At one point, I moved to the end of the world. At first I thought this was a temporary thing, and for my first few months here, I counted the days and weeks until I could return home. If I could make it six months, I would count myself as successful. And then, at a certain point, I stopped counting, begin enjoying life here. And that, at an even further point, I decided to stay. And now, in the past one or two months, I have started to look at my previous life as a murky dream. I doubt I will really spend the rest of my life here, but as of now, I have reached the point where I can't go home again. I have changed enough, and home has changed enough, that I will be a different person going back. For a while I could just pretend this was a pocket dimension or time loop, and I would jump out of it, with everything unchanged around me. I could pretend the whole thing ran on Narnia Time. But I am now at the point where things have become irrevocable, where the genie can't go back in the bottle.

Not much happens in Chile. Some people might have grown up with stereotypes of South America as a turbulent, emotional place, but it seems that those stereotypes are changing with time, and they are especially not fitting in Santiago de Chile, which is a staid place. Not even the weather changes much here. There is no terrorism or civil unrest here. Crime is mostly of the petty variety. Its easy to get into a rhythm where months run away here, especially since (for the first time in a long time), I am very fully employed.

Sometimes the audacity of what I have done still hits me, but less and less. My first few months here, the contradiction between my life a year before then (sitting frustrated and unemployed in Montana) and now was too hard to explain. But now, more and more, this course, rather than improbable, seems inevitable.

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