I hear it's nice in the summer, some snow would be nice...

Sitting in class right now.  Creative writing. Twelve kids and only one other English major. So it goes.

I'm loving studying literature these days.  My Vonnegut course is amazing, as usual Stu Peterfreund is the highlight of my semester.  "Understanding the Bible" is going well, in the sense that I'm wild about the material.  Not the book itself necessarily, but the fascinating history and geography and people behind it.  The professor, however, is quiet and meek, and is impossible to hear from anywhere in the room.  So we're not looking at an easy A, but it's fascinating stuff.

I have a face I cannot show, I make the rules up as I go...

So much has changed since last spring.

Obvious things first, I had a breast reduction.  That's right, I have little boobs now.  I look very different, but I'm much more comfortable with myself and my back feels the best it has since I was a kid. So woo surgery!

The recovery has been kind of hard on me (and probably harder on Rich, who has had to deal with me fairly full-time).  For the past three weeks, not only have I not been myself, I have forgotten who she is.  I've been moody, and antisocial, and strange.

It was so easy, and the words so sweet. You can't remember, you try to feel the beat ...

Today, I got a letter from myself. I wrote it in a computer class that I took in the tenth grade.  It was dated December 19, 2005.  I was sixteen, I still lived with both of my parents and what was then all of my brothers, I had just fallen in love for the first time, and I was as open-hearted and warm as anyone is ever likely to be.  My friends were my whole world, my mom was my hero (some things never change), and I was so willing and so able to put my whole soul out in the open.  Some of this letter is awkward, some is embarassing, some doesn't make sense to anyone but me, and some of it is about people and things that live in my past like a beautiful scene in an old movie.  Reading this letter was like having lunch with myself at sixteen.  Though it is a little strange, I thought it was important, and I'm going to reprint it here, with as few corrections as modesty will allow :). I'd like to introduce you to Rachel Cathleen Esteban, aged 16.