Suffice it 2 Say by Daniel Walker

Before I get carried away, I'd like to apologize to my millions of adoring fans and avid readers for not following through on my ~BONUS~ blog post that was promised to arrive around last Wednesday.  You can email customer service if you would like a refund for the hours of time you spent anxiously hitting refresh on your desktop in hopes that another blog from yours truly would appear.  Okay--moving on to the meat and potatoes of this blog post.

I write from a small booth in a restaurant located on the fourth floor of the Santiago airport.  Waitresses in red uniforms bustle about, travelers drink beer and take advantage of the buffet, and sounds of hurried Spanish follow the occasional shatter of dropped glassware.  The environment is certainly interesting, and it's one I won't see for quite a while, but it sure does make writing a reflective blog post much harder of a task than it should be.  Additionally, how am I going to write a blog post that encapsulates everything that I've experienced in the past three weeks (the same three weeks that seem to disguise themselves as a much longer period of time)?  From the time I first touched Chilean soil to the last hour spent with my host family, I've been bombarded with new experiences, revelations, and memories.  Seeing all my colleagues writing blogs about things that they learned and experienced is great but I'm not in a position to do that.  I could spend at least the next ten blog posts dissecting an experience from the trip, and they'd all be longer than my attention span.  What is there to say about three weeks that are wildly different than anything you've ever done?  What is there to say about a short trip abroad that will have a profound impact on the way you live your life from here on out?

After thinking long and hard over my cold buffet food, I realized that I don't want this "final" blog post to be a seal on a finished letter.  I'll spend the next few months unpacking this experience, trying to soak up as much as I can from what I went through and what I learned.  For now, though, all there is to say is THANK YOU.

Thank you to my friends and family for your support of me stepping out of my comfort zone and study abroad.  Thank you to my teachers at LSU for making this experience a lot more manageable and preparing me for something like this since the day I stepped into the School of Music as a freshman.  Thank you to my host teachers and family for everything that y'all (yes--y'all) did for me while I was in Chile.  This has been an experience that I will never forget and one that I will be talking about for a long time.

This isn't a permanent goodbye.  Thank you.

A distressed princess waits for the day in which she will be reunited with her prince charming (me).