Sitting on the Roof of the World

As my journey reaches its end, I feel like this song sums up my time in Spain.

"I climbed a mountain, not knowing that I had
Thought it was just a point from A to B...

And there I was, sitting on the roof of the world,
there I was, with all the gods,
not knowing how I got there or how to leave...

people say, whats so special about being back here, with everyone so close,
Thats the point.  I don't want to be different, I just want to fit it.

There I was, there I was, sitting on the roof of the world
there I was, with all the gods,

not knowing how I got there or how to leave..."

These words, though not explaining my experience verbatim, touch on some key points.  This semester was a mountain for me to climb, and now that I am at the top, I'm still not quite sure how I got here.  And I find that two weeks (to the day) until I board that plane a little to soon.  On the other hand, when friends ask me why I can't wait to be home, they don't understand how close I am to the people there, to my family, my brother.  I almost needed this experience to discover what things in life really matter.  In the words of a classmate of mine, "when you are in another country, you really find out who you are."  And in discovering that, I also found out what really matters in my life.  

Before this experience, I thought that studying abroad was just something you did in college.  It was a good idea, one gains good experiences and language skills.  Since I started studying Spanish when I was 14, I just knew that fall semester of my junior year in college, I would study in Spain.  So last semester, I knew it was time to look for and apply to a program.  It was a never a decision I made, and I am not even sure I wanted to.  I just knew I had to, in this world I had created inside my head.  

I saw it as just a point from A to B.  

But it had been so much more than than.

So now Im sitting in a café, countries and ocean and hours away from everything that I love and hold dear, sitting on the roof of the world, and I find myself at a loss of how to really leave.  Its oddly surreal.  Even more so knowing that life at home can't possibly be exactly how I left it.  There are new people at my family church, who don't know me at all.  One of my best friends is getting married.  My brother is even taller.  And life at Marlboro, that surely will be different as well.  I will be in my second semester of my junior year, having to preparing for senior year.  New students will be on campus, students who don't know me, and yet are friends with the friends I left behind.  And yet other friends won't be on campus, graduated or studying abroad.  So there is no going back.  Not really.  That doesn't mean that I can't wait to see each and every face I've missed, the lights of my small town a lit for Christmas, the snow covered Vermont mountains out of the library windows at school.

So in two weeks, I will take a taxi, to a bus, to a plane, to another plane, to the waiting arms for my family, with the knowledge that I'd climbed mountains.