At the beginning of the year, a version of me that retrospectively seems exaggeratedly younger than I am now left the comfort of her home country for the adventure of a lifetime. I spent an amazing semester based in France and branching out to nearby countries at every given opportunity, but all things ultimately must come to an end.
I haven't added a word to this blog in quite some time, so my catching up starts with my final couple of weeks in Europe, which turned out to be an absurd culmination of the best and the worst of the trip. Let's start with the worst.
As most of you that have spoken to me since my return already know, I got really sick in Europe. That upper respiratory infection from the week in Spain and Portugal was already uncommonly poor health for me, but the end of my semester put that sickness stint to shame. During the finals period, which would already have been unpleasant enough due to excessive amounts of studying for these foreign exams and the hurt of having to say goodbye to all the amazing friends that I had made throughout the semester, injury was added to insult. Not only did I get shingles (a disease that you may be familiar with from your 80-year-old grandfather having recently contracted it), but I also got an ulcer. At the same time. Yup.
Needless to say, this situation was rather unpleasant for me, but looking back at it, there never really was a better semester to get so sick. With the American medical system, we are largely conditioned to try to walk off most any illness we contract unless we think that we legitimately might die from it, because let's face it, our health care is expensive. In France, though, medical care is much more accessible to the public, making it far less daunting of a task for a young foreigner to finally make her way into the doctor's office and get some treatment before her condition gets irreparably bad. Realistically, I probably should have gone to the doctor about a week before I ended up going -- you know, before I lost 10 pounds from being unable to eat anything -- but chances are that I would have put it off even longer if I had been in the States at the time. I'm not sure how differently it might have ended if that had been the case, but I'm just glad that I was someplace where I could get the help that I needed without the fear that it was excessive or a luxury. I'm better now, and I have the socialist health care system to thank for that.
About two hours after getting out the hospital, I completed my last final exam of my undergraduate career (langage et cerveau, or language and the brain, by neurolinguistics class), and I had a couple of days to rest up a bit and pack before greeting my parents once more, saying my goodbyes to my France friends, and starting off on the final legs of my European adventure. The transition was bittersweet, and I still wasn't anywhere near 100% health wise, but this was where the amazing things got started up again.
Seamus and Ryktica, as I like to call my parents, took me on a perfect parisian redemption trip. Just as a review of the first trip to Paris, half of the group got pickpocketed, the other half got sick (strongly recurring theme for me), and I never saw the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, top of Notre Dame, or, ya know, any of the cool and stereotypically standard stuff that you're supposed to see in Paris except for Shakespeare and Company. Paris Take II fixed all of that, and Shakespeare and Co. was still magical, plus I ended up running into somebody I know outside the shop (shout out to Mackenzie McDermit, who solidified my parents' ideas that I actually know everyone on the planet). The highlight of this second attempt at the city, though, came from a magical moment while watching one of the most magical movies ever: Midnight in Paris.
I only have one movie on my laptop, and that is it, so the three of us found it only fitting that we should watch it together while reposing after a full day of parisian adventures. I knew that the movie would go through the midnight hour, but I wasn't wearing a watch, so part way through the movie I turned to good ol' Seamus to ask him what time it was. He showed me his watch, and it was exactly midnight in Paris. It was perfect.
In other news, Ryktica took selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower.
We soon moved on to the land of Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and the Beatles: London. We rode double decker buses. We got rained on. We went on walking tours. We saw Big Ben. We got rained on some more. I turned 21, and on that day I was able to reincorporate tea into my diet, and that night we saw Spamalot and walked along the moonlit banks of the Thames. I felt immensely grateful to be there.
The very last city that we went to visit was a lesser known town in the north of England, but still held great importance to my father and myself. Seamus and I made our pilgrimage to Liverpool, the Beatles' hometown. We only spent a single night in the rainy little city, but we certainly made the most of it. We saw the band members' childhood homes, the famed locations of Penny Lane and the Strawberry Fields orphanage, and the locations where the music started. I ended up having my first beer as a 21-year-old at the Cavern Club, where the Beatles had their first gigs. Yeah, I'm just that cool. You have my permission to be jealous now.
And so it ended for us where it began for them. We flew back to the States, and it was time to face culture shock once more.
Yes, I know that I've spent pretty much the entirety of my life in the US, but after so much time in France, certain things were surprising to adjust back to upon my return. For one thing, American openness had me thrown for a loop. I had forgotten that it was normal to smile at a stranger on the street, so it took me some time to not be creeped out by others doing that, and it still takes conscious effort to reciprocate rather than just naturally scowling at every stranger I see. I'm also adjusting to not being able to blatantly people watch the way we do in France; over there, you can just kind of openly stare at people and it isn't weird. That's not so much the case in this country. The one thing that would never have occurred to me as a culture shock that I would face has nothing to do with personal interactions, though. As it turns out, light switches took some adjustment for me. In Europe, all of the light switches are the flat ones that you can basically just slap with your hand and be done with. Since those exist in the States, too, they didn't take any adjustment when I first went to Europe. Coming back, though, I hadn't run into an american light switch all year, so I may or may not have slightly injured my hand on a number of occasions by just trying to slap my bedroom light on. I'm incredibly smart that way.
At this point, save for the mornings when I wake up and am unsure of what country I'm in, I've gotten past the vast majority of the culture shock, and I'm starting to see how my time in Europe has changed me. There are some obvious things, like the series of shingles scars running down my leg, but other things have taken me some more time to figure out. For one thing, I feel a lot more confident now than I was before I left. Instead of thinking of myself as a young and helpless kid, I now know that I'm capable of navigating foreign countries by myself, both geographically and in terms of leading my life. I also feel a lot less awkward in my own skin now. One of the most striking compliments that I received while overseas was that I seemed so confident, and that helped me realize that I wasn't just weird and annoying when I opened up and acted like myself, but it could actually be a good thing. I also feel more confident in my appearance now, which does feel kind of superficial to put down in text, but not only do I feel capable of putting myself together well now, but for the first time in my life, I don't feel so self-conscious about being unattractive. Maybe this just came along with growing comfortable in other aspects of my life, but it's been a meaningful transformation for me. Finally, as I've started the next stage of my life in graduate school, I've begun to actually feel like an adult. I know that I will always have more growing up to do, even if I make it to 100, but I see myself as more than just a kid.
It's been a wild ride, and I've learned so much more than I could put into words on this blog, but it's time to move on. Thanks for reading.
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