Most things have a tendency to feel smaller over time. The lake you visited as a child now looks like an over large puddle, despite your memory of its vastness. The giant ice cream cones of your youth seem meager in comparison to the rest of our super-sized world.
When I landed at the Paro International Airport in February (it’s hard to believe that was nearly five months ago) I had to stop myself from laughing at how puny the place was. I remember thinking if this is what Bhutan’s international airport looks like, what the hell is the rest of the country going to be like?
Walking back into the same airport this morning, on the precipice of my reentry into the United States, I couldn’t help wondering aloud at how huge the place seemed. My memory was of a single room that was dark, damp and dusty. Today I saw one of the largest and most modern buildings I have encountered in months. In reality, the single terminal, single gate airport is close to laughable when Boston's Logan Airport is my local hub.
That’s where I am headed back to right now—Boston, and then eventually I will go home to my parents' house in New Hampshire. But as I sit on my first of three international flights that are needed to get from Bhutan to the United States, as I stare longingly out the window as the Paro Valley disappears from my sightline, I can’t help feeling that I am leaving home rather than going home. After all, last night I had to say goodbye to the people who I have come to call my family here in Bhutan, I packed up all of my possessions and said "be back soon," rather than "it was nice knowing you."
Maybe home is one of those things that over time becomes less monumental.
If you’re lucky and are willing to really work at it, to be invested physically and mentally, studying abroad can afford you a second (or maybe a third or a fourth) home. I have been incredibly lucky in that I feel I have found home this year, both in London during my past semester, and now in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon.
So what is the one awful thing that no one will tell you about? You may have heard someone say "study abroad and find a new home," or "travel and become a citizen of the world!" But what happens if you really do find a new place to call home? I will tell you, from my own personal experience, what happens is that eventually the semester ends and you are forced to leave your new home and are unceremoniously dropped back into a place that you feel you no longer belong in.
I spent my first day home from London after the fall semester literally walking around the house in circles. I was in a terrible mood and time had never moved slower. No one understood my jokes about the never-ending Night Tube delays or wanted to talk about what bands would be playing at Roxy in the new year. Yes, I sat on my bed in my bedroom in my house, but I still felt alien in this supposed home of mine.
Most of us embark on these quintessential study abroad experiences while we are in the midst of college, while we are beginning to think about what we want our lives to resemble post-graduation. This is a terrifying and anxiety-ridden time in our lives. Will we find jobs? Where will we live? What kind of people do we want to surround ourselves with?
The beauty in studying abroad is that we have the ability to find these answers. Sometimes we also realize just how exciting not having the answers can be. The terror is feeling as though these answers lie in a place that after a few months you are forced to leave.
Sitting on my Bhutan Airlines flight, I feel that I had all of the answers in my grasp and just like that I am being ripped from them. I don’t want to go home because home no longer feels like home to me. I am my best self in Thimphu, Bhutan—not in Hampton, New Hampshire.
Finishing a semester abroad sucks. There’s simply no other way to explain it. This is what no one will tell you. No one will tell you that it will feel like your heart is being ripped out and your soul torn in two. But the other thing no one tells you is that you can always go back. You can return to your second home, you can continue looking for that special state of mind, you can do what makes you happy. You can make your own home—even if it is not a physical place—because home is really just a state of being, no matter how big or how small.
