So, my last blog was a bit much, but I stand by it. My heart broke into a million pieces for three days straight, but I’m okay now. I spent a week with my German family, and I enjoyed it immensely. It was epic and great to see my cousins again before leaving Europe. Sometimes a person needs a transition period, and going to Germany for 7 days before leaving Europe for good was perfect.
AMURRICA. F YEAH! 😀
I came back to the US two days ago, and it felt wonderful to see my family again. What everyone says about coming home from studying abroad happened to me in more or less the stereotypical way. If it’s true or not, most people (which includes me) end up feeling as though they changed, but nothing at home did. That’s traumatic in a way because you feel like you don’t exactly fit where you were before. Everything survived without you, and you survived without it. It’s coming home to a place that is no longer actually your home. This reminds me a lot of a friend of mine in Spain. He called us twin souls because we both don’t feel like we belong anywhere. We have homes, but in the plural. In the end, you’re just a citizen of the world once you’ve come to see more than one place as yours, because you’re never actually home.
Let me explain: He was born in Logroño, but his parents are both from different places in Spain (one of them from Cataluña, which is a different story because it’s Spain but not really… they have their own language and culture, and they don’t feel exactly Spanish). If everything works out the way he wants he’s going to China in a month. He might as well, because his homes are more or less scattered, and his heritage/identity is nonspecific. That must be similar to how the children of immigrants feel.
Back to me coming home…. apparently I am self-involved and I act like the popular girls in high school. Apparently I am no longer me, but in a negative way. Maybe the stress of the move back has affected the way I act because in Spain I was happy and nice and pretty much the most optimistic person in my group of friends. Yes, my experiences in Europe made me a different person than I was before, but all I saw of the changes was my more positive outlook, my less stressed disposition, and a dramatic increase in self-confidence…
Well, a whole summer of reflection lies ahead.
Love,
Julia
P.S. This blog may or may not become a UEFA EURO 2012 blog. GERMANY IS PLAYING AGAINST DENMARK TODAY. (and winning 😉 I’ve got a bet going with a Catalán boy (who happens to believe that Spain is getting farther than Germany hahah)….
