2/9/2016 2 Comments A N Y T H I N GIf you' ve never spent time aboard, you may not get this post. If you have, I hope you tell me you relate to this post because I'm not sure if these feelings I'm having are normal. I haven't blogged about or posted pictures from most of my trips I took while studying abroad. One reason is because I really want to write a good travel-article-type posts and am drafting those now. However, the main reason I haven't is because it makes me melancholy to think about those days in far off cities with people I don't see anymore. Many people have asked me why I went, why I applied to leave home and all familiarity for nearly 4 months. I really struggle to answer that. I struggle to find a meaning to those 110 days. What was the purpose? What do I have to show from it? Some nights, all I have to show for it is sitting alone in my apartment and wondering what my friends are doing, where they are, and if it all really happened. Those nights, I fight off the thought that I just fell asleep on September seventh and had a long dream. Those nights, I pour over my post cards and maps and travel log to remind myself it was real. I lay them out across my table and run my hands over the streets I walked, hold the post cards up to the window pretending it's my view, read over and over what I did in every city. Was it real? Did it happen? What was the point? I'm honestly still working on that last question. I don't know that I'll ever have that answer. For now, I operate under the thought that my crazy adventure made me grow up. It turned me into a more confident young woman. It's my point of reference for what I can do; if I can figure out how to get from Wales to Switzerland for less that $40.00 on my own, I can do anything. If I can survive a day in the Brussels train station with five euros to my name, I can do anything. If I can handle living with seven of the coolest but most extremely different people, I can do anything. If I can muster up the courage to wave goodbye to my parents at security, I can do anything. I can do anything. If I learned nothing else in 110 days, I learned that I can do anything. My parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, friends, encouraging children's books, have always told me I can do anything. And I guess I always believed them in theory, but I never experienced it in practice. I suppose you have to do something to realize that you can do anything.
2 Comments
Kate
2/9/2016 04:15:00 pm
What was the point? I think you will find that answer changes with each season in life. Looking back on my 3 months in China when I was where you were was to push me to grow up and like you know I could do anything like moving 12 hours from home five days after I graduated college to a city where I knew no one. I think now it helps me want my girls to see that the world is bigger than just our house, our town, our state and even our country because some day they too need to know they can do anything and go anywhere. I also think now it reminds me to see people as someone I can relate to no matter the obstacles.
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Veronica
2/9/2016 06:26:20 pm
I can't wait to see all of the wonderful things you'll do. I'm hoping you find the answer to you last question.
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