Time escapes me...interesting things, however, do not.

As I wait for my final departure date a million little things run through my head. I think of ideas of what to buy before I leave, thoughts of events in the past that had some special meaning to me, family members and friends I may never see again, etcetera.

While these are to be expected, what never ceases to amaze me are how things turn full circle, and fate seems to have its way of letting you know whether or not your decisions are correct. You may just have a conversation with someone you don't care for that much and he/she says something bad about where you are going. You may feel rebellious by nature when your father hears in the news that the American consulate in Jiddah, Saudi was attacked. You may have had just the correct amount of time to finish watching the entire collection of Sex and the City and found much more meaning out of it after being able to see it in its entirety. You may have someone who read your old Blog about Tunisia find your info and look you up. That person might herself be a young Tunisian-American girl just 20 miles from Ann Arbor, Michigan looking to work at the same place I did during my sejour last summer. You may have found some very special people in your life who have motivated you to be the person you always wanted to be and they might not even know it. These same people may have changed you so much in the past 4+ months that when you watch the same season finale of Sex and the City you find yourself fighting tears, sharing the moments with the ladies, and truly understanding the profound impact and meaning of such a show as opposed to just watching it to say you did (as was the case the first time around). Those same people might not even know any of this because they didn't know me prior to August. Others I have known for years and as much as I think they know how impactful they have been to me, they may have no clue.

I owe a list people as large as S. Clause's a whole world of thank yous. I owe a list of people the size of the backside of a postcard from Dubai a very special, personal, and individualized thank you that I might not have guts to do so in person. I hope those of you reading this understand and accept. To the rest of you on my first list, accept my thanks for making my life so great. To those I haven't yet had the occasion to grow close to, yours will come. I can't even tell you how much I analyze so many little things in my life, so many seemingly insignificant, separate events constantly flash through my mind in an attempt to bring logic into my life's timeline. In an instant I flash through a hundred lineages such as, "if it weren't for ______ I wouldn't have done _________ and I wouldn't have been able to meet ________ who did ______ for me." I have grown to realize that in this mentality no single person and no single event can ever have regret attached to it for something can always come out of anything if thought of in the right frame of mind. This being said, you can see how each and every person you meet can be so influencial. In the wise and simple words of Louis Armstrong, "and I think to myself, what a wonderful world."