I came home on a high, I had an incredible, unforgettable experience in Ecuador that will be matched by no other. Coming home to a pretty quiet life in New Hampshire was needless to say a bit of a shock.
First of all, there were little cultural things like say, throwing the toilet paper *into* the toilet instead of the trash can, or drinking water straight out of the tap that were pleasant, but hard to remember. No big, I can deal with that. Or slightly bigger cultural differences, for example, instead of a balmy 78 degrees I could chisel the recently showered hair off my head in the frigid -15 degree weather. Alright, so I miss the warmer weather a bit, but there's no pollution!
There's also no public transport.
I never thought I would ever see the day that I would miss those buses belching out the cancerous black smoke into the tropical sunset, but I do. I think more so the walking, the running to catch your next bus, the camaraderie of being around people heading home whether they be mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers, or businessmen is what I miss more. Or maybe I'm over romanticizing the whole thing.
In reality, the drinking water, weather and city living I can readjust from. The one thing I can't readjust from is, well, me.
I'm a different person. With different worldviews, cultural influences and terrible itch for travel it makes it extremely hard coming back to the old life I had when I'm a very new me. People have told me, "Nothing's changed" but I beg to differ. EVERYTHING has changed, and I'm not necessarily saying that they're wrong and Keene now has the affiliation with being a beach town, but more so that everything about me has changed. The person I thought I was before I left was introverted, didn't like to leave home much, studied hard and had never done anything that risky. I came back, looked in the mirror and realized that I am a closet extrovert, that I love to travel, am willing to skip class just for the heck of it, and decided it would be a good idea to just throw myself off a bridge.
Now some of you guys might be thinking, "Well cool, so she's now just irresponsible and says YOLO all the time." NO. I've just discovered who I *am* instead of who I kept telling myself I was.
Which leads me to the hard part of being home. I think everyone who has studied abroad and had the experience of "Self discovery" or whatever hippy granola thing you want to call it has a hard time coming back and finding a sense of purpose. Which is why this week especially has been so bad. You know how earlier I said sometimes God let's you hit a brick wall to show you that He's the one in control of your life? I think I felt more like that wall was an electric fence. And I was trapped on the inside. With velociraptors. Coming home I made a promise to myself to be as driven and dedicated to having a fulfilling life perusing my dreams like I did while in Quito and when the normalcy took over and my college was just about as disappointing as ever, I got depressed. Again.
If you're like any normal person, you'll relate with the issue of depression. If you never have had it, I'd like a vial of your blood donated to science because that's a superpower. It was one of those days. You know it. You wake up late, look at the clock and realize you've already wasted the better part of your day so you might as well stay in bed. When the bed sores start to get irritating you slump out of bed and onto the couch, only to make a few phone calls in a fake, overly cheerful voice to sound more awake than you are. Then you proceed to sit for the next 8 hours feeling like you won't ever amount to anything while you watch random cooking shows on YouTube.
I put a lot of pressure on myself. I looked at my life in Ecuador as me pursuing my dream and once I got home it was over. I had looked at my options as an interpreter and didn't know how there would be any options for me in this area, especially as someone with just her bachelors and a masters program seemed just out of the question because most programs required *six* months of study abroad. Not *four*.
That seems to be life sometimes right? You try and try and you're *just* short of hitting your dreams. You're at that brick wall (or 10,000 volt electric fence) and there is no way out. You'll just never reach it. it's too far, you can't do it.
You're right. You can't. But guess what God can do?
He can make the Keene State College email system not work so you can't see your schedule, making you go to the academic career advising center to have a woman look it up for you and then ask why you're a senior only enrolled in two classes. You explain Keene's screw up a few years back and she INSISTS on meeting one of the advisors there to talk about an internship. You meet with said advisor two days later and all of the sudden you have options blown wide open.
"Need more study abroad? Go do a volunteer program in a Spanish speaking country over the summer. Talk to people in the UMass Amherst translation department about their program options and see what they say. Here's a list of resources in Mass that you might be able to get your foot in the door with. I'll see you in two weeks."
I don't know what my future career holds. I might get out of college and say "Spanish is dumb. I want to work at a restaurant." But that awful trapped feeling is gone. Time and time again, when I'm frustrated with God and point fingers and say that it's all His fault and He should have guided me to what I should be doing, He always responds with gentle undeserved grace that I always underestimate. I said at the beginning that this blog was about my struggles in life. Trust, anxiety, depression. Over and over I'm seeing that I think my bigger problem is that I need to learn how to see.
<3MS
if you end up working in a restaurant I may have to choke you.
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