Dear ones,

A few minutes after I walked in the door after finishing my Ear Training Final, Ben called me! We talked for an hour and 18 minutes...?

He sounded a little awkward/nervous when I picked up the phone. I said, "you have great timing! I just walked in the door after finishing my Harmonic Dictation Final!" He sounded like maybe he thought I was being a little sarcastic about him having good timing. (Sometimes I think I'm "too cool" and he gets discouraged??? I probably need to work on that). He said he had just finished something "almost as fun," working on organizing his finances. (Interesting, it's something that he was originally inspired to do pre-bomb by... me!) So that when he went to a tax preparer, he would "look organized" even though he wasn't "actually organized." Then he asked me if it was about 15 degrees outside [that's FAHRENHEIT for you international ladies ;\) ] , I laughed and said no, I am so spoiled in atlanta, it is only in the 30s... but we are supposed to get some torrential rain and 40 mph winds later this week! I made a joke about how I didn't know how I'd ever return to the northern lands.

There was a little pause and I said, "so, you got to talk to your brother C about him switching schools?" B started telling me that he thinks his brother, who is in his second year of college, is stalling and getting depressed, feeling really down and also torn about finishing his studies at the university he's currently at. brother C said everyone around him "has an extremely shallow view of religion and life." How brother C's piano teacher is really encouraging and supportive, and has offered to let C move into her [the teacher's] house so he can focus more on his practicing. B said that C's roommate situation is really distracting, apparently one of the roommates is "banging whatever cheerleader that walks in the door." B then told me that he felt that his brother C was going through a similiar crisis to what B went through in college, and he really wanted to show his younger brother that there was a world outside the college he's frustrated with. FYI both brother C's college and B's college are conservative Christian colleges. B said that he wanted his brother "to be able to see people do something completely nuts and get a degree for it." And that if his brother "put his energy toward something he really believed in--he would light a fire and just go."