Boredom

Once upon a time I looked forward to school breaks with great anticipation. They meant uninterrupted days of sleeping in, lounging, hanging out with friends; all without the impediment of school work stealing me away from what I considered much more interesting and worthwhile activities.

Funny how situations are reversed: I now feel anxiety ridden about all the dead time there is to fill. I have officially had four days of "winter break," and I feel as if I'm going insane. I find myself waking up in the morning and questioning how I'm going to kill the next 14 hours. I attempt to break it into chunks: "Okay, I'm going to read, then go running, then bathe, then clean my room, and have lunch- luckily the morning seems to go by fairly quickly but there is only so much knitting, reading and writing I can do in the afternoon. I find myself counting the days until I leave for vacation- less that a week but at this pace it might as well be a month.

I know I should appreciate the free time. It is probably the only time in my life that I'll get so much down time, but it only makes me lonely. I have no one to talk to and so I spend the day living in my head imagining all the productive things I could be accomplishing with my life in America. In addition, it makes me embarrassingly resentful towards the villagers. I keep looking at them and wondering why someone can't go out of their way to be nice to me instead of asking for my things: "I want some of the food you cooked. " "I want you to knit me a scarf." "I want you too borrow me your game." As a result I try to hide- in my room or down by the dam, so I won't snap at them, but I know being such a hermit can't be healthy for me. Sigh...only a few days until I can leave for Grahamstown and be with my friends again...Sigh.