Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

-eekend. Finally.

Finance test returned and reviewed, management test done, grocery and book store visited, packing started. Now just four more tests to study for - finance retest and my management final Monday, finance final Tuesday and law final Wednesday.  Thursday is to pack and relax and I'm home on Friday.  Whew.

Wait. What?

What just happened to the past four months of my life? Seriously? Are they over? They can't be. Wow. What a year.

In the past twelve months, I have: taken seven AP exams, gotten into and gone to college, worked two jobs, taught an autistic child how to swim, graduated, moved out of my home, reinvolved myself with Marion and Inge, driven back and forth to Clemson, gone to three surprise parties, completed two semesters of college, lived in Europe, traveled to twenty-four cities (at least), been to New York City for the first time, learned German, gone sailing, gotten drunk, raced on the college level, taken a train, seen a whole lot, kissed, loved, missed, taken an online class, watched Lord of the Rings, read a whole bunch of books, tasted a space cake, eaten Chinese, made dinner for friends, lived with roommates and been on my own.  And a million other things.  Sheesh.

I'll be nineteen in just about a month.  I'll be a junior in college with only two years left in a week.  It's scary yet amazing how much life changes in a year - just think what it will be like in a year from now.  I'll be twenty.  No. I don't want to think about that. 

I was talking to a friend today and I said that I regretted some of the things I've done in the past semester.  He made me correct myself.  I don't regret things, I've learned what not to do in the most meaningful way possible.  By wasting time on them.  This year has been intense.  Not only getting to know Marion and Inge, but getting to know myself, test my own limits, see who my real friends are and who's only there from convenience.

Living in a foreign country has been eye-opening, for sure.  The escalators that only work from pressure pads and motion detection.  The roundabouts.  The SNOW.  The food, the smells (oh, gosh the smells), the cobblestone streets.  The metro (oh, how I'll miss public transportation).  The tourists now that it's warm(ish).  The way Belgians can be jerks.  The cars.  The heaters (or lack thereof). Everything is different. 

And yet it's so similar. 

There are friendly people.  There are foods you recognize (like fruit - I have my Florida grapefruit every morning).  There is sunshine and the same people you see jogging every day.  There's clouds, most of the time, but there's thunderstorms.  No humidity, but rain.  Dandelions and the same pretty weeds. 

The songs on my ipod are the same, but the route I run has hills.  The food I cook is the same, but the kitchen and recipes are in metric and Celsius.  Once upon a time, I thought of Europe as this far-away play land, where people were old fashioned and so different.  The buildings might be old, but the population is young.  Technology is everywhere.  You have fast-food places run out of old stone buildings, pubs and modern restaurants in buildings hundreds of years old.  It's so cool.

Being in Europe has been a ton of fun, and I'm sure that my posts in the next week will be redundant, but I want to write down every detail so I don't forget when I go home.  I'm glad I got to be a student in Brussels, with the opportunity to travel every weekend and see all that I've seen.  To have studied here has really made me realize how limited we are when it comes to culture in the States.  Yes, it's a "melting pot" but here you're really immersed in it.  Spain, Ireland, England, Germany, France, Israel, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, and of course Belgium have all been interesting and different.  I enjoyed traveling and learning and I can't wait to explore other parts of the world, as well as one day come back. 

Goodnight, world.