A blog entry from Christy, an Outbound from Upper Michigan to Chile
T -10 days and counting:
Well folks… 10. I can now count how many days I have left here in Chile on TWO hands! eek! It’s pretty paralyzing that I’m actually going home. My stomach feels empty and I couldn’t get it off my mind in the morning! I’ll be hugging my family in 11 days. What?! A while ago I bought a little blue book for people here to write in. I’ve been pretending I’m not leaving and haven’t touched it. But today I brought it to class and started passing it around. I’m totally in the denial stage! I need to start packing too… How much time do I need for that anyway??
I’m feeling pretty sad! I’m definitely not ready to return to my ‘other life’. I miss my family tons and friends of course, but I’m not ready to leave everything behind here for what could be forever. So I have two and a half days left of school at San Ramon Nonato. I am actually really going to miss it. The uniforms, the recesses, going to buy snacks at the kiosk in the patio, going to Top Dog a gillion times a week, my wonderful classmates, walking into the classroom, setting my backpack down, and going to greet my friends with a hug and a kiss, the awkward daily prayers that I still stand silently through, having teachers tell me to put up my hair only to take it down two seconds later, the closeness of my classmates, my rambunctious classmates, the few teachers that still think I don’t understand what they’re saying, the impossible tests I randomly fill in and sleep through, and so much more. It’s a log of little things.
But I’m great. My spanish is good. I don’t get headaches every day from translating anymore, I don’t need to think of every word in english and then translate it to spanish, I don’t really have to focus to understand people, and I dream a lot in Spanish! Lots of ups and downs on an exchange with the language. But I’m on an up.
I will be leaving my second home on July 17th at 9:10 p.m. from Santiago. I will then have a grueling ten hour-something flight to Dallas, Texas where I will wait for 4 hours before I fly the last piece of my trip to the Minneapolis International Airport! There on July 18th, I will be reunited with my family who will be waiting for me! (right??)
So that leaves me… with way too low of a number of days on my countdown clock on my phone.
I am full of so many emotions. I’m excited, ready, not-ready, happy, sad, torn, and so many more. Some days I feel like I’ve learned everything I should have learned here, I’m satisfied with my español, and I’m ready to see my family. But other days, I feel like I have so much to do still, I have memories to make, bonds to deepen, spanish to learn, and dreams to complete. Most days, July 17th seems like my death date. We tend not to talk about that day… Although I’m excited to see my family as I walk through those airport doors. Seeing them with signs or balloons or how ever it will be. Hugging my Dad and brothers and sisters and my too-big-nephews and nieces. I cry when I think about those last good byes that I’ll have to make with my friends and family HERE. I have another life that I’ll be walking away from. I know that we’ll keep in touch. But it won’t be the same.
So when people from home tell me that I have a little time left, I don’t know how to feel. Or people say “no te vallas, Christy!” (don’t go!). My heart hurts! Inside of me, I have this snow globe of emotions. Usually all the glitter is at the bottom and things are calm. But now, life has taken the snow globe and shaken it with all its might. aghhhh.
But anyywwaysss. That’s the big news. I’m great. I love life. I love hugging my friends at school and laughing with them. I love knowing the language and being able to be me. I love my family. I love school. I love Chile.
These next few days, I’ll be focusing on loving every minute I have left, hugging everyone a little bit tighter, and appreciating a bit more all the good things I have right now.