Recently, I've been experiencing a lot of change in my life and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it all happening at once. So, I decided to write about it, hoping it will help me organize my thoughts.
The biggest change would have to be that my two best friends in the entire world left/ are leaving within the same week. Bruno went home to Brazil on Tuesday, and Sophie leaves Saturday for her year in Denmark. Last Monday (August 4th), all of us (Sydney, Nicole, Sophie, Bruno, and I) got together at Sydney's pond to have a "Going Home" dinner for Bruno. Here is a picture of us that night: 
Then that next morning, Sophie and I went to the Fort Wayne Airport to say goodbye to Bruno. I'll admit that I did tear up a little bit. Afterwards, Sophie took me to her Grandma's house for some homemade Bulgarian food, which was amazing by the way. But as I was leaving to go home, all my emotions changed. I didn't cry all day or anything, I just became numb. I was trying to block out all the feelings of sadness, and the many urges to cry, by pretending that I didn't miss my best friend. {And this is for you Sydney:} But as one of my favorite authors John Green said in his book "The Fault in our Stars", Pain Demands to be Felt. So as the days went on, I started feeling worse and worse. I'd reached the point of just needing a good cry to release all the bottled up emotion I'd been holding on to. So today, I was driving to Sophie's house so we could carpool together to go volunteering, and as I was driving out to her house in the country, all these sad country songs came on, such as "It won't be like this for long" by Darius Rucker and "Don't forget to remember me" by Carrie Underwood. And with each one I became even more sad than before. Then all the emotion I'd been holding back hit me at once, like a ton of bricks. I started crying so uncontrollably that I had to stop driving and finally face what I'd been holding back all this time. But I'll admit, the worst part about crying for me is that once I start crying, I'll cry about everything sad in my life. So I'd say I probably sat in the middle of that country road for a solid 10 minutes before I was able to pull myself together enough to be able to drive the rest of the way to Sophie's house. But once I got there, Sophie gave me a goodbye present which consisted of some coffee filters (because I have no filter in my personality haha), a "Horton hears a Who" book with a message written inside from Sophie, and some candy. It was a very thoughtful gift that I'll definitely use over this next year. Have an amazing year Soph, I can't wait to hear all about it!
But the more I think about Sophie leaving, the more I realize that this exchange brought us so close as friends before ever leaving for our separate host countries, that it must have so many other great things in store for the both of us over this next year apart.
On a lighter note, several new exchange students have arrived recently to start their exchanges in Indiana! First is Sydney's exchange student Estelle, who is with a program called CHI from Switzerland, then Sergio, who is with Rotary from Peru, and finally Sophie's exchange student Orsi, who is also with Rotary from Hungary! They all are such nice people, I just know they will have an awesome year on exchange!
Writing this really helped me start to organize my feelings towards everything changing in my life. I hope this post has shown to you all that foreign exchange is much more than just going to another country for a year. There is a price you pay for leaving your heart in many different places. But in the end, I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything in the world. Rotary has given me this valueable gift of knowing and loving people from all over the world, and that can never be repayed. 
Thanks for reading,
Maggie
Perfect Maggie!! <3
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