I've come to the conclusion that going on exchange is a most unhealthy experience. Think about it. You're taken from all that is close, familiar and comfortable and thrown headfirst into the freezing cold wilderness of everything that is distant, faraway and altogether very strange. You make friends, first out of necessity more than anything else, then subsequently form relationships that arise from common suffering and mutual empathy, last minute grocery runs because you need eggs for pancakes, late night adventures through the library and at the end of a year, just when you've ironed out the kinks and rubbed the uncomfortable corners off each other and when you've finally gotten past the awkwardness of being friends to being friends, you're expected to just drop everything and sever all ties. I know I know one can always keep in touch via email and whathaveyounots but you and I and everyone else knows that that simply isn't the same. Words on a screen and a distant voice do not a friendship make. It's cruel inhuman treatment that's what it is. Sigh.

Mistake me not friends, I do miss all you guys back home and all over the globe but I also love love love all my friends here. Gah. Enough of this rubbish, there will be more than a fair share of this angsting come June, I promise.

Oh, and proof I've put on weight: