The end.

This blog post is a little late.

It's January 4, and yesterday I turned 21, among friends from high school, in sunny California. Just three weeks ago, I was in Prague, deep in snow, surrounded by a pack of strangers from various nations with whom I had forged deep bonds. We had a lot of parties, right at the end, a Chanukah party, a pancakes party. We ate and laughed and cried.

I have never been good at goodbyes (who is?), but I am learning to appreciate transitions. I moved across the country for college, and then abroad, each time having the people and culture around me shift radically. Eating with my friends here, yesterday, trading barbs and telling our life stories, was deeply comfortable, but different: I met these people at 13, and now we're adults. The transition has been subtle -- though we've all experienced life-changing events, we still revel in our shared history. We've kept up favorite foods, hobbies, television shows, various little points of commonality. And yet sitting at that table, in a familiar rhythm, I was acutely aware that we were grown ups now, with the responsibility and excitement and maturity that entails.

This blog post is a little late because I've been transitioning. I got thrown back into the US on the day of my family's Chanukah party, and sleepily noshed on latkes, getting lost in the English, the traffic, the everything different. Then the series of holidays -- Christmas, New Year's, my birthday -- all occasions for parties, milestones, and promises. I have reconnected with so many people, told them fragments of what Prague was to me, but what can I say? The last few months are transitioning into memory and history. It still feels like the present, like I can hop on the metro and take a walk along Wenceslas square. It is hard for me to accept it's over, but it's nice to be home and decompress. I felt constantly challenged and changed by Prague, whether it was speaking with Holocaust survivors or just trying to make new friends.

When I left, I saw the whole city covered in snow, and hiked through Vysherad on my last day, the site of an ancient castle. I was told that the castle had been built there because it was a site of intense energy, one of just a handful of those places in the world. They say you can stand in the middle and recharge your spiritual batteries. I trekked through the snow and stood and breathed the air and stood up high and looked at a city I had grown to love in transition - from fall to winter, covered in white white snow, into a holiday rich with cinammon pastries and bright lights, into a new year in a long and winding history.

Wherever my life's journey takes me, I will carry Prague inside me forever.