This is the End

So here we are, or, here I am, staring down at the last 30 days of my exchange year, and as my blog tells, I am at a loss of words. Of course I promised several times throughtout the year that I would begin to write more constantly, but because of my daily life and my desire to experience and not just write about experience, I was kept from ever putting any thoughts down onto (e-)paper. In a way, this blog is a definite failure, as it failed to capture the goals I had marked by its creation: namely, to document my year so that others could learn something from it and so that I sometime in the future could look back and reflect. I am very ambivalent about my decision to not write. Part of me is quite regretful, as I feel that because of my lack of writing I will not be able to remember this year as the decades roll by. But at the same time, I feel this wholeness having not written much of anything. Even if I had written blog posts every single week, I still would have never been able to satisfyingly summarize what the year was to me. Many parts of this experience can not be translated to word, they are subtle and, more importantly, heart-felt. They symbolize a deepness of the mark that this life has left on me, many parts of which I wish to keep to myself, which is maybe a subconscious reason for my lack of desire to write. The reawakening literary nerd inside me believes that in a sense, this blog does accurately represent my year, because from the outside it looks pretty shallow, but if you understand the little tidbits of it all, then you can also understand and appreciate the beauty as a whole. I will never be able to take this year and fully present it to someone else, I can tell stories of wild adventures but the listener will never be able to understand how it really was from my perspective. Through that, my year will remain mostly an experience just for myself, something that I will always look back at and smile with some nostalgic grin. What I at least hope that this blog does, if it isn't inform, is inspire. I will not be able to make anyone relive my adventures, but I would love for them to go out and start an adventure themselves. I hope my year stands as proof, that we really are limitless, that man can accomplish anything he wants to if he sets his mind to it. This whole year was never a part of the plan for me. The ball fell to my feet and I just let it roll. I hope this can go out as a reminder that people should bounce on the small chances, because one can never know where they might lead. Throughout weeks of preparation for this year, we always heard the sentence, "Never say no (except to drugs of course)." We were all encouraged to always say yes, to accept every invitation, because we could never know when that one small moment could result in a positive change for the rest of the year. And that is also advice that I would like to leave with you, that we should always jump at the slightest twitch of oppurtunity. Fate is a complicated thing. If we say no once, in the grand scheme of things, it will make no major difference. A passed oppurtunity is an oppurtunity unknown, our decisions will lead us to some destination regardless of the path we took there. But sometimes one path is prettier than another. This year, I chose another path and even though at the end of it all I will be back where I started, this road was more beautiful than any other road that I have stepped across. And that has made all the difference.

So go out. Live life. Love life. Love yourself. And only say no to drugs and and candy that isn't wrapped.