What do you mean you wait for the 'walk' signal to cross the street?
[Monday - 01.20]
This weekend, it rained. I drank a bottle of wine. I cried…(I cried a decent amount). Overall, this weekend kind of sucked, and it was about time. As someone who has fought back and forth with obsessive compulsive tendencies, massive change is a rather daunting challenge. Many people asked why I did not participate in a home-stay in my time studying abroad and, for me, the answer was simple: I needed some sort of consistency in this experience. I think a lot, I overthink a lot, and knowing I could come home to friends I already know and a kitchen I can prepare my own dinner in was important. Having this has allowed me to funnel my energy into battling the inevitable “holy crap, I am living in a foreign country for 4 months, I’m scared of not knowing what comes next” which – if you hadn’t guessed – happened this weekend.
I’m so grateful to have felt a low so early on so that I could better appreciate the highs.
I cannot take all of the credit for that, though. I have some really patient people in my life that are quite willing to lend me a hand and help me through periods of irrationality and panic and (in reality) being a big old dumb baby. My family, my boyfriend, and my friends told me all the things I needed to hear, from kind to blunt, and helped me get my head out of my tuchus. And, let me be the one to tell you first hand, life has a much nicer glow to it when your head isn’t stuck in your butt. I am strapping back on my blind optimism and seeing what the second week holds for me. I am here no matter what and cannot do anything to change that, so why not make the best of these situations? So, dear few fans of this blog that’s really just an excuse for me to pour out my stream of consciousness in hopes that someone will find it entertaining: I am excited to see what this next week holds for me.
[Thursday – 01.23]
Well, Germany is just exhausting. However, things have been rather slow with the gloomy weather and with everyone still wanting to settle in. Not to mention the 16-mile bike ride yesterday along the river that really set us up for an evening of pure, needed laziness. I tell you what, a couple of weeks in a European culture and it’s not too difficult to see why America struggles with a lot of the health, stress and cleanliness issues that we have (but we can save that STEAMING hot tea for a different rant on sustainability, I told you I’d try and hold off on the landscape architecture-y things for now).
Something interesting to me is that the thing that inspired me to write today was my German class. A room full of students trying to make the correct mucus-clearing noises to improve their pronunciation of words with too many consonants made me want to sit down and reflect…maybe all that exercise and clean air is really getting to me. All jokes aside, it was because of a cultural exercise our professor wanted us to do. She assigned a quick personal reflection and (those of you who know me know) I was beaming at this opportunity to be graded on being sentimental. Essentially, we were asked to identify our goals during this trip, things we were excited for and things we were afraid of. At the end of the semester, she is going to give us the same sheets back and we can see how we did. I – being the desperate, angsty artist that I am – took this opportunity to be really truthful to future Julia. I’ve obviously been anxious lately and adapting to life abroad has been nothing short of challenging, but I can’t help to wonder what exactly it is that I’m so afraid of. My boyfriend says something all the time to comfort me, and he goes: “Jules, everything and everyone that you love will still be here when you get back, enjoy being there”. Every time he has said this (unfortunately) has never been a revelation, I mean, these are things that I know. What I wasn’t accepting until this tacky exercise in my German language class is that I am enjoying myself, but I’m afraid to enjoy myself too much.
I’m the type of person that really dedicates everything in me to the task at hand. I am incredible at dedicating myself to a goal and achieving that goal as quickly and effectively as possible…you’d think this is a great trait, right? Well, what also comes with this lovely habit of mine is another habit of separating. My friends can attest for sure that when I’m at school, I’m bad at keeping in touch with my friends from home and when I’m home, vice versa. One of the main reasons I have been so afraid to let myself become completely enveloped in the lifestyle of lovely Europe is that I’m worried to like it too much. Your parents can only joke about “just don’t fall in love with that place and never come home” so many times before you realize how much of a legitimate option it is. I’m a full-steam-ahead type of person and I don’t want to get lost.
I want this trip to build on who I am, not recreate me.
So dear, avid readers, that is exactly what I’m not going to let Europe do. The point of study abroad programs are not actually to study, we all know this, right? Instead, these are opportunities for us to improve ourselves as young adults and to build on our character – but that would be a little hard to do if I never let myself face my fears. I will wake up every day and find something new to try, something new to learn and something new to love…and I won’t forget to reach out to home every now and then to remind them that I haven’t cancelled my flight back in May (….yet).
-Jules
