Outside of the classroom and field, I was trying to squeeze every moment out of my day with friends - both other students and locals - so I was pretty much never at home/ Host family relations may have gotten a little rocky as a result.... I think I started having some anxiety about the end of this program and what it means to go home to my actual "home" - the one over 4.000 miles away from here. Through Skype, Facebook, and this blog, I've been able to share snapshots of my Galapagos life with the world I otherwise left behind/ Here's the thing, though: my sharing has mostly consisted of photos and stories of major adventures, descriptions of a handful of the many people I've met, and MAYBE a brief dialogue of my thoughts along the way. Still, it barely touches on the personal experience I've had. My mindsets about a lot of things have entirely changed, and I'm pretty sure my future is going to take off in a totally different track from the extensive research+PhD+professor plan I had laid out for myself before. I'll be going home a different person - even my relationships at home will probably change. And all of that change totally freaked me out. I got really, really nervous - what if I go home and I can't connect to my friends, my family, or my boyfriend anymore? What if going home doesn't actually feel like going home, and instead I feel like a stranger? What if I'm not ready to leave these islands, their people, the ocean, this way of life? Galapagos has become so much more to me than an academic experience in Darwin's natural field laboratory - it has become a life-redirecting, friendship-building, fear-conquering, love-discovering, story-creating, life-lesson-pounding, energy-nurturing home where everything is permanently sandy and you don't actually need a clock. I just learned how to thrive here, and I'm about to be tossed back into a place that's no longer familiar in any sense of the word.
Yeah, I freaked out.
And just in time, one final trip came up. This time, I left my computer at home. Just a duffel bag of clothes, snorkel gear, and my GoPro, and I took off. Our class had one more scheduled adventure to Santa Cruz. We dove at North Seymore Island, Mosquera, and Gordon Rocks - three incredible sites around the north side of the island. Gordon Rocks has been on my AbsoluteMustDo list since getting here, and it didn't disappoint. We took a beautiful sailboat out to the ashy outcroppings surrounded by rough currents and dropped into schools and schools of enormous hammerhead sharks and shadows of evolutionarily bizarre Mola Mola (sunfish).
We also snorkeled with hoards of white tipped reef sharks at Daphne Minor Island. I had a very proud moment where I realized that this trip has taken me from cowering inside the tiny speedboat because of waves to being the first to jump in, being someone who loves to free dive and chase reef sharks as fast and as deep as I can without an air supply. I think that hints to the type of minor changes that have grouped together and reshaped me during my time on the archipelago. We also took a class day to interview representatives of NGO's, including the Galapagos National Park, WWF, and Sea Shepard. The program organization was far less than perfect, as per usual, but the experiences were incredible nonetheless.
To complete the journey, I went back to Isabela Island with a small group of friends. Each of us wanted the peaceful tranquility of that magic Island to fill us one more time and to kind of hit a reset button on the stress brought by the previous whirlwind weeks. It worked. I managed to get pretty sick with some sort of island cold bug, but the energy of Isabela still did it's job. After a night spent laying in the sand watching shooting stars (a meteor shower and clear skies greeted us for the weekend) and sipping coco locos with some guitars and good conversation and great friends, I woke up feeling ready.
It's time to go home. To my actual home in the US. I'll miss this place and I will never EVER forget my journey here and I will always feel connected to the Galápagos. But it's time. Leaving is scary and the uncertainty of what will happen once I'm at home is terrifying, but I accept it. I have a nice, long travel day coming up for reflection, so I'm sure I've got at least one more Galapa-post coming for you.
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Here's to a full final four days to celebrate la vida bonita and create a quality "hasta luego" - because an "adiós" is too permanent and, who knows, I might just wind up here again.
(Noted after my return to the states: .unfortunately, my laptop and gopro were stolen in Quito on my way home, and I lost all my photos....so for now, I can't visually share this incredible experience with you. Lo siento.)