El Fin

So in the beginning of February when I was preparing to go to Chile, I thought about it constantly. There was a always a part of my mind reminding me of the tiny amount of time I had left until my plane would be taking off. But it felt like it would never happen, like the seconds ticking by would never add up, that February 19th would never actually arrive. And then it did. My mom and I drove to Conneticut and for the first time in my life, I went through security without her. After walking through the metal detector and slinging my backpack back into place, I smiled and waved goodbye to her and then walked towards my gate. None of it felt real. Not flying by myself to Atlanta. Not meeting ten other exchange students in the airport in Atlanta. Not checking into our hotel together in Miami. Nothing. In the moment all the little things that were happening seemed perfectly normal, but when I stopped for a minute to think about the bigger picture it was unreal. Ridiculous. Impossible. There was no way I was actually going to be arriving in Chile in some small number of hours. What even was Chile? How could I be sure that it really existed?
At some point in the last six months, the roles reversed. Chile became my reality, my home, my life and the US became a distant dream, something that my head thought would happen someday but no other part of me believed. The Spanish language infiltrated my brain, pushing out all traces of Chinese and a good portion of English. The school skirt stopped bothering me and I became accustomed (should mention that I had to google the spelling of accostomed because acostumed didn't quite look right but I could swear it was spelled like that) to the idea that girls sit with crossed legs all the time. Onces-- pancito y cafecito-- became so normal that when making a presentation about the US it didn't even occur to me to mention that onces doesn't exist in the US.
So right now, I'm back to the dream state. I have a week left in Puerto Natales. That means somehow, in some way, I've got to say goodbye to my reality and live in the dream. Again. Only this time, the sense of excitement isn't there. Because before, I knew that I would always come back. That no matter what happened in the dream world, I would be back in the real world in August. This time, the dream world is my future. I might never see the real world again. But I still have a week or so before that hits for real. Right now, my life is in Puerto Natales and I can't imagine my life in the US as my life.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am really excited to see my friends and family again. But at the same time the Chilean half of me has to say goodbye to her friends, her family, her school, her culture for an unknown possibly infinite amount of time.
In short, when my six-thirty am flight leaves the south of Chile next Monday, I'm going to be the wacko on the plane who spends the entire time staring out the window, looking for Puerto Natales and crying.