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I started this blog with 4,469.52 dollars in my bank account. That was the leftover savings from my time at Old Soul and financial aid. That was September. I'm now coming up to the final $2,000 Stretch, which includes one more rent check (-500) and a few straggling bills (-100). This is certainly the end of the runway and I'm starting to feel like James Bond at the start of GoldenEye when he rides a motorcycle off a cliff to skydive into a free-falling plane just in time to yank the flight-stick back and lift the plane into the air. If I were James Bond, I'd be going to Turkey. 

Tomorrow I'm taking Final #1, followed by #2 on Thursday. 

But I don't want to talk about that. 

I want to talk about love and long-distance, about friendship and trust and backgammon and we'll listen to something on vinyl and drink cheap red wine. I want to talk about the cartoons and the short stories and the late nights for no reason. The kick-back Mondays. The Segway tour. The local gossip and the national news. Rediscovering Of Monsters and Men. I want to talk about the small-town feel of friends yelling up at me through my open window. I want to share the good news about Kelly's new love. I want to talk about the ESL Teaching Presentation project. The trip to Santa Rosa, seeing old friends who felt like characters I once dreamed about. I want to talk about how much I loved the new Muppet movie. The dinner at Spaghetti Factory with Lance and his brother and some Old Soulers. I don't want to talk about school. I'm anxious enough thinking about the acceptance letter I'm expecting from Istanbul. 

Jenny continues to teach onward in South Korea, acclimating slowly but surely, finding the once-foreign to suddenly feel so normal. We Skype randomly throughout the week. We've kept in touch and the relationship feels equally supported from both shores of the Pacific, which rocks. It's certainly been interesting being in what I like to call a RelationSkype (patent pending), but I feel strength from our puppy-eyed goodbyes and the image of us reuniting in some Turkish airport. It sucks not to be able to touch and kiss, but if Jason Lee ever taught me anything, it was that you can't know the sweet without the sour, so I think the distance only makes the pay-off sweeter. 

That said, it's time to rest. 

Tomorrow is a day that will shape the rest of my entire life.