Last night, I found myself recounting my adventures in Europe for the first time in months to a friend over pages of homework and piles of textbooks.
Normally, when I talk about my study abroad experience, people only inquire how it was, and when I reply "Ohmygosh it was ah-mazing," they feel as though they've received an adequate response, that it's enough information. Meanwhile, voices chime in my brain, shouting various memories as a plea to be told. The longer those stories remain untouched in my ever-active brain, the more difficult it becomes to feel as though I have a place back in student life in the United States of America.
I'll be honest: transitioning back to the United States after four months in a place that made me the happiest girl in the world, a place I grew to call home, was trying.
One of the first aspects I noticed about being back in America was that, generally, people only want to know that you had a good time. Anything more than that becomes extreneous information that impedes on the daily lives of the common person. The second aspect I noticed was that nobody seemed to wonder how transitioning back to the United States affected me. Yes, I absolutely experienced culture shock abroad, but I felt as though I experienced even more readjusting to a life I had left behind temporarily. There were nights I sat in my room, staring at my maps that decorate my dorm room walls, crying at the mere thought that I had to leave behind something I loved with my entire being. Living and experiencing another culture altered the chemistry of my blood, and no longer do I associate myself with being just merely American.
Germany allowed me to grow into my own. I asserted my brutal independence in ways I never thought possible. To suddenly be ripped away from a place that permitted me to be myself without any negative reprecussion whatsoever and forced to readapt to a place where I once was inconfident proved to be an ultimate test to what I had learned. If I can't maintain the same qualities of confidence, independence, and uniqueness in America that I learned to accept and exemplify in Germany, then the entire trip was for naught. But it seemed to me like nobody noticed this, nor did anyone truly care if they did.
What I found even more difficult was articulating this sort of feeling I had, how much I missed everything about the past four months of my life, how out of place I felt, and how listless and asinine every aspect of being back in America seemed. I miss my host family, speaking German, interacting with people, and experiencing and discovering new parts of life on a minute by minute basis. I was afraid to allow myself to become comfortable with my surroundings all over again because the more I relaxed and the more I let people and experiences in to affect my being, the more I felt lost from a culture I fell in love with. Along with involuntarily feeling like a fish out of water, I simultaneously liked that I was perceived as foreign because it meant that I was safe from the grasp of American cultural reintegration.
Slowly but surely, however, I found that talking about my experiences with someone who had similar experiences to me made all the difference. Up until that point, I felt as though I was mourning the loss of a loved one, focusing and dwelling on only the negative aspects of being back in the United States. But I learned that's not the only perspective from which I should approach my present experiences. Suddenly I realized the positive impact that my experiences abroad left on not only me as an individual but my environment as a student as well as the future positivity I can leave behind whereever I go.
Once again, I allowed myself to lose my self-inflicted comfort zone in favor of one foreign to me.
So here I am, at the end of my first semester back at school, reflecting on the symbolism of the distance I've had from that semester past, and I've realized that I'm continuing to uphold the ideals I've adopted in my time abroad. Just like the German language, those ideals of confidence and independence are ingrained in my core being. That will never change. Yes, sometimes my heart still aches for Germany and everything it bestowed upon me. Sometimes, I even wish I was anywhere but here, but would that change anything? Memories are memories no matter where we are, and it's about time I made some new ones.
