I walked into my apartment today for the last time and I just wanted to cry. I realized just how much this place has become my home. This is my room, my bed, my closet, my bathroom, my kitchen, my dining room, my family. I feel so comfortable here and so at home. This is part of what I don't want to leave. Why I do not want to leave this wonderful place and this wonderful experience cannot be put into a few words or a few sentences. It is the sensation. The feeling. It is this that I don't want to leave. And it is just this that can't be explained. I have been trying to explain it in my head. Trying to sum it up into words, but it feels nearly impossible. Although of course I will still try. This has been my life for the past 17 1/2 weeks. My friends are here, my family is here, my school is here. I have all of these incredible memories, so much new knowledge and ability, so many great stories and experiences, and when I leave it will all be behind me. Yes I will have "memories to last a lifetime" and a great experience that I can reminisce about and draw from. But my life will never be the same. I will never be with all of these friends just hanging out and living life in Ecuador again. I will never be part of that special international-student connection again where anytime you see a white person on campus you feel like you can smile at them because you share something special and unique together, because you understand. I won't be going to school on a campus that has a campus dog and a pirate ship in the lagoon and palm trees everywhere and the best cookies and salads ever. I can't just go visit Veronica's office anymore. I won't be spending my weekends either going out to the bars with my friends and exploring our city or traveling to brand new cities to eat new foods and see new culture and learn more about myself and my friends and traveling in general. All of my grades will matter, the weather won't always be the same, I won't have a queen-size bed anymore, and my life won't be constantly exciting or interesting anymore. Study abroad cannot be fully understood by even those who experience it, but those who have not experienced it cannot possibly understand how it feels to come and also how it feels to go. Ecuador, with it's incredible amount of diversity and culture, has taught me so much. It has stolen my heart and a piece of my soul will always remain here. Ecuador will always remain in my mind exactly as I have seen it and in that way my leaving is almost like a mourning process as well. This experience, because it started, had to end and on Monday when I fly back to the United States it will end. It is like love. It is so much better to have been here and to be sad that it is ending than to have never been here at all, but it is still an emotionally-trying experience for me to leave it all behind. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but living in a different country for 18 weeks is an unforgettable and marvelous experience and ending it is difficult. I will always have the thousands of photos that I have taken and the funny stories and great memories. I will always be able to chat on about Ecuador and study abroad and my semester here for hours, but as time passes the smells and sights and memories will become less clear in my mind. The things about living here that have been trying or lonely or difficult or frustrating or boring or awful are outweighed 10 times over by the goodness of it all. And the memories of the annoyances and trying times have already left my brain. As I sit here on my queen-sized Ecuadorian bed in my Ecuadorian home for one of the last times I try and soak it all up: the smell of the damp air, the sounds of the traffic, the smell of my coffee/hot chocolate drink that I invented about a month in, the feeling of my comforter on my bare ankles, and the feeling that I have accomplished something great for myself. I have done it. I can be proud of myself and look back on my time in college without the regret of not challenging myself. I have challenged myself and I have risen to that challenge with a smile on my face and a brain willing to learn. My first goal in coming here was to get through it. To know that I could live in a foreign country for a semester and survive. That I wouldn't need to get on a plane back home and give up because of loneliness or homesickness or the difficulty of the language. My goals progressed way beyond that and they became what my semester became. A semester of challenge, of learning, of seeing culture, of a better understanding of the world, of making new friends, of enjoying myself, of perceiving and learning through every step of every day, of traveling, and traveling, and more traveling, of seeing God's beauty and creation and people, a semester of experiencing constant new-ness and being completely and totally in love with it.
A constant refrain heard between my friends and I was, "Is this our lives?" As in, are we really this incredibly and totally blessed to be experiencing this kind of thing? Is this really our lives or is this a dream? I feel like when I return to the United States this may seem like a dream, and in a way it was, but also, in a very important way, this is my life.
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