Whenever you leave a place that you have grown accustomed to, there is always some bitterness involved. Though it is always nice to go back home to the places where you feel the most comfortable, you always know that you are leaving a piece of yourself behind.

When it comes to studying abroad, there are so many things that you get to see and do, that you come out of your shell a little. You become a slightly different person than you ever were back home. Maybe you are a little more open while you are abroad, or more willing to strike up a conversation with strangers, or maybe it is something as simple as smiling a little bit more. No matter the ways you grow on your trip there is no explaining how strange it can be to leave.

After you have lived some place for awhile, say more than a week, you get comfortable there. You know your routines and what you like to do. You stop being in a place of transition and start just living your life in this new place. Of course, you want to go home, and of course, you miss your family and friends and your favorite pizza place, but you really also want to stay. Packing up your bags become an almost insurmountable task. When you were preparing for this trip, it was so much easier choosing the things you wanted to bring. But now you have to choose what will fit and what won’t, what you can afford to leave behind and what you absolutely must take.

Sometimes this gets a little out of hand as I desperately wished that I could fit some of my housemates into my suitcase as I was packing. Weight limits on airplanes are a killer and by the end of the trip, everyone is so broke you can’t afford to pay an overweight fee. It is sad to see the room you stayed in completely empty and it is hard not to think about the first day that you moved in. Maybe you were excited or scared or both, but this place has come to be a little home for you. It was a place where you could run to when you were almost late for dinner or stumble into late at night, or just crash in after a long day of classes. No matter what your home stay had become for you, it will definitely be missed.

While studying abroad, I constantly found myself referring to my life back home as “real life” and now I really know why. All the experiences that I had here are so real and so vivid to me and the other people who I traveled abroad with, but explaining them to people back home will be impossible. Sure, there are plenty of pictures and stories and embarrassing snapchats, but there will be no way for those back home to really know what it felt like. Any explanation will always be so much less than the real deal.

So maybe I am going back to my “real life” but this experience was so amazing that I have to try to keep it alive. By coming back, or staying close to others who shared this time with me, or just by looking through the many photos. As much as no one wants to go home and as much as I wish that this trip would last forever, I also know that I won’t really appreciate these experiences until I am back to the status quo.