This going to be cheesy, corny, drippy, sugary… No apologies, you have been warned.

Its real name is ‘Cloud Gate’, but people commonly refer to it as ‘The Egg’. It’s a beautiful sculpture in the middle of Millenium Park, in Chicago, and on its smooth, silvery, mirror-like surface you can see reflected the sky, the city and… well, you.

Everybody, when confronted with The Egg, just smiles. Maybe it’s because it’s both beautiful and playful, but I think it’s because is always a pleasant surprise to see yourself from a different perspective.It’s always cool when you get a chance to see yourself and you find something different. People just love that.

What I am trying to say is that today was the last day of September and October feels like, IS like, a finish line. We still have to go to L.A. and San Francisco, but the fact is that in the next two weeks we will have to think about what we learned in this trip.

For me, this means to examin what every destination, every speaker, every guide or host, brougth to my own process of constructing an idea of the US beyond the one I had when I arrived. It also means to make a list of the concepts, the references, the contacts and the ideas I’m taking with me. I can tell you already that my personal reflection has changed, that my views have in fact broadened, and that’s amazing becaused that’s exactly what I came looking for.

What I didn’t come looking for, and now I am pleased to make room for, are these new friends, these people whose names I now know, whose faces are now so familiar to me, and whose lifes and careers now matter to me. You have become part of my life, even when the odds seem to be against a reunion any time soon. Well, you never know…

You DO need to know this: I feel blessed to have been selected and honored to have met you all. You now have a home in Colombia, as humble as it may be, and I urge you, kind of dare you, to use it. And if it sounds like I’m rushing to say this already is because when I saw myself in the mirror I realized that in the next two weeks we will also have to find a way to say goodbye.