A long summer, a new hemisphere

This has been one of the strangest, most haphazard summers of my life. I fell in love at the end of Spring semester, moved away from the place where I've been pleasantly moored for the last six years, sold my car, rode the overnight hell train of snoring to Florida, went to Europe with my family, and spent the last month alternating, mostly alone, between the beach and an office where I research and write about awesome dusty robots from the 60s. Everything has been steeped in slow sunlight and the certainty of leaving.

I've learned a lot since the beginning of this year. If I had to compare this period of my life to a chapter in American History (I wish people would stop asking me to do this all the time.) I might be in my Manifest Destiny period. I've been careening forward like a jerk and working out the details later. Anyway, the point is that shortly after Westward Expansion came the Progressive Era, which was awesome! I think I've been sowing the seeds of my Progressive Era all winter, and now it's time to let them grow. Please don't point out the problems in this mixed metaphor. Thank you.

My flight leaves this Sunday, July 24th at 9:50 a.m. I arrive in Santiago, Chile at 2:35 a.m. on July 25th. Then I ride three hours in the dark to the coast and meet my family in Viña del Mar around dawn. I'll crash into bed, my bed, at 6 or 7 a.m. and wake up a few hours later in a new house, surrounded by a new dialect, enrolled in a new University, in a new hemisphere. I'm excited and terrified, but I think I'm ready.