so this is the new year...

Happy New Year.

2007.

My garduating year. The year of the first endings and the biggest beginnings. Last night when the ball dropped, my friends and I cheered and toasted as tradition requests. But then we were silent, absently watching the confetti and kissing couples in Times Square. Zach said, "2007. We graduate in 2007." I said, "We start college in 2007. I wonder where I'll be." Dave said, "I remember when I was 12, doing the math to see what year I would graduate. And now it's here." Melanie said, "In Romania, my new year will start 7 hours before yours will." We all looked around the room at each other, at the people we've known since elementary school. The people we've walked into school with every year for as many as 8 years. And when next September rolls around, we'll be walking into school without them. We'll be walking into school alone. But of course no one said that. The boys went back to their ping pong game. The girls went back to the watching of the ping pong game and the talking about nothing in particular.
On one hand it's scary. I won't know anyone or anything, I'll have this entirely new world that I have to figure out completely on my own. But then I think about where I'll be in 12 hours. High school. I'm there before the sun is up, and it smells, and I'm surrounded by people that really don't want to be there, and taught by teachers that really don't want to be there, either. I'll have 25 minutes in the cafeteria for lunch, and if I'm late to any of my classes I'll be lectured and handed a detention. On the other hand, I can't wait for the day when I walk out of that place, knowing that I never have to walk back in again.
2007 is a big year for me. I will leave my high school, my friends, my home, and my family for "the real world." I will go from brown-bagging it and living by other people's schedules to running my own life. I go into 2007 playing the child, I go out of 2007 playing the adult. A year of change, and of fear. A year of finding out what I am made of. A year of finally taking on the world for the first time.

It will be very interesting...