Magic letters

Over the past 2 or so years I've gotten some fantastic letters from some fantastic people. But here's a little something I never thought I would say: I think letters from sister missionaries are 10 million times better than letters from other missionaries. (No offense to my boys. They wrote some dang good letters.)

On Friday I got a letter from my dear friend Katie. She's eventually going to Hong Kong. (Yes, this is the Katie who inspired this post and the one I went October wakeboarding with.) The letter really wasn't anything that special. There were no crazy stories or experiences shared. But it was so wonderful to hear from her. She's been gone less than a month but I know it'll be weird going back to school and not having the opportunity to randomly run into her on campus. Somehow we always would and it made the days brighter.

I've gotten out of the habit of checking the mail ever since Jordan got home because his arrival meant the arrival of basically everyone else in the months soon after. There wasn't much chance of getting a letter in the last month or two before any of my friends came home. Checking the mail was one of very few constants I had from May 2010 to May 2012. It's interesting how things like that just become a part of you. In some ways I felt like a piece of me was lost when Jordan got home because suddenly there was no need to do the thing I had done for two whole years. And as John Green once wrote and Colin Singleton once said, "I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing." Usually I would agree, but in this case I think it has.

Getting that letter from Katie was exhilarating. I love doing semi-irresponsible things (longboarding, wakeboarding, climbing things, staying up until ridiculous o'clock w/ friends etc.) but there's a nifty kind of exhilaration that comes from opening a letter from a close friend. I didn't think I would ever really experience it again, even though I have a number of friends who are girls going off for 18 months, people I'll only communicate with through letters. This exhilaration does come in different forms, depending on who the letter is from, but it is always there in some way. Letter writing is a lost art and I'm so happy that I get to keep changing that.

T-minus 18 days until I return to Utah. Get excited, Utah friends.

Last YouTube video I watched: Rivers and Roads