So really I've been home for two weeks, but I've been really busy. I thought (well, Roger thought) that it would be a good idea to write about being home.
Honestly, there's not a lot to write about. It's the strangest feeling because not a lot has changed here, whereas I feel like I spent my entire exchange year changing. It's almost like I never left, or like I just went for a week vacation. I think I am still kind of in shock that it's over. I don't yet realize that I'm not going to see all my friends at school the next day.
The worst part about leaving was, obviously, the goodbyes. I think the hardest part was the fact that my class, being as amazing as they are, decided to give my five going away parties. It all started with my closest classmates a week before I left, then a party at school during our last block on Friday with my whole class. On Saturday there was another party with the whole class at a friends house. I wasn't planning to go to school Monday, because I left Wednesday, but was told I had to because my teachers and classmates wanted to do a going away ceremony for me with the whole school. That was one of the most amazing experiences of my exchange. That would never happen at Scona, and it just showed me how much they thought I really was part of the school. Then, finally, on Monday night at a classmate's house, we had one final goodbye party, because I would be leaving Tuesday morning for La Serena to catch my plane early Monday morning. It was so sweet of them to do all that, but it also just got harder and harder to say goodbye each time. And then, on Wednesday at the airport, all my exchange student friends from La Serena and Ovalle came to say goodbye to me and Christina, who was also a student who was leaving that day. It was so hard to say goodbye to them, but even harder to say goodbye to my host mom.
But, as hard as the goodbyes were, it was an amazing feeling to arrive home in the airport in Edmonton. It was so strange to see everything look the same, almost exactly, as when I left. My first order of business after arriving home? Sleeping. I hadn't slept most of the almost 12 hour plane ride from Santiago to Toronto, and of course it was impossible to sleep once I was in the plane on my way to Edmonton. After a nice nap, my friend came over to my house and picked me up and we went back to my highschool to say hi to people. Being back in my highschool after so long was weird, and it felt like I had never left at all.
And although it is still hard when I think about not seeing all the amazing people I have met in Chile soon, I will always keep in touch with them. I hope to go back to Chile one day, and to the other home countries of my exchange friends. Now I just have to get a job and save some money...
