growing up.

it's december! and advent's here! which means christmas is coming!

yesterday, for reasons unknown to myself, i listened to josh groban's christmas carols... and it reminded me of the shows the pushparatnam cousins (used to) put on for the pushparatnam adults. gosh we must've done it for like 10 years before we got too old for it. i especially remember trying to sing in parts, as well as the "magic" shows we did. hehe. good times.

i'm done with classes for the term... soon i'll have new classes to fall asleep in. =P i have two papers tomorrow - lit and cog dev, and then chem on tue, and chem lab on wednesday. i honestly haven't started studying for any of my finals yet, cos i've been so busy working on the big assignments that were due last week... but hopefully the groundwork i've been doing over the term will help pull me through.

on friday i was told that i seem to have grown up since i got here... that i seem less naive. and that got me thinking about whether i really have grown, or if they're just beginning to see the sides of me that they hadn't seen before. i think it's a bit of both. i think people rarely get an accurate first impression of me, and it takes quite a while for the whole me to be unearthed and understood. i like it that way. at the same time, i feel as if i've matured over the past three months somewhat... and i've discovered just how independent i am (which scares myself sometimes), but how that doesn't mean i don't need people.

on thursday lucy (from the moss street children's center) climbed into my lap, and as i was sitting there holding her in my arms, i realized how my supply of hugs has gone down drastically since i got here, and how much i actually miss it.

i've also been thinking a lot about my academic future, and narrowing down the field i wanna end up working in. it's intimidating, and yet so incredibly exciting that all these abstract, airy-fairy castles in the air i used to have about what i wanna do are becoming increasingly concrete. things are coming together, or at least they seem to be for now. it's always nice to have a sense of purpose.

i'm gonna be 20 next year.