Thanks, Girls.

In one week I'll be in America, and for the past week I have done... nothing I'm willing to discuss on my blog!  No, no, I kid.  It hasn't been anything too crazy, just a whole ton of parties and laying in parks, saying goodbye to the friends I have made this year.  It's weird to think that I got here less than a year ago, or that at this time last year I was packing up my flat in Budapest, burying Bencelita, and saying goodbye to my friends there.  I was also sobbing hysterically pretty much nonstop.  In the past year, I have obtained a masters degree and figured out quite a few things about teaching and life in general.

All of my friends here are American.  I spend my free time almost exclusively with girls from my master's program.  It has created a different sort of dynamic, one that is temporary and foreign and intense.  And this year, while I am certainly sad to say "hasta luego" to those friends, it seems almost natural.  Everyone is going on to something new and exciting, a new adventure in a new place, and this is how life should be.  We have been camp friends to each other: thrown together in an intense situation to become impossibly close for a limited amount of time, always knowing that real life would come back some day and separate us again.  And I'm sure that we will keep in some sort of touch, because I really do love these girls, but it feels natural to split up and move on without each other to the next thing.

My "year off life" is almost over, thank God, and it's almost time to go back to the real thing.  But parts of it have been like a dream, almost exclusively thanks to the awesome American women I've gotten to spend it with.

Carissa

Juliet

Katie

Chelsi

Jessica

Mary

Megan