Catch-up

It's been s few months since I wrote anything. We all finished well in Ukraine. The last weekend was a little crazy. A few of is even jumped off a bridge. On my way back to shore my shoes were stolen. I ended up going home the same day everyone else did, only on a different flight, so I was actually earlier than them.
Since we've been home our little group hasn't kept in touch very well. I guess everyone has just gotten back to their lives. I miss them, though. A few of us got together to go to Meagan's wedding. Jamie got married to her missionary, and her reception was the same day as Meagan's. We managed to see them both, even though one was in Idaho and the other was in Salt Lake City. It was good to see them again.
The summer flew by really fast. I went to Vernal for a week to stay with my sister and help her with her son who was born prematurely while I was in Ukraine. He was still on oxygen while I was there. Now he's as healthy as any baby could be. I visited the grave of my grandmother who passed away while I was gone. I wish I could have seen her again and said goodbye, but in the end there are no real goodbyes anyway. I'm sure that I'll see her again. I helped my little brother get his motorcycle running and used that to get around until I could get my car fixed. Now the motorcycle is having problems again.
I got a job with my old friend Casey at a new junior high school that they built while I was on my mission. It was a lot of fun working with him, and the schedule is easy and flexible enough that I can keep it and still have time to do all my schoolwork. In the summer I did all kinds of different jobs around the school, but now that school has started I mostly just clean the bathrooms. I can't say I really enjoy it that much, but it is symbolic for me to make something so dirty spotless every day. Then the next day it's filthy again and needs to be clean. I reminds me of our lives.
A lot of things have happened with my friends while I was gone. Casey is planning on marrying his girlfriend in April. Kyle got married not long after I got back from Ukraine, and now he has a job working with me, too. Kristy had her baby a few weeks ago. I still haven't had a chance to see him yet, but I'm proud of her. I was able to spend a little time with Deb before she went to California and then to England. I've seen Allen once since I got home, but only because his wife was out of town. I've done a few things with the missionaries I served with, but not a lot. Hopefully I'll get my social life going a little more now that I'm working less. For a few weeks I was doing two jobs.
I'm shooting for staight "A"s this semester. I need it to improve my GPA, and I want to prove to myself that I can do it. I've had a rough time in some classes, though. In history they just happen to have a quiz every single time I show up late, and the teacher doesn't consider accidents on the freeway or road construction to be valid excuses to take them late. In math I accidently mixed up my book with an older edition that I had, and did all the wrong homework. Hopefully I'll find ways to make up the points that I've lost.
I have a second on-call job playing laser tag. It's an easy, fun job. I mostly just help with equipment and sometimes I go out and shoot at people to make the game more interesting. I get to be a referee sometimes, too, which just means I take a really big gun and shoot cheaters from far away.
So, that's the last few months in a page. I could go on for a long time about everything, but that would be boring even to me. My goal now is to just do well in school and become an optometrist. I feel very alone, though. I'm sure it's my fault for the most part. I can see now that I wasn't really raised in our common culture. I spent all my time with my family and don't really know how society expects me to act. As a result I'm a little weird and hard to understand. I've been trying to learn to speak in a way that isn't to confusing, but it's taking time. Everything that I say seems to have two meanings, and I usually have one in mind but everyone else understands the other. That is how I'm different. So, school is my main priority, but I'm also looking for a friend who is patient enough to learn to understand me.