A reflective look back

This post is way over due, for that I apologize. In fact I originally planned to write and post this on the 31st August – the 1 year anniversary of my year abroad, but it just didn’t happen.
It’s weird to comprehend just how much time has passed since I got on that plane to Cologne. It seems like a few months rather than more than a year. As I’ve said before, I do feel quite disconnected from that girl I was, but proud at what she achieved at the same time. I’ve seen the change in myself even more since coming back to the UK. I can interact with people and deal with awkward situations a lot better. Idle chitchat is not as painful as it used to be. That’s not saying that I enjoy it, because I still loathe talking about absolutely nothing just for the sake of filling in the silence, but it’s a lot easier.
I keep thinking back to how I was this time last year. The first few weeks were definitely the most difficult in both countries. Trying to get over your home sickness, whilst being constantly exposed to new and strange places, people, customs, whilst trying to speak the language, whilst trying to sort out your accommodation, internet, mobile, whilst trying to figure out where to buy things like toiletries, crockery, bedding, stationary, batteries and other simple items that are never sold in the places you’d expect to find them at home (Good luck trying to buy some decent shampoo in a German supermarket) is exhausting. In fact it blinds your vision from all of the positive things that are happening. Like those amazing people you are meeting, the beautiful surroundings (location dependent of cause), those interesting aspects of foreign life…I’m pretty sure I don’t need to go on. How long it takes for the black clouds to blow away revealing the year abroad’s silver lining differs of course, but for me it was about a few weeks into it that I really began to fully enjoy it. I mean I loved orientation at Marburg, but I spent the all of my free time depressed and lonely.
If we go back even further to spring 2010, when I was in the final planning stages of my year abroad I remember distinctively a phone conversation with one of my fellow Germanists in which we both broke down in tears at the thought that we HAD to go abroad for the year. I’ve said this 1000 times but I know that if the year abroad was voluntary then I would never have gone through with it. I saw the value of going abroad, but I couldn’t see the enjoyment. I was a wuss. But I know that I am not the only one who felt like that. I hear often about people who actually do not go through with the year abroad. Students here in the UK who will purposefully apply to university courses without the YA or, those who are more extreme, even drop out of their course because when the choice is between that and spending a year in a foreign country they’d rather be a uni drop out. One of my friends in Naples had been offered the chance to study in Spain but she turned it down a few weeks before her departure because she was so scared. I understand why she did it. I still remember how extreme the fear was in those final weeks at home. The fear of the unknown. But do you know what? She regrets that decision, and I’m not surprised. She’s missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime.
As humans we are flawed. We concentrate on the short term and not on the long term benefits. We are so overwhelmed by our current emotions that we make decisions on a whim without even thinking about what we are actually throwing away. A year abroad isn’t just about improving language, it’s about becoming independent, seeing the world without having to worry about your financial situation, meeting and making friends with people from all over the world, having a year out of uni to relax and think about your future without to much stress, try out new things that you’ve always wanted to……..and so on and so on.
My year abroad helped to finally choose a career path which no means that I can properly plan my future and tailor my extracurricular activities to benefit my CV. It’s also helped my confidence in speaking, which is something I’ve always have problems with since I started learning languages. It’s also helped me to want to learn Italian. I look back at my Italian grades from last year with disgust. They were really poor. But it was because my heart wasn’t in it. After living in Italy and meeting some of the nicest Italians I now WANT to improve my Italian, which should hopefully become apparent in next semester’s grades.
I know that this post is a little unstructured, it’s pretty much waffle. But it is how I feel looking back at my year abroad. I’m very jealous of the people who are now in Marburg going through the trials and tribulations that I did. Those living in Fuchspass pulling their hair out about the absence of internet. It was an amazing year. Definitely worth the home sickness and trouble, because now I have a unique set of memories that I will hold dear to me for a life time. <3