Originally published on August 19, 2016. I’m re-publishing posts I’d had on this blog that, due to some glitch of the internet, got scrubbed. No editing has been done.

“People love to talk about how ‘life-changing’ studying abroad is,” Kalindi said. Her long fingers curled into air quotes around the idea of life-changing to emphasize her disdain.

“But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I don’t think we will come home from South Africa completely different people, or that we’ll lead totally new lives because of our experiences here.”

The open air safari truck jolted on the dirt road, with Kalindi and me rattling around the back seat. We were studying abroad in South Africa, and at that moment our group was arriving at the encampment where we would sleep for the night.

In just a few months we had bungee jumped, tasted bobotie and biltong, visited townships, made new friends, and pushed our comfort zones. As Kalindi spoke, the sun sank into the veld around us. I thought that sometimes you just run out of adjectives for moments like that. Life-changing has to suffice.

Nevertheless, I nodded along. If I had any meaningful insight to contribute to the conversation at the time, I’ve long since forgotten. What I will always remember is what Kalindi said next:

“I don’t think this experience will, like, send me down a totally new path in life. I’m not making any 180 degree turns, none of us are. It’s more like fractals,” she paused to check I was still following. I kept nodding.

“In a fractal, the same pattern keeps repeating over and over. If life is like a fractal, an experience like this doesn’t change that fractal into a totally different pattern, it just adds a new color or a new twist to the design.

“That small change keeps repeating in the fractal, and it will probably expand and shift and influence other parts of life without you realizing.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about that fractal this year.

I keep returning to that conversation as Mike and I travel today. The first half of this year was actually life-changing for us. We quit jobs, left apartments, bid farewell to our Midwest community, and booked tickets overseas. We’re changing our fractals in a big way.

I keep wondering if I’ll change, too. Not just the pattern of my life, but me. I hope I’m changing as drastically as my daily surroundings are. I love myself, but there were a lot of habits I wanted to break when I left Chicago. I don’t think I was the friend, girlfriend, daughter, sister, or granddaughter I can be.

I’m ready for new patterns.