Okay, Saturday, I think, is fairly easily summed up.
On Saturday morning, for the first, and very unfortunate, instance, I woke at around three in the morning and could not fall back asleep. I laid in my bed, in the dark, and thought about leaving Gotland.
I really wish that I had written this in the moment; I could remember the feeling better then, but all I could think of was that I didn't want to leave. It made me sick, anxious, apprehensive, even to think about going away from Gotland. I thought about me, on a map, situated safely here on this tiny island off of mainland Sweden; how I'd planned to be here since we'd bought our plane tickets at the beginning of the year, and how, now, it was over. I was still there, on the island, and already, I wanted to turn my future self around and stay on the island for ever.
The next morning, after a minimal amount of sleep, I woke up. The feeling wasn't as bad anymore; it had turned tepid and I could forget it whilst I was occupied with packing my bags, shaking rugs, sweeping, and cleaning up the house we had for the week. The Hummer we had borrowed from Alec couldn't hold us and our bags all in one trip, so Dad made two trips to Visby and back. The boys went first, while the girls stayed at home and finished everything off. When the house was essentially done, Mom sent Melissa and I off to look for wildflowers for a little vase in the house, so we walked down this road and picked some along the walk. When everything was finished with, we sat down, turned the T.V. on, and waited.
When Dad arrived to ferry us over to Visby, we got all the other bags and backpacks still at the house and piled them into the car. Mom and Dad said goodbye to the family that rented us the house, and we drove away. I waved at the lady, who was waving at us, and laughed at her dog, who was barking us off.
We went to the hotel and sometime we met Alec and we decided that, as a last hurrah, we would go see a few more things a little ways away. Alec took us to these hight cliffs where we could look out and see Visby, and if we looked over, on our knees, we could peek over the edge of the cliff to the ocean and rocks below. After that, we drove to this place called Sommarland, where Pippi Longstocking's house is, and we saw her house through this window; not very well, of course, but it was better than having to go through all that commercialized park stuff.
We wanted to get ice cream after that, so Alec and Dad went to get the bags from the Gotlan d Ring office, where we'd dropped them off, and they left us at this ice cream place. We wanted to get something, but the line was really long and our other option was soft serve, which kind of took the fun out of it. We decided to bag the ice cream idea and just meet them at the front of the boat terminal which would take us away.
The feeling came back as we were walking along the harbor. I got this idea that I wanted, needed, to stop, to hold still and stand on the ground, and, literally, grow roots into the ground. It was depressing to leave. So I plan on being back.
We got on the boat, found our seats, and sat around for a while. Some of them went up to the upper level to watch us moving away, and I went up after a while with Melissa when I realized where they had gone. I stayed up there by myself for a while after everyone was gone, which was nice, to see Visby getting smaller; like a goodbye.
The boat ride was long; they showed a movie, which was okay, and eventually (I keep using that word) we were there. We took a bus to Stockholm after getting our luggage, and there, after some confusion, we took the subway to a station near our hotel. After we got of the station, we got lost for a while until we found a sort of bridge across the railroad and towards our hotel. When we got there, Mom and Dad checked in, we settled into our rooms (one of which is this awesome big suite with big windows (you can see the bay from all the windows on our side of the hotel), and then we went down to the hotel restaurant and ate ridiculously expensive meals because we couldn't think of what else to do for dinner. Later we went up to our rooms, read scriptures, had family prayer, and eventually split off to separate rooms, watched T.V. for a while, and went to bed.
