A genuine, sincere farewell.

I have been keeping busy.

Actually, I think the more accurate phrasing of that statement is, I have been swamped by pre-departure work. Packing up six months of your life into two suitcases and a box to mail home is difficult, as you might surmise; I have already re-homed my space heater to some random student in Kringsjå, and have delivered Halliburton 2 the jade plant to Julia, who is happy to report that H2 is now good friends with Lily. I have high hopes for their future romance.

After saying goodbye to Tim and Mike at the Oslo S. train platform on Sunday, I was understandably depressed (and England's bombing out of the World Cup didn't help matters), but as the days have progressed, I've found that getting ready to leave has been strangely cathartic. I've been visiting sites around town for the last time, saying goodbye to friends who are still here, going out for the obligatory last beer at Olsens Cafe, even volunteering for my last shift as coffee and tea server at St. Edmund's on Sundays. I'll admit some relief to tying off these loose ends in my life here in Oslo, because it means when it comes time for me to lock the door to my room, haul my luggage up to the platform, and take the T-bane down to Jernbanetorget for the last time, it will seem like the logical, sensible end to things. Of course, I still expect to cry into my hands as I pop across the North Sea to England, but then I will be greeted by my Uncle Pete and the familiarity of Leatherhead and Ashtead, and I will start feeling better.

I don't know if I will update again before I leave Norway, so I will go ahead and make some remarks about the lasting impact of this country upon me while I'm thinking about it. First and foremost, I've gained immeasurable confidence in myself. I know I can live alone successfully in a foreign country, I know I can travel within that country, and I know I can travel outside of it as well. I know that wherever I am, I am amiable and personable enough that I can carve a niche for myself; I can make friends easily, I can become part of a community. Anywhere can become home for me. This was something I felt most scared of when coming here, to be honest--that I would travel thousands of miles only to discover that I had no friends and no connections, and that I would spend my time counting down the days to when I could come back to Huntsville. On the contrary, I know the sadness I felt in saying goodbye to my two best friends here in Norway was tied up in just how much happiness I felt while we were spending time together this year. I suppose this ties in well to one of my last realizations: that the magic of this experience was less about where I was--where I still am, until Sunday--and more about who I became.

What this country did for me, inside and out, through my clumsy (but improving!) attempts to speak Norwegian with the Turkish bakery owners at Forskningsparken T-banestasjon, through allowing me to befriend so many other international students from across Europe and around the world, through giving me the confidence to say, "Yes, I will go out tonight!" is something that has less to do with where Norway is in relation to the rest of the world, and more with how I now see that world. "White nights" at midnight here in Oslo, where the sky stays blue and the horizon glows like it is full of stars. The dazzlingly bright sunset in Bergen at 11:30pm, turning everything orange like it's on fire. The complete silence of the forests around Sognsvann, and me, just laying there in the moss taking in the sunlight, listening to the creeks babbling, watching shy red squirrels in the trees. The bustle of life down at Aker Brygge, cramped quarters on the T-bane, the tram, the bus. Kebab and børek smell, the "old book" smell in the antique shop in Old Kristiania, the fresh laundry smell that I've come to associate with new beginnings. It's the details of everyday life that leap out at me now and remind me, thrillingly, that I am alive, and that, in the words of one of St. Edmund's Colombian parishioners who has become so dear to me, "You are young, you have the passport, and you have the will. That is all you need. You can do anything!"

Norway liberated me--not from Huntsville, of course, but from myself. My own fear of inadequacy that have crippled me into inaction in the past, my fear of failing. These fears kept me from doing, but not anymore. Never again.

This country has set me free.