To Friends

I cannot believe it myself, but it is true.  My year in Bruges has come to a bittersweet end.  The last week has been a blur of friends, hugs, Italian food, and tears - both happy and sad.  Today was my last day in Bruges.  Tomorrow I wake up at an ungodly hour to head to the airport with the same pair of amazing people that first drove me into this city.  Paul and Kaatje will leave me at the airport tomorrow morning, June 20, 2010, and close the final chapter of my days in Belgium at the College of Europe.
At the moment, I am sitting in my eerily empty room in my usually boisterous residence staring out the window and trying not to think of all the goodbyes I had to say tonight.  I have done a fair amount of reminiscing this year.  Trust me, I miss my "old life."  I think about my friends and family in St. Louis everyday.  I also think about Furman and the friends I made there on a daily basis.  I have missed so many people and places this year.  That being said, saying goodbye to my friends at the College has been so much harder than I thought it would be.  It's funny.  Earlier today I remembered a conversation I had with my roommates Alison, Annie, and Jaclyn last year, just before we graduated.  We were sitting somberly in our living room trying not to think of soon being forced to leave each other.  We were talking about our plans for the following year - what we would do, who we would meet, etc - when Alison said what we had all been thinking: "I don't want to make new friends.  I like the ones I have."  I felt the same way.  Making friends is a long and sometimes lonely process.  We had spent the past four years building some of the strongest friendships of our lives and, quite frankly, I was not interested in starting over.  However, life is funny.  One minute you are sitting in an apartment in Greenville, SC dreading the prospect of that is the process of friendship, and the next you are pushing your bags through the door of your dorm in Bruges, Belgium, dreading the thought of leaving the people who became so dear to you after only 10 months time.  I think that there is a part of me that will always dread "starting over."  What can I say, I am not big on change.  What I can say is that I will never dread meeting new people and making new friends.  After everything is said and done, it is the people who come into our lives that define us and our experiences.  This has certainly been true of my experience this year and I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be one of those life lessons that applies to the rest of my existence as well.
So I would just like to thank all of the new people who came into my life this year and made it richer, tastier, and oh so much more fun.
Thank you Rita, Alex, Paul, Kaatje, Inês, Irene, Oline, Oran, and everyone else who made this trip worthwhile.

Peace, Love, and Waffles.