overflowing....

i'm a weird person.

i'm mostly packed and ready to go. i'm excited about visiting prague and budapest again. it's gonna be a good month.

but last night i couldn't handle anything or anyone. i knew scott was coming over to say goodbye before i went away for a month, and that was fine, but when he brought over the girl he likes, who i hadn't met before (hadn't met before was the problem, not the first half), i snapped.... not directly at anyone, because no one's to blame, but in general... basically "let's hang out with lara before she goes away for a month!" became "let's all play a board game or two together while lara hides in her room"

most people love being around other people and enjoy meeting new people, etc., etc., etc.... me, i get overwhelmed sometimes.

it's not that i'm not excited about europe, there's just a lot of other factors at play.
* i think the emotion level has been pretty high for me the past few days, with saying goodbye to 60 percent of my REU students.
* although i love europe, i hate packing and i hate long flights
* i'm generally not capable of sleeping on airplanes so i won't really sleep again until monday night.
* last time i left the country for a month my grandma died, and there was nothing i could do about it (including make it for the funeral)
* it takes a lot of energy to be the lara who does a great job in front of people every single day for the summer with the REU... don't get me wrong, i love it, but sometimes they 100 percent happy and helpful shell has to crack..... i've got about 6 hours to get back to being that for another 2.5 weeks.

all of these together plus some more, and i was in a very brittle/fragile mood. when scott showed up with his friend i whispered "no offense, but i can't handle meeting new people today"... i met new people anyhow, but later on in the evening i cracked... scott said i was acting how i do when i'm mad at him, but he knew i wasn't mad at anyone, so he wasn't quite sure how to relate to me... when he gave up on me being in a good mood and left me alone for a bit, i couldn't stop crying for a bit... not that i'm sad or anything, just, it was like the emotional tension/overflow release just opened up and i couldn't stop until all the built up emotion (good/bad/or otherwise) leaked out.

notably, i made a *fantastic* new impression on scott's friend (extreme sarcasm), and today my eyes are incredibly dry today from the amount of tears that involuntarily came out of them last night. it's gonna be a long 24 hours, but 24 hours from NOW, i'll be in prague, mid afternoon, possibly hiding in a garden or showing my REU kids charles bridge. *that* is a happy thought.

more updates from europe. :P