Snapshot

I'm leaving Europe today and heading back to the States.  I'm saying goodbye to Mia in Gothenburg, Sweden and meeting up with my sister in Boston some 12 hours later.

I decided I'm taking europe with me (as if I can just make that decision) because saying goodbye is just too bitter sweet. At least, I'm taking the things I have learned and the experiences I have had and using them to bolster me in the weeks, months, years to come.

Study abroad has changed me. More appropriately, it has magnified the "me" that already existed.  It has opened my eyes to my passions and the way I want to live my life.  Someone I respect told me recently that study abroad helped him build on the things he already had inside him.  I think that is true for me too.  It has been a time of personal growth and self discovery but it does not build from nothing.  The beginnings, the foundations were there already.  Now I can only hope that this energy, vitality, passion, and positivity stays with me, rooted so deep into my being that it can never be taken away.

I'm taking a mental picture, a snapshot, of the confidence, strength, resilience, and excitement I feel right now and hope that I will always be able to carry these empowering feelings with me. I know there will be hard times ahead (the one year anniversary of my Dad's death is less than two months away), but at least I feel capable in this moment.  And when I don't feel as empowered, I have these memories and the friends I have made - along with a new found appreciation for the friends and family that I have missed so dearly - to bolster me.

I think this is as good a time as any to give a special shout out to everyone who has been there for me this year and a special thanks to everyone who has allowed me to be a guest in there home.  I am continually amazed and humbled by the amount of love that has been given to me and the amount of energy that has been spent on me in this last year...not to mention my entire life. It is this support that has given me the strength to keep exploring, keep smiling, keep loving life.  And it means the world to me.

In this moment, I couldn't be more excited for the next adventure.

Scrap-booking

At the moment I am sifting through pictures hand-picked from over 1000 I have taken this semester.  Somehow, I managed to narrow it down to 120.  It will be a challenge to compress this experience into 30 pages, but with these pictures in my hands, I already know it is worth attempting.  Just seeing these memories in tangible form - off the computer screen and printed onto glossy paper - is rewarding and exciting.

I realize I still have two weeks left of this experience but if I don't do this now - take the time to reflect while it is fresh in my mind - there is a good chance that so much of it will be lost.  I will always remember this experience as such an exciting and energizing period in my life but I want to make sure I remember the details - and be able to convey them as well as possible to my friends and family.  (While somehow refraining from repeating myself a thousand times and annoying everyone within a three mile radius!)

So, I am attempting to tell a story with each page I make, and trying not to get too exhausted by the cutting-room process :)