Thursday, December 10, 2009

"Is this real life?!?!??!"

The “in Santiago” part of the “Sophie in Santiago” blog is ending for good in four hours. This is all too big to think about. Since I can’t formulate coherent thoughts right now, I’m going to make a bulleted list of my incoherent thoughts:

• I’ve been planning my study abroad semester since my senior year of high school. Now it is over. I have used it as motivation and something to look forward to since I was seventeen—a semester of break from normalcy. I don’t think that I will be in this type of situation again.
• I will never have this type of experience again—living far away I mean. I don’t see myself ever living in a country other than the US permanently, which isn’t something I could have said four months ago.
• I leave for Brazil in four hours, where I will be meeting and staying with a few random relatives who I got in touch with via e-mail six months ago.
• I took my friends to the airport today—these are people who I have spent every day with (almost) for the past three and a half months. Although I’m pretty sure I will see almost all of them again, I highly doubt that we’ll ever all be together. Except at Kim’s wedding. (Kimi, I hope you still read this.)
• “Is this real life?!?!??!?” (The second most commonly used phrase of our program—after “It’s fine.”)
• There is a strong likelihood that I will never return to Chile. If I do, it will definitely be in a different context—I will be a tourist rather than a student. Chances are it will be in a long time.
• I will not be speaking in Spanish every day anymore (well, really that’s a three-weeks-from-now concern.) It’s pretty likely that if I do, people won’t be able to understand me because of Chile’s crazy dialect. They don’t exactly put “po” after every sentence anywhere else…
• There is a very strong likelihood that I will never see Mercedes again after tomorrow morning. I am trying not to think about this.

I’ll try to post from Brazil, Peru, and will definitely be posting reflections from home. For now, chau from Chile.

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