Again, the past couple of days have been unreal. I’ve gotten a chance to talk to friends from back home, family and friends who also decided to study around the world. I said goodbye to friends going home early. I’ve made new friends with less than twenty days left here. It’s unbelievable. The other international students (dutch, german, etc.) have been walking around with little ‘autograph’ books for everyone to sign. So of course I also jumped on the bandwagon with my own little going away book haha. I’m waiting to read it when I get home… It’s so strange. To feel that there are so many and yet so few days left here. I find myself flowing between people and places, photographing the reverberating melody of sounds and recording a symphony of pictures. A wine glass from our first wine festival. A bracelet from the garden route. A rock from Cederburg. I have yet to have a day when my I’m not holding my sides from laughing or singing at the top of my lungs to the songs of goodbye’s and see-ya-laters. I’ve met movement makers and soul shakers and all along I’ve been scared I wouldn’t be able to keep them all. The reality, as we come closer and closer to leaving, that no, I can’t keep them, is both crushing and comforting. It’s kind of like the first time you jump in the pool, all the water rushes around you, everything outside is muted and for a moment all you hear is the sound of water until you hit the bottom, push up and break the surface again. Above surface, for a few seconds, everything hits with a different vibration and a new intensity. That’s what it feels like and through it all whether it's 20 days or a few hours I'm praising God. For the significant and insignificant. For the ability to catch and release. For this and that and all of it.
For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
