Four Weeks Later and How I Feel

I have been home for four weeks now. Everyone's been asking how the trip was and how I'm feeling now that I've been at home. I don't know why I am writing this blog entry because the people who ask how it is being home never read the blog while I was gone anyway, so I doubt the following information will ever reach them, anyway.

Ok, that was a little depressing.

Anyway, my wonderful friend Viktor came to visit a week after I returned. The two weeks that followed were two weeks of my life that I will most certainly never forget. Even after almost an entire year abroad that anyone would call unforgettable, these two weeks in my own country somehow stand out from the others. Truthfully, it was a time to truly be myself again. It was a fusing of my two worlds. That is a chance I won't have for a very long time. Viktor was a big part of my world when I was in Europe, and I'm glad that he got to come here to "this" world, because as funny as it sounds, that helped prove to me that my "other" world was real and meaningful to someone. I am realizing that most of my friends here will never really know that part of me, that part of me that speaks a language they don't, that part of me that experienced something that most of them probably never will... I will never be able to explain anything to a point to where anyone will see that it wasn't "just a trip". And even if, after this fusing of two realities, I had to say goodbye to a huge and wonderful part of one of them, I'm somehow okay with that. I guess I have to be. I never imagined that I would have this standing in my way, though, the struggle to be "you" for people who wouldn't know "you" had they encountered you in the "other" world. Most people I know who go to another country stick around with people that speak their own language, who do the same things they do, who look like them, who have been to where they live, who actually like where they live. And they don't stay very long. That's the thing. They may not even want to stay longer. It takes a long time to really ground yourself, to really become that "other" you in that other place. Apparently its the deepest desire, the highest goal of most exchange students...to really integrate themselves. And everyone is ready to be there, but no one prepares you for leaving. Not just the physical separation of you from that new home, but the mental, emotional separation. It is one thing to go to a country, stay for a while, and leave without ever really growing any roots. Never having the intention to stick around. But I felt at home there. I could speak the language. I can get a job there. Could I say the same thing if the last year had been "just a trip"? I don't think so.

I will return. Another thing that made my "trip" different.