Spoiler	+
My reaction to realizing that I was in the finals.

Hey everyone!

I honestly don't even know what to say. It's been about five hours since I made it to the finals and I am still shaking my head, asking myself if it's real. Never in a million years did I expect to be at the end when I started this game. I am very happy to be here, though, as it gives me an opportunity to explain how I played this game to you all. For now, I want to be briefly summarize the key aspects of my game.

1) Be a social butterfly
Though I was battling against a 12/11 hour time difference, being on the other side of the world, the one aspect of my game play that I was confident in was my ability to socialize. That part of my game play was both strategic and self-serving, as the main reason I signed up for this game was to interact with people back home to cure my boredom being over in Thailand. However, I learned quickly that sociability would be key to me getting far in the game. I landed on a tribe that ended up being a dud. Essentially, half of it was either inactive or crazy, meaning that being social was the only thing you really needed to get far on the tribe. When we got to One World and the tribe swap, it was about being able to best connect with others in a short amount of time, which I think I did pretty well at. I remember calling myself a chameleon (complete with a gif of Pascal from Tangled) because I realized that I was able to alter my personality a little to be able to interact smoothly with everyone left at that point in the game and make personal connections with them. This was important to me because the previous tribe challenge was the 24 hour flash game challenge. That challenge showed everyone in the game how much of a threat I could be in challenges, so I wanted to really connect with people socially to dilute the fact that I was a challenge threat. Once we merged, I believe being a social butterfly allowed me to smoothly weave between two very polarized sides, giving me the opportunity to use that polarization to do what was best for my individual game. Because the merge game was so polarized, I believe having this strategy really enabled me to have power throughout the merge. For someone that was halfway across the world, fighting that time difference, and on vacation for sixteen of the thirty-six days the game has occurred, to be able to say I was a good social player is something I hope can be commended.

2) Play two rounds ahead
This was a strategy that I adapted as soon as the merge hit, since strategy really wasn't a crucial part of the game for me up until that point (see, dud tribe/inactive players). Once I got to merge, I decided that I wanted to play this game to ensure that I would be safe two rounds later. This strategy is what guided me to be a bit... flippy. Rather than staying loyal to alliances that I didn't believe I was in the nucleus of, I forged my own path, using other alliances (essentially, the other side of the game) to take out who I believed to be the biggest threat to me, personally. This self-centric strategy helped me keep perspective of what was best for me as an individual player rather than sticking to decisions I may not have agreed with for the betterment of a majority alliance.

3) Stay loyal to 1 person 100% of the time (and use them as a shield)
From the beginning of the game, I knew that I needed to play this game with one person. Not any more, not any less. That person, from round one, ended up being Luke. We came together because our circumstances were similar (Chronicles 5 alumni, on a dud tribe, only players that wanted to play the game strategically), not necessarily because that's who I would have ideally like to work with (I was on the tribe that voted him out round 1 of SC5 and went "FUUUUUUUUUUCK" when I saw him on my tribe). However, I knew that I would succeed better being loyal to one person. The beneficial part of having two heads rather than one is that you can sometimes place blame on that other head, which was the second part of my strategy. I always stayed loyal to one person, and that person always needed to be a bigger target than me in case things went to shit. By the early merge, I'm sure it was obvious that Luke & I were together, but I always wanted to think he was the head of the snake. When the F9 vote went down and Tina left, I wanted people to believe he orchestrated the swap, when I had brought the idea up to him. When Luke betrayed my trust because he didn't like a tentative game plan I proposed to him, I quickly found another F2/shield in Stan. He was, by and large, universally disliked, meaning it would buy me one more round if I ended up on the wrong side of the numbers. While I'm sure I wasn't the poster child of loyalty and trust this season, I always stayed loyal to at least one person in this game, and that holds true right now in this final two, bringing Stan to the end with me, as I promised at the final eight.

At the end of the day, I am proud of the game I played. I won five individual immunity challenges. I was in the majority of every tribal council that I attended. I made quality connections with most of the players that I had a chance to play with (both pre- and post-merge). Most importantly, I enjoyed playing this game. When it comes down to it, I am happy that I had the perspective that this was just a game. I played it to have fun and to give me some entertainment in rural Thailand. That, in itself, seemed to benefit me, as many players came into this game with grudges or vendettas against other players. I'm just happy I got a chance to play this game for so long. Now I look forward to answering how.

Thanks jury!