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November has come in Cape Town, and as I sit staring at Devil's Peak out my bedroom window on a delightfully mild late spring morning, I am instantly aware that countdown has begun. I have only 30 days left here in Africa. 30 days. When I was packing up for a semester, I honestly never thought the finality would set in this quickly. I have started to feel at home here, that happened one day about a month ago, right after coming back from Namibia. I realized, as I was walking to 7-11 down the street that I wasn't just a visitor here, that I have become part of this place and it had become part of me. It was not about doing the tourist stuff anymore, or feeling like I was drifting breezily through a foreign environment. It seems sort of silly, but I feel like if someone stopped and asked me for directions in my neighborhood, or asked for a recommendation on dinner or some fun place to go, I could give a genuine perspective not parroted from a guidebook or similar hearsay. I am by no means a Capetonian, yet, but I am also not a tourist. I am more a transplant, much as I have been my entire life. Growing up in Gloucester with what locals consider a funny last name (i.e. not Italian, Portuguese or Finnish) I have always been sort of an outsider, for better or worse. Here it's not my name, more my accent, that sets me apart. The difference here is that though I am immediately identified as an outsider, the people here make that distinction for the purposes of inclusion, not exclusion. The new South Africa, as I have said earlier, is a society on the brink; it could go either way, towards inclusion and prosperity or exclusion and chaos. If the people are any indication, the winds of change are blowing in the right direction, in my opinion. To have experienced them, and experienced this place at this moment in time and become a small part of it has been so enriching to my soul. I have made so many memories in my time here, most of which I have relayed to you. Now, in these last 30 days, I am excited to have even more new encounters in this place which I have come to call home.