.  For fun, we go out to "the mall" and see the monuments.

The classes are much smaller and the professors are very accessible. I'm also thinking of changing my major. Although I love philosophy, without the linguistics minor, it doesn't quiet mean as much to me.  I am going to try to get an interdisciplinary studies major, in which I write my own curriculum. I want to major in oppression, combining women's studies, sociology, international relations, and government.  This will give me an amazing opportunity to learn about everything I care about. By expanding outside women's studies, I will be able to learn about oppression other than sexism(s), and I will be able to take many classes with some of AUs best departments!

Washington DC is so cool. It's such a fun, progressive city. I've found some really cool bookstores and coffee shops, and I've yet to go out clubbing, but when I do, I know it will be great.

Although I know this is perfect, I miss CU.  I miss Gather, I miss QI, I miss my friends, I miss discussing kink in RL, I miss Alex writing sweet things on my whiteboard, I miss the flatirons, I miss the good weather and lack of mosquitoes, I miss Tracks, I miss the parties, I miss so much.

<3

Annual Farewells

At the end of every summer, sitting around the campfire in the middle of the night, with tears either in our eyes or near our hearts, comes the time for annual farewells.  I loved what I said this year, so here it is, edited and expanded, so I can share it with others and always remember it for myself.

Every day I wonder how I got here. I'll be waking up in a tent, or walking from the Dining Hall to Arrowhead, or holding a chicken on the farm, and I'll think - how did I get here? It was never my dream to be a counselor when I grow up, it was never my calling to work with children.  Sometimes, I think I got here by accident - one day, I tripped, and next thing I knew, I was at Tomahawk Ranch.  Well, it was definitely the best trip of my life.

I've learned so much at camp. I learned how to care for myself and others; I learned how to make new friends, but keep the old; I learned how to clean the bathrooms; I learned how to stay in touch through distance, how friends really can be forever; I learned what matters to me in the world, what I care about, what makes me happy; and, most of all, I learned how to call a place home. Before I came to Tomahawk, there was no place I could ever call home.  The concept confused me, completely eluded me. But now I know what home is. Home is right here, in the mountains of Bailey, Colorado. There is no other home for me in this world.

I ran in the rain.

I took off my shoes and my sweater, I wanted to take off my shirt because it's legal here in Boulder, but I chickened out and didn't. I ran with a smile, feeling free and liberated, because Colorado is thirsty, and I'm thirsty here in Colorado. Although I love our sunny days, I love our beautiful mountains, I've never felt so at home, but I've never felt so thirsty. And I remember skinny dipping in the summer, a mountain lake, a real lake, and how I drank it with my mind so I wouldn't be thirsty. And I ran in the rain, quenching my thirst, each item of cloth on my body wet as the blood in my veins.  It's never enough here. Then, I remembered that first winter back from California. That first snowflake, and how I ran outside and stood there, in love.

Love. That's really what it's all about. That's why I wanted to cry today, but couldn't until the drops landed in my eyes and I was getting a little bit scared because of the lightning, and I was walking faster, but I couldn't see, couldn't open my eyes because of the raindrops hiding there but it felt so right, like I was finally crying. It's strange, I never once cried without first smiling, never once smiled without first shedding a tear, a cause and effect that happens so instantly it all blurs into one until it's all the same thing. Joy and sorrow, is there even a difference? A mountain lake, a snow flake, I miss here while I stand on this soil, I miss California, and I miss New York although I've never even been there. It's never right, it's never enough. But Colorado, I love you.

Why do I love? I know, in the end, it's a conscious decision to turn a spark into wildfire, to let go and to fall. So much I sacrifice, so many chances I take just for a kiss from somebody I love only to feel empty until I kiss them again.  Yet I still do, always, thinking ahead to when it will all end, a forest, deceased. It took so long for it to grow, and now it's gone. Have you ever seen a burned down forest? Don't tell me to look at the positive - to think of the plants that only grow in ashes and the future that will eventually come - until you've seen a burned down forest with your own eyes, a burned down forest you once used to love. I have.

And I forgot that rain makes me depressed.

Life Takes Decisions

My mother teases me for not making up my mind.  She tells me how she graduated highschool at 16, and went on straight to med school. She tells me how, by the time she was my age, she was already deciding on her speciality as a doctor.  I can't even imagine that.  At sixteen, I literally had no limitations on my interests. Physics or literature? Performance music or primary education? It all seemed like a viable option.  Upon entering college, I'd realized that my interests focus in the humanities, and began zooming in. Even now - nineteen years old, second semester in college, and a sophomore if you take a look at my credits - I can't even decide what to major in, I can't even decide if I even like this university.

But life, it takes decisions, and it's time I start making decisions, too. Last Thursday, I declared a Linguistics minor. The day after tomorrow, I'm declaring a Philosophy major, and then going on to find out about the Cognitive Science certificate program.  I'd considered a philosophy major since before I started college, I knew I'd do it as either a major or a minor, but deciding on a major seemed impossible: so many credits in one discipline! So many credits not in a variety of other disciplines! So much I would have to sacrifice for a philosophy major. I had to be sure, and it's the Cogntivie Science certificate program - restricted to Philosophy majors, among others - that served as my final push: Philosophy major it is; it's worth it.  I love this feeling - I am on track, I know what I am doing.  It feels so right, it feels great to make decisions pertaining to my life.

I'm on a roll with making decisions now, and I suddenly found myself rolling into new territory. I'm filling out transfer applications.  I am considering leaving CU. Maybe it's the recent rainy weather, or the fact that, due to my birth control, I've been bleeding heavily for more than a week straight, but I've been feeling depressed, lonely, and out of place. I really don't like CU or Boulder. I need to get out of here.

I settled for CU when I was selecting colleges. It's not like I didn't try. I'd been looking since tenth grade, but I didn't know what to look for. I didn't know what I'd major in, I didn't know whether I wanted in or out of state, I didn't know whether I wanted a city or a town. I knew I wanted a place that's bigger than my highschool of 4000, which did cut many colleges out of the picture, but not enough. I toured universities around Colorado and the Bay Area - a place that's very special to me, very close to my heart - but none of them seemed just quiet right. My counselor wasn't much help, either. His only suggestion was the University of Oregon. I am well acquainted with and absolutely adore Oregon and the Pacific North West, but I'm so glad I didn't go there. Even Boulder, just twenty minutes away from Denver, is too small for my taste, and, in a little rainy town in Oregon, I would have gone insane. In the end, I applied to three public Colorado Universities: CU Denver, CSU, and CU Boulder.  Boulder was my top choice, lying near the upper bounds of a "good match".  I got into all three. Even before I started college, I already began thinking about where I want to transfer.

I can't do this small town thing. I find myself dreaming of cities, of highrises and lights, of strange blocks and public buses.  Every time I go down to Denver, my heart starts to beat a little faster. I crave a city life, I'm begging to get to know it's every street, it's every turn. I crave to live, to really live, and I feel like I can't live here in Boulder.

I don't like CU. I hate how there is no diversity. I hate how everyone is white, and either from Colorado, California, Chicago, or New York.  I hate how everyone is rich and spoiled. I hate how no one cares, how they all think they are these cool hippies just because they smoke weed and wear overpriced "bohemian" clothes. I've found myself saying the same things I used to say when I was in highschool.  My sister told me I need to branch out more (of course, by that she means I need fewer queer friends, but that's beside the point), and I told her that I have no where to branch out, that I don't like the vast majority of people at CU, that I don't get along with most of the people here, and thus I have much fewer options. I've been saying that people don't care, and that they're too alike. In fact, this is just like Creek. I see Creek kids everywhere. I can't seem to get away from them. I don't know what to do. I feel trapped. A few weeks ago, I went to march for higher education down in Denver. It took off from Auraria campus - CU Denver, Metro State, and Community College of Denver. Midday on Wednesday, I looked around the campus, and I though, I love it here. I want to be here, the people here look real. Sure, they're still all white, but at least they resemble actual individuals, not like those in Boulder.  When I was waiting for acceptance letters, I was secretly hoping CU would reject me. Then, I would go to CU Denver, and I liked it there more.

I am currently applying to New York University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Denver University. The first two will be really hard to get into, and, if I do get in, I'll have to find some time to visit them before making a decision. I am fairly certain I'll get into DU, but I'm not sure if I'll accept of I do. I doubt my problems with CU will be successfully remedied in DU, except, perhaps, the part where I really want to live in a city. If I don't succeed this semester, I've got a few schools in mind that I'll apply to next year. University of Washington (ok, I know that, here I am, whining about the rain, and then considering life in Seattle, but I really love Washington state, it's one of those places I can already call home), Tufts, and Stanford (now I'm just getting ridiculous; however, I never took a risk when I first applied for colleges, and I want to take one now, I want rejection letters, please).

It's a bit very scary, but I know this is right. If I'm having these thoughts after one year, I'll never make it through my entirely undergraduate career alive. Most of all, if I go any of these places, I'll miss Colorado - the mountains, the skies, the whether, the cities and towns, the culture and people. But I'm a nomad at heart. I've lived four years in a row in Colorado now - longer than anywhere else since I was seven. I need to move on in this world.

Spring has come!

I officially declare yesterday the first day of spring. Not so much because it was really really warm, such days happen often during winter in Colorado, but because it felt like springtime. Thursday night it snowed, and yesterday it was more than 50 degrees, and I love Colorado. In the spring, the mood swings get slightly worse than usual. They happen just as often, but the snowstorms are bigger and the warm days are warmer.

My weather-dependent mood follows. I start running whenever I'm alone: running to class like one of those kids, running to my room in the middle of the night, running because I'm too impatient to walk. I get excited, bouncy, giddy; I sit still less than I usually do. I also get paranoid. On the other hand, I feel sadder and lonelier. Little things set me off (I was reading Kozol's Savage Inequalities yesterday, and I started crying, but then, that's a really sad book.

I'm so excited for spring.

PS. While on the Hop last night, we were having a conversation about spring and later seasons in general, and the entire bus participated. It made me so happy to see people actually talk to each other!

First Semester

Today, I finished my last final, and survived my first semester of college.

I had those nights that I feared, those evenings where I shut the door and cried, feeling like I'd never make friends, that I'd always be alone. Sometimes, I would sit alone in my room, my door open, inviting others in, hoping others would come in, but instead, only their voices entered my room, their distant conversations about drugs and love and the world, and I would shut the door and cry. Why can they make friends and not me, I wondered? At times I was desperate, hopeless, refreshing facebook, looking at who was online, hoping that someone - anyone - would talk to me. At times, I slipped back into depression, not sleeping or eating for days, wondering when I would ever find a friend.

But those nights didn't happen all that often. I was surprised by how few of those there were, compared to the times I spent with others, talking for hours on end in the dining halls or on the grass or at Starbucks. I exchanged secrets with dear friends while spooning on the floor and intoxicated. I stayed up late with friends by my side. I began getting texts, phone calls, facebook messages, connexion testimonials. We had sleepovers, study sessions, and a lot of stripping. I began getting hugs and kisses, I began flirting and being flirted with, and my heart began to soar. This is college, I realized, and I am surviving - really, really surviving.

There are a few people/places/things/ideas I would like to thank for making this an amazing semester:

1. God. I prayed a lot this semester. I prayed in bed, on the floor, and in trees. (On another note, I've befriended many trees, Boulder has many great trees for climbing.) God helped me through by helping me understand what was amazing about my life, and how much hope I really had. Without unconditional faith, I couldn't have done it. Having completely given myself to Hir, I stayed on the right path, and found my way here.

2. The LGBTQA community. I quickly found my place within the LGBTQA community. I met so many amazing people through GSA, QI, Gather, and the trip to Washington DC for the National Equality March. Even when I met people outside queer clubs, many still ended up coming to the RC eventually. Even before I was queer, I always felt in place in the LGBTQA community, and college is no exception.

3. Colorado. Even when I thought that I could never belong at CU, that Boulder just wasn't my place, I looked at the flatirons, and everything seemed a little better. I love Colorado, and I couldn't imagine living anywhere but here, at foot of the most beautiful mountains, in such an amazing, beautiful town.

4. Education. My classes made everything worth while. I learned more this semester than ever before in my life, and my entire worldview has changed. Every single lecture I attended, every single article I read, every single paper I wrote absolutely blew my mind. Without being able to look forward to class, I would have never made it.

I finished my first semester of college. I am a sophomore standing. I turn 19 in five days. I'm growing up, and I'm terrified, but I'm glad there are things out there to help me through.

November, I Am Thankful

At 6:30 in the morning, the sun lays its rays on the flatirons, and they glow. Light skims the tops of stone buildings, and birds chirp, signaling that morning has arrived.

Things are quieter here, closer to the cold ground, still untouched by direct sunlight. The naked, crouching trees are asleep, and the grass, covered with their shriveled leaves and leftover mounds of frozen snow, is silent.

That's when I realize that this is where I live. Where I party and study. Where I love, I think, I dream. This is the place where, each morning, I take my first hopeful breath, and where each night I fall asleep with a prayer. I'm living a dream.

It occurs to me that the next holiday is Thanksgiving.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you God and thank you Mom. Thank you hard work and thank you fate. Thank you life for this chance to live - to really live - like everyone should. Thank you for food and beer; for friends and kisses. Thank you for crunchy leaves and foggy breath, for sunlight and rain. Thank you for the rainbow of colors, the scale of notes, the spectrum of scents. Thank you for wisdom and play, for knowledge, poetry, and art. Thank you for hope, for without it, we live in chains. Thank you for love, that gets us through the day. Thank you for dreams and fantasies, that remind us to never give up. Thank you for today.

Home.

The words "home" and "hometown" have always confused me. Such simple words, yet it seems I've never understood what they really mean.

In ninth grade, I made a myspace. Clearly, there was some info I had to fill out. Gender: Female, Age: 15, Birth Date: 12.22.90, Religion: Atheist, Sexuality: Bi-curious (I changed that to Straight about a month later and it remained such, at least on myspace, for the remainder of high school). And, finally, the one that caused me the most trouble: "Hometown".

Unsure as to what I should say, I went and checked all my friend's profiles, wondering what their answer was. All of them referenced the place they spent their childhood, or the place they were born. Often, I knew they barely spent any of their life actually living there, but somehow they still referred to it as their hometown.

For a while, my hometown was listed as Khabarovsk, Russia. I figured that made sense: I lived there until I was seven, and then again when I was eight going on nine. Yet, somehow, I hated of thinking of Khabarovsk as my hometown. "Home", I've been told, "is where the heart is". Well, very little of my heart is in Russia. In fact, most of my heart hated Russia and hated being Russian. I hated being associated with Russian people, hated having an accent, hated standing out, hated any reference to Russia, hated everything that had to do with the one place I just so happened to be born. Khabarovsk, Russia, was not my hometown.

I then considered all the places I'd lived. Pullman, WA was not my hometown. Oh, I loved it dearly. I still remember its playgrounds, parks, libraries, and McDonalds. This was the first town in the United States that I lived in, and I loved it. Only I made no connection with the town or the people in it. I could have lived in any other town, and I would have learned just as much. I was a happy loner child, and I read a lot and colored a lot and spent a lot of time swinging, but I seldom spoke to any peers, to the extent that it worried my teachers, my principle, and the school psychologist. Without people to connect to, I can't imagine Pullman being my hometown.

After Pullman, I lived in Glen Ellyn, IL. For the first time in my life, I thought I had friends. "Thought" is the keyword. I really didn't. I only interacted with people within the classroom, while during lunch and recess, I was entirely alone. Still, class was lots of fun. For the first time in my life, in Glen Ellyn, I lived in a house. A huge huge house my stepdad renovated himself about a billion times over, a house which was actually two houses, two zipcodes, and two cities (Glen Ellyn and Glendale Heights). Also, unlike the small college town of Pullman, WA, Glen Ellyn was a suburb. I developed a sense of living in a larger community: Chicagoland. To this day, I still feel connected to anyone who's ever inhabited that area, especially those who've lived in the western suburbs. Nonetheless, after just a year, there is no way that Glen Ellyn could be my hometown.

I started sixth grade at West Middle School in Colorado. Middle school was miserable. I lived in Glendale, a small island-town far away from the rest of the Cherry Creek School District, far away from all my friends. I hated everyone that lived in Glendale and despised every bus ride to and from school. At school, I befriended the girls who were at the top of the social hierarchy. "Befriended" is not an accurate word. I struggled with non-verbal communication and failed to realize that I was not one of their friends, just someone who stood around all the time and was especially annoying. After those three horrible years, I never thought that Colorado could ever be my home.

The first place I ever regarded as a hometown was Palo Alto, California. I lived there my freshman year of highschool. For the first time in my life, I made friends, had a boyfriend, went out, enjoyed life. We had inside jokes, "our spots", and made tons of great memories. I blossomed into a person in California, but I still had a long way to go.

On a somewhat aside, I made a very interesting socio-geographic observation about suburbia. Bay Area and Chicagoland suburbs are very different from newer Denver suburbs. In Chicago and the Bay, every town had a strong personal identity, including somewhat clear boundaries and a downtown. Each suburb had a highschool of its own, so everyone who goes to that highschool lives in the same town. Thus, it was easy to relate to and to befriend everyone and anyone in the school. In Colorado, on the other hand, multiple suburbs fed into both my middle and my highschool. Often, kids would self-segregate based on neighborhood. That led to other types of segregation, mostly race and class segregation, and created powerful social hierarchies based mostly on wealth. I believe another factor contributed to the wealth-based hierarchy: in Palo Alto and Glen Ellyn, the downtown was a wonderful place to hang out. When the suburb has no downtown, the only place for youth to assemble is the mall, which naturally draws attention to wealth. I talked to my AP Human Geography teacher about this last year (not the segregation, but the suburbs' personal identities), and he said that the reason this is the case is because Chicagoland and Bay Area suburbs are older than Denver Metro Area suburbs. Older suburbs around Denver - such as Littleton and Aurora - have much stronger personal identities, and even might have their own downtowns. I will refer to this paragraph later in this blog.

After a year in California, I, sadly, moved back to Denver. Things were tough at first. I lived once again in Glendale, and hated Creek. It took me a long time to find my place, and I reluctantly spent a lot of time alone, seldom going out. That, combined with intense adjustment depression, made my first year back especially difficult.

The summer before my Junior year of highschool, my mom purchased her first home. It was close - only two miles away - to my school and much closer to all my friends. At last, it was easier to go out, to hang out, to have fun. I began to settle in, and even learned that there are things I could enjoy about Creek (such as the many fun courses it offers). For the first time in my life, I began to feel like I have a home and a hometown. I made some of the best friends in the world my last two years of highschool and had the time of my life. It was then that I also fell in love with Colorado, and I knew that my heart will always stay here. I love the mountains, I love Denver, and I love this amazing state.

Also, around that time of my life, I began going to Tomahawk Ranch as a CIT. Tomahawk is a home like no other, a retreat not from stress or worry, but from the stress and worry of the real world. It's a place to dream, to love, and to be yourself. The friends I made at TR are amazing, and I will forever consider it my home.

Despite the fact that I now know what my hometown is, my confusion about what to call it has not gone away. Whenever someone asks me where my hometown is, I usually say "Denver" or "Denver suburbs". Technically, my address says "Englewood", but I don't live in Englewood. I remember during college orientation, I was talking to a guy from the Denver Metro Area, and he asked me where I'm from. "Denver-ish," I answered, and he accurately replied with, "Greenwood Village? Centennial?" "Yeah," I laughed, "How'd you know?" "Denver-ish usually means Greenwood Village or Centennial. People from Aurora say Aurora, people from Littleton say Littleton, people from Denver say Denver, people from Highlands Ranch say Highlands Ranch. People from Greenwood Village and Centennial don't know what to say." Which is true. Greenwood Village and Centennial have very unusual boundaries, contain many unincorporated neighborhoods, and have no personal identity. The closest thing we have to a downtown is the Denver Tech Center, which is mostly office buildings and places to eat, and even that's fairly spread out. Lately, to Colorado natives, I've begun answering "Greenwood Village", though I'm slightly embarrassed. I had a really good conversation with a girl from Highlands Ranch about how much it sucks to be from "one of those" embarrassing places.

The word "home" also took on a new meaning for me lately. I've realized that, in college, "home" refers to your hometown and "school" refers to where you live most of the year. Well, somehow, that just doesn't work for me. Sure, I refer to "home" as "home", but it's not the same definition of home that I've used all my life, that word took on a meaning that's entirely new. When it's time to head back to Boulder, I tell my family that I'm going "home". I've had many temporary homes in my life, and this is one of them. But, just because its temporary, that doesn't make it any less of a home. I love Boulder, I love the people I've met here, I'm beginning to love my school, and I love living up here. This is, truly, home.

Edit: Colorado is my home. I've noticed that, whenever I go out of town, even for just a weekend, I feel so much joy when I return. Denver - downtown Denver - is my home, and whenever I come home from Boulder, I get a rush whenever I feel myself approaching the city. Boulder is also my home, I miss it so much when I'm away, and I feel happy the moment I return. 01.06.10