The End is Nigh

In exactly one week, I will be back in Chicago, and this strange and wonderful adventure will be over. I am wrapping up my academic business; I have one final and one paper remaining. My big suitcase is sitting, half-packed, at the end of my bed.
I came across this quote on 3quarksdaily (my new favorite thing):

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us - the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

          Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

I think that, using this quote as a framework, I might manage to produce an interesting interpretation of my time here.
But I won't.
Not yet.
I think that I need to take some time to digest. And to reacclimate myself to America, to home.
I think that this might prove more difficult than I am now anticipating.
What has it really meant to me, to remove myself from familiar surroundings and try to live and learn on another continent?
My mother spent a semester in Strasbourg, in France, her junior year of college. She still talks about it. Will that be me in forty years? I wonder.
There have been ups and downs, ins and outs, to the past few months. But it is difficult to see the effect this has had on me while still in close proximity to the agent of change.
So, I'll wait.
I won't declare this blog complete, because I don't know if this experience will ever truly cease to affect me.
But, for now, adieu.

PS: I will be continuing my regular blog 'In Which Hannah Attends the University of Iowa,' which is mostly dedicated to my experience as an English major in a UNESCO city of Literature. Lots of poetry, a bit about classes, a smidge of politics, basically what I wrote about for this blog, but in Iowa City.