"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.