Thursday, May 19, 2011
The 'Rents in Ecuador. May 9-May 16.
On Monday the 9th my parents arrived in Quito! Their trip was much anticipated and could not have been timed better seeing as I had taken my last final exam earlier that morning. The end of that exam was so freeing. I had completed all of my course work for the semester and was officially on vacation from school for a little while! It felt so great to finally be done with the studying part of my study abroad experience because that had been the most trying/annoying/unenjoyable part of this semester (haha, isn't class/studying always the worst part of the semester?). Isabel drove me to the airport and then waited in the car so she could work on some homework and not leave her computer unattended in the car. This was definitely a good thing seeing as I started to tear up just standing in the airport looking at all of the people waiting and knowing that my parents were going to be coming through the doors at any moment. A very exciting and emotional day. The doors slid open to let other people through and I peeked through for my parents. As soon as I saw them with all their luggage looking a little bit confused and tired I began to laugh. They came through the doors and didn't even cry when they saw me! I guess they didn't miss me too much. ;) We met up with Isabel and then she drove us to the hotel, with me translating along the way. Good practice for the rest of their stay in Ecuador when I would be constantly translating. We arrived at the hotel, checked in, and got to our room. What a shock compared to my usual hostel experiences. This room had a nice TV with cable, a phone, carpet, and was soooo nice! Of course my parents felt right at home seeing as it mirrored American hotel rooms. :) After a few hours chatting and catching up, we slept.
In the morning we marveled at the beautiful view (of the hotel pool, the valley that contains Cumbayá, and the beautifully manicured lawn) and slowly prepared for their first day in Ecuador. I was peppered with questions about what kinds of clothes to wear, what the weather was going to be like, exactly how to avoid being robbed (tons of questions about this one, I think I scared them a little bit too much with my promise that they would be robbed if we weren't extremely cautious), etc. and then we were off. I don't know the area around Hotel Quito too well so it took us a little while to find the Ecovia which we took to Rio Coca. There dad and I got some street empanadas for breakfast (cheap and delicious, a combination we all know Dirk Snoek loves) and mom got some coffee. Then we took the Agua Clara bus to Ofelia and finally a bus from Ofelia to Mitad del Mundo or the Equator! They tried very hard to keep the names of the buses and stations straight but they found it a little bit difficult. It was hard for me to remember how overwhelmingly different everything felt when I first arrived so I may not have been as empathetic as I should have been. They were real troupers on the buses though. We had money hidden in various shoe insoles and they left their phones, passports, credit cards, and the majority of their money in the safe at the hotel. They got to see how I've been traveling around Quito this whole semester and got to see a lot of Quito through the bus windows. When we got to Mitad del Mundo we decided to go visit the Pululahua Geobiological Reserve which is kind of a hike up through some grass and flower-covered hills to see the crater of a dormant volcano. Simply beautiful and I enjoyed translating the information from our guide to them the whole time. We even had some hallucinogenic berries painted on our faces! Then we went to the Mitad del Mundo museum that is the real GPS-calculated equator but not the one with the big monument. They tried some Ecuadorian helados (ice-cream treats) and then we got a tour with various other English-speaking tourists of the museum. The highlights were the real shrunken head of a 12-year old (done by an indigenous Ecuadorian tribe), 2 large boa constrictors, some freshly picked free orito (little gold) bananas, a depiction of a tomb a different indigeous tribe used to use, and the different scientific tests to show how things are different on the equator (ej. strength, the direction water turns, balancing an egg on a nail, etc.). We had lunch at a typical Ecuadorian restaurant (our $2.25 meals included soup, a very typical part of Ecuadorian lunch, that had chicken's feet in it--now that's how you know you're not in the US anymore) and because the combination of travel and altitude had tired them out we headed back to Quito without taking pictures at the Mitad del Mundo monument. Their thinking: we had pictures of us on the real equator, why would we want them on the fake equator? We took the bus back into Quito and then took a $4 taxi ride back to the hotel, the cheapness of which astounded my father. We rested for a while and then got cleaned up to go to my apartment for dinner with my host family! In the taxi on the way there tears just started streaming down my face uncontrollably. I thought that I was mentally prepared to leave Ecuador and excited to go home, but I think how much I didn't want to leave and how much I was going to miss everything and everyone here struck me in that taxi. I was an absolute mess when I got to my host family's apartment. Such a mess that I forgot for a moment that my families couldn't understand one another. I held onto Joaquín as I showed my parents my home for the semester and tearfully translated for my families. I calmed down and we had a simply delightful dinner of chicken with peaches, rice (of course. :)), a pea and tomato salad, maracuyá juice, and a jello dessert. We had some tea afterwords and then decided to head back to the hotel because it was past my dad's bedtime (aka after 9:00 pm). Dinner conversation was delightful and ranged from discussion of the success of the semester, how grateful I was to my host family, and the different things that most struck my parents about Ecuador.
On Wednesday we packed up our bags for Mindo and our day in Cumbaya, put the rest in storage at Hotel Quito, and took some buses off to Cumbaya to see my university! We first visited SuperMaxi, the supermarket close to my school so that we could get some bus snacks and so that they could see the differences in prices and products between Ecuador and Michigan. Things like different fruits, chips, chocolates, books, and hygiene products and a huge increase in prices of makeup ($20.00 for a tube of mascara) and a huge decrease in prices of things like chips/crackers, fruits and bread. We bought some snacks for our 2-hour bus trip to Mindo and then headed to the university for a little tour. When I say "little" I definitely mean it. While MSU's campus would take a good half-day to visit thouroughly, USFQ took about 20 minutes. We visited the biggest library in Ecuador (the one at my school which is 1/8 the size of the one at MSU), some of my classroom buildings, and the lagoon near which I would study frequently. We joined up with my friends Tracy and Christina and went to La Pizzeria El Hornero for their lunch specials, delicious and cheap, another Ecuadorian and Dirk favorite. After lunch we went to Iomi, a healthy frozen yogurt shop which I like to think is fashioned after a not-so-healthy yogurt shop in an episode of Seinfeld. We left the beautiful and safe area of Cumbaya to take our chances on the buses and make our way to Mindo. After a bus ride, a taxi ride, and another beautiful yet terrifying bus ride later, we were finally in Mindo, a tiny town in the center of the Ecuadorian cloud forest. Exhausted from our adventures we checked into our hostel and fell asleep swathed in our mosquito nets. The next day [Thursday] we went off on an adventure. For the first part of the day we hopped in a pickup truck taxi and went to do some zip-lining. I had already been when I came to Mindo in January with my friends so I listened to music, looked out at the cloud forest, and swung in a hammock while the parents went off on the zip-lines with 2 guides who spoke minimal English. Before they took off I translated the very important safety instructions just to be sure they didn't misunderstand any of the guides' instructions. We went to El Cheff (a restaurant on the main street of Mindo that I had been to before) for a hearty Ecuadorian lunch, chilled at the hostel reading and napping for awhile, and then took another pickup truck taxi ride (me and dad hanging on for dear life in the back while it rained mind you) to "Mindo Lindo" a place with a hummingbird viewing area and some paths to walk on. We drank freshly made lemongrass tea (from the actual lemongrass), ate some cookies, and watched tons of hummingbirds feeding. In North America there are 2 kinds of hummingbirds, but in Ecuador alone there are 125 species. Crazy! That evening we had some more Ecuadorian food (sangria, helado, and patacones con queso fresco) and then headed off to bed early so we could catch our 6:30am bus back to Quito the next morning.
Friday we headed back into Quito and then split ways. I went back to my host family's apartment to pack up the rest of my belongings and get everything figured out back there while the parents headed back to Hotel Quito to rest for the morning. We went swimming in the hotel pool while it rained in the afternoon and just had a chill, relaxing day. That evening I took them to Red Hot Chili Peppers, a Mexican restaurant in the Mariscal that my friends and I frequent. We shared some grande drinks (piña colada and strawberry daiquiri), chicken faijitas, and chips, salsa, and guacamole. Delicious! We wandered around Plaza Foch for a while, taking in the sights and sounds and then had one more drink at BBQ & Co so dad could catch the end of some basketball game. We sent dad home in a cab and mom and I headed to meet my friends to do some chiva-ing!
Saturday was our day to visit various things around Quito. We got breakfast and then headed to Joaquín's 1st birthday party! [To get to the bus station we took a cab and it was the first female cab driver I've even seen in Ecuador!] His birthday is the 12th of May and my host family had planned a birthday party for the Saturday after. It was a lovely affair. Even though we were 45 minutes late, we were still the first people there besides my host family! That's Ecua-time for you! We helped set up, ate some snacks, hung out and took pictures of Joaquín and greeted all the new arrivals with a kiss on the cheek (and me explaining that these strange white people were my parents and that they didn't speak Spanish). There was a clown at the party who did some face-painting, led games, did a little puppet show, and led the singing of Happy Birthday. An Ecuadorian tradition that I was unaware of that we got to witness is having one of the parents (probably the birthday boy/girl when they're old enough take a bite out of the cake before it is cut. Isabel did the honors and skillfully avoided having her head pushed into the cake. :) After a tearful goodbye the parents and I were off to Telefériqo. The Telefériqo is a gondala-type thing that goes up one of the mountains around Quito so that you can look out over the city. Although it was a bit cloudy we ended up being able to walk around and see both North and South Quito! A beautiful view and a good way to kind of wrap up my time living in Quito. After that we went to the Mariscal Market to buy some gifts and things and then to Crepes & Waffles (another one of our favorite restaurants in Ecuador) for dinner before heading back to the hotel to chill after our crazy-busy day. Later that night I went out with some of the girls for snacks and coffee, my last night out in Quito. :(
Sunday was our final day in Ecuador and we took the day to go visit the historical district of Quito (Centro Historico). While touring this crowded place I was interviewed twice by middle-school student Quiteños. They probably both went to the same school (maybe they were even in the same class) and needed to have themselves filmed interviewing a foreigner in English. I was happy to oblige and it was a very interesting experience. We started out at the Basilica (a big old gothic church) and then walked through the streets of Centro Historico, visiting both La Plaza de La Independencia and Plaza de San Fransisco. We also visited El Banco Central where we saw some interesting causes and effects of dollarization. It started raining so we went to Cafe Tianguez (another restaurant I went to once that I really liked) where dad got humitas, mom ceviche, and me locro. They were great about trying lots of Ecuadorian dishes and got to try a lot of different Ecuadorian and Latin American foods! After wandering around some more we headed back to the hotel. Later that night we went out to a more American dinner and then worked on packing up all of our stuff. A great tip for future study-abroad travelers is that it is MUCH easier to pack up going home when you have about 4 times the space than when you came. You accrue a lot of new belongings (be it gifts or clothes or things you forgot or needed to buy while abroad) and they will not fit in the suitcase that you stuffed and restuffed before you arrived. It was great that my parents could take a lot of my stuff in their bags.
Now I'm just sitting on the plane, listening to some music and writing this in preparation for when I next have internet and can post it. Getting on the plane this morning was such a strange sensation. Rebecca and I boarded together and it was so weird to realize that the next time my feet would be touching land it would be in the United States. Such a strange concept. For those who haven't studied abroad there are a lot of things that are probably hard to understand about the experience, simply because it is so unique and strange. I still feel like this isn't real life. I can't believe that it is May 16. When I bought my plane ticket last semester even January 4 (when I arrived) seemed so far away, May 16 even farther, and now I'm on a plane going home. The past 18 weeks have absolutely FLOWN by. I know they say that time flies, but when you're studying abroad it really really does. It is hard to explain how I feel or what exactly I'm thinking. I'm sad to leave but I'm excited to be back in the United States, but my feelings are so much more complicated than that. I want so many more chapters of my life to look like the last one and I truly have hope that they will.
-EM
In the morning we marveled at the beautiful view (of the hotel pool, the valley that contains Cumbayá, and the beautifully manicured lawn) and slowly prepared for their first day in Ecuador. I was peppered with questions about what kinds of clothes to wear, what the weather was going to be like, exactly how to avoid being robbed (tons of questions about this one, I think I scared them a little bit too much with my promise that they would be robbed if we weren't extremely cautious), etc. and then we were off. I don't know the area around Hotel Quito too well so it took us a little while to find the Ecovia which we took to Rio Coca. There dad and I got some street empanadas for breakfast (cheap and delicious, a combination we all know Dirk Snoek loves) and mom got some coffee. Then we took the Agua Clara bus to Ofelia and finally a bus from Ofelia to Mitad del Mundo or the Equator! They tried very hard to keep the names of the buses and stations straight but they found it a little bit difficult. It was hard for me to remember how overwhelmingly different everything felt when I first arrived so I may not have been as empathetic as I should have been. They were real troupers on the buses though. We had money hidden in various shoe insoles and they left their phones, passports, credit cards, and the majority of their money in the safe at the hotel. They got to see how I've been traveling around Quito this whole semester and got to see a lot of Quito through the bus windows. When we got to Mitad del Mundo we decided to go visit the Pululahua Geobiological Reserve which is kind of a hike up through some grass and flower-covered hills to see the crater of a dormant volcano. Simply beautiful and I enjoyed translating the information from our guide to them the whole time. We even had some hallucinogenic berries painted on our faces! Then we went to the Mitad del Mundo museum that is the real GPS-calculated equator but not the one with the big monument. They tried some Ecuadorian helados (ice-cream treats) and then we got a tour with various other English-speaking tourists of the museum. The highlights were the real shrunken head of a 12-year old (done by an indigenous Ecuadorian tribe), 2 large boa constrictors, some freshly picked free orito (little gold) bananas, a depiction of a tomb a different indigeous tribe used to use, and the different scientific tests to show how things are different on the equator (ej. strength, the direction water turns, balancing an egg on a nail, etc.). We had lunch at a typical Ecuadorian restaurant (our $2.25 meals included soup, a very typical part of Ecuadorian lunch, that had chicken's feet in it--now that's how you know you're not in the US anymore) and because the combination of travel and altitude had tired them out we headed back to Quito without taking pictures at the Mitad del Mundo monument. Their thinking: we had pictures of us on the real equator, why would we want them on the fake equator? We took the bus back into Quito and then took a $4 taxi ride back to the hotel, the cheapness of which astounded my father. We rested for a while and then got cleaned up to go to my apartment for dinner with my host family! In the taxi on the way there tears just started streaming down my face uncontrollably. I thought that I was mentally prepared to leave Ecuador and excited to go home, but I think how much I didn't want to leave and how much I was going to miss everything and everyone here struck me in that taxi. I was an absolute mess when I got to my host family's apartment. Such a mess that I forgot for a moment that my families couldn't understand one another. I held onto Joaquín as I showed my parents my home for the semester and tearfully translated for my families. I calmed down and we had a simply delightful dinner of chicken with peaches, rice (of course. :)), a pea and tomato salad, maracuyá juice, and a jello dessert. We had some tea afterwords and then decided to head back to the hotel because it was past my dad's bedtime (aka after 9:00 pm). Dinner conversation was delightful and ranged from discussion of the success of the semester, how grateful I was to my host family, and the different things that most struck my parents about Ecuador.
On Wednesday we packed up our bags for Mindo and our day in Cumbaya, put the rest in storage at Hotel Quito, and took some buses off to Cumbaya to see my university! We first visited SuperMaxi, the supermarket close to my school so that we could get some bus snacks and so that they could see the differences in prices and products between Ecuador and Michigan. Things like different fruits, chips, chocolates, books, and hygiene products and a huge increase in prices of makeup ($20.00 for a tube of mascara) and a huge decrease in prices of things like chips/crackers, fruits and bread. We bought some snacks for our 2-hour bus trip to Mindo and then headed to the university for a little tour. When I say "little" I definitely mean it. While MSU's campus would take a good half-day to visit thouroughly, USFQ took about 20 minutes. We visited the biggest library in Ecuador (the one at my school which is 1/8 the size of the one at MSU), some of my classroom buildings, and the lagoon near which I would study frequently. We joined up with my friends Tracy and Christina and went to La Pizzeria El Hornero for their lunch specials, delicious and cheap, another Ecuadorian and Dirk favorite. After lunch we went to Iomi, a healthy frozen yogurt shop which I like to think is fashioned after a not-so-healthy yogurt shop in an episode of Seinfeld. We left the beautiful and safe area of Cumbaya to take our chances on the buses and make our way to Mindo. After a bus ride, a taxi ride, and another beautiful yet terrifying bus ride later, we were finally in Mindo, a tiny town in the center of the Ecuadorian cloud forest. Exhausted from our adventures we checked into our hostel and fell asleep swathed in our mosquito nets. The next day [Thursday] we went off on an adventure. For the first part of the day we hopped in a pickup truck taxi and went to do some zip-lining. I had already been when I came to Mindo in January with my friends so I listened to music, looked out at the cloud forest, and swung in a hammock while the parents went off on the zip-lines with 2 guides who spoke minimal English. Before they took off I translated the very important safety instructions just to be sure they didn't misunderstand any of the guides' instructions. We went to El Cheff (a restaurant on the main street of Mindo that I had been to before) for a hearty Ecuadorian lunch, chilled at the hostel reading and napping for awhile, and then took another pickup truck taxi ride (me and dad hanging on for dear life in the back while it rained mind you) to "Mindo Lindo" a place with a hummingbird viewing area and some paths to walk on. We drank freshly made lemongrass tea (from the actual lemongrass), ate some cookies, and watched tons of hummingbirds feeding. In North America there are 2 kinds of hummingbirds, but in Ecuador alone there are 125 species. Crazy! That evening we had some more Ecuadorian food (sangria, helado, and patacones con queso fresco) and then headed off to bed early so we could catch our 6:30am bus back to Quito the next morning.
Friday we headed back into Quito and then split ways. I went back to my host family's apartment to pack up the rest of my belongings and get everything figured out back there while the parents headed back to Hotel Quito to rest for the morning. We went swimming in the hotel pool while it rained in the afternoon and just had a chill, relaxing day. That evening I took them to Red Hot Chili Peppers, a Mexican restaurant in the Mariscal that my friends and I frequent. We shared some grande drinks (piña colada and strawberry daiquiri), chicken faijitas, and chips, salsa, and guacamole. Delicious! We wandered around Plaza Foch for a while, taking in the sights and sounds and then had one more drink at BBQ & Co so dad could catch the end of some basketball game. We sent dad home in a cab and mom and I headed to meet my friends to do some chiva-ing!
Saturday was our day to visit various things around Quito. We got breakfast and then headed to Joaquín's 1st birthday party! [To get to the bus station we took a cab and it was the first female cab driver I've even seen in Ecuador!] His birthday is the 12th of May and my host family had planned a birthday party for the Saturday after. It was a lovely affair. Even though we were 45 minutes late, we were still the first people there besides my host family! That's Ecua-time for you! We helped set up, ate some snacks, hung out and took pictures of Joaquín and greeted all the new arrivals with a kiss on the cheek (and me explaining that these strange white people were my parents and that they didn't speak Spanish). There was a clown at the party who did some face-painting, led games, did a little puppet show, and led the singing of Happy Birthday. An Ecuadorian tradition that I was unaware of that we got to witness is having one of the parents (probably the birthday boy/girl when they're old enough take a bite out of the cake before it is cut. Isabel did the honors and skillfully avoided having her head pushed into the cake. :) After a tearful goodbye the parents and I were off to Telefériqo. The Telefériqo is a gondala-type thing that goes up one of the mountains around Quito so that you can look out over the city. Although it was a bit cloudy we ended up being able to walk around and see both North and South Quito! A beautiful view and a good way to kind of wrap up my time living in Quito. After that we went to the Mariscal Market to buy some gifts and things and then to Crepes & Waffles (another one of our favorite restaurants in Ecuador) for dinner before heading back to the hotel to chill after our crazy-busy day. Later that night I went out with some of the girls for snacks and coffee, my last night out in Quito. :(
Sunday was our final day in Ecuador and we took the day to go visit the historical district of Quito (Centro Historico). While touring this crowded place I was interviewed twice by middle-school student Quiteños. They probably both went to the same school (maybe they were even in the same class) and needed to have themselves filmed interviewing a foreigner in English. I was happy to oblige and it was a very interesting experience. We started out at the Basilica (a big old gothic church) and then walked through the streets of Centro Historico, visiting both La Plaza de La Independencia and Plaza de San Fransisco. We also visited El Banco Central where we saw some interesting causes and effects of dollarization. It started raining so we went to Cafe Tianguez (another restaurant I went to once that I really liked) where dad got humitas, mom ceviche, and me locro. They were great about trying lots of Ecuadorian dishes and got to try a lot of different Ecuadorian and Latin American foods! After wandering around some more we headed back to the hotel. Later that night we went out to a more American dinner and then worked on packing up all of our stuff. A great tip for future study-abroad travelers is that it is MUCH easier to pack up going home when you have about 4 times the space than when you came. You accrue a lot of new belongings (be it gifts or clothes or things you forgot or needed to buy while abroad) and they will not fit in the suitcase that you stuffed and restuffed before you arrived. It was great that my parents could take a lot of my stuff in their bags.
Now I'm just sitting on the plane, listening to some music and writing this in preparation for when I next have internet and can post it. Getting on the plane this morning was such a strange sensation. Rebecca and I boarded together and it was so weird to realize that the next time my feet would be touching land it would be in the United States. Such a strange concept. For those who haven't studied abroad there are a lot of things that are probably hard to understand about the experience, simply because it is so unique and strange. I still feel like this isn't real life. I can't believe that it is May 16. When I bought my plane ticket last semester even January 4 (when I arrived) seemed so far away, May 16 even farther, and now I'm on a plane going home. The past 18 weeks have absolutely FLOWN by. I know they say that time flies, but when you're studying abroad it really really does. It is hard to explain how I feel or what exactly I'm thinking. I'm sad to leave but I'm excited to be back in the United States, but my feelings are so much more complicated than that. I want so many more chapters of my life to look like the last one and I truly have hope that they will.
-EM
How I'm Currently Feeling: May 13, 2011.
I walked into my apartment today for the last time and I just wanted to cry. I realized just how much this place has become my home. This is my room, my bed, my closet, my bathroom, my kitchen, my dining room, my family. I feel so comfortable here and so at home. This is part of what I don't want to leave. Why I do not want to leave this wonderful place and this wonderful experience cannot be put into a few words or a few sentences. It is the sensation. The feeling. It is this that I don't want to leave. And it is just this that can't be explained. I have been trying to explain it in my head. Trying to sum it up into words, but it feels nearly impossible. Although of course I will still try. This has been my life for the past 17 1/2 weeks. My friends are here, my family is here, my school is here. I have all of these incredible memories, so much new knowledge and ability, so many great stories and experiences, and when I leave it will all be behind me. Yes I will have "memories to last a lifetime" and a great experience that I can reminisce about and draw from. But my life will never be the same. I will never be with all of these friends just hanging out and living life in Ecuador again. I will never be part of that special international-student connection again where anytime you see a white person on campus you feel like you can smile at them because you share something special and unique together, because you understand. I won't be going to school on a campus that has a campus dog and a pirate ship in the lagoon and palm trees everywhere and the best cookies and salads ever. I can't just go visit Veronica's office anymore. I won't be spending my weekends either going out to the bars with my friends and exploring our city or traveling to brand new cities to eat new foods and see new culture and learn more about myself and my friends and traveling in general. All of my grades will matter, the weather won't always be the same, I won't have a queen-size bed anymore, and my life won't be constantly exciting or interesting anymore. Study abroad cannot be fully understood by even those who experience it, but those who have not experienced it cannot possibly understand how it feels to come and also how it feels to go. Ecuador, with it's incredible amount of diversity and culture, has taught me so much. It has stolen my heart and a piece of my soul will always remain here. Ecuador will always remain in my mind exactly as I have seen it and in that way my leaving is almost like a mourning process as well. This experience, because it started, had to end and on Monday when I fly back to the United States it will end. It is like love. It is so much better to have been here and to be sad that it is ending than to have never been here at all, but it is still an emotionally-trying experience for me to leave it all behind. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but living in a different country for 18 weeks is an unforgettable and marvelous experience and ending it is difficult. I will always have the thousands of photos that I have taken and the funny stories and great memories. I will always be able to chat on about Ecuador and study abroad and my semester here for hours, but as time passes the smells and sights and memories will become less clear in my mind. The things about living here that have been trying or lonely or difficult or frustrating or boring or awful are outweighed 10 times over by the goodness of it all. And the memories of the annoyances and trying times have already left my brain. As I sit here on my queen-sized Ecuadorian bed in my Ecuadorian home for one of the last times I try and soak it all up: the smell of the damp air, the sounds of the traffic, the smell of my coffee/hot chocolate drink that I invented about a month in, the feeling of my comforter on my bare ankles, and the feeling that I have accomplished something great for myself. I have done it. I can be proud of myself and look back on my time in college without the regret of not challenging myself. I have challenged myself and I have risen to that challenge with a smile on my face and a brain willing to learn. My first goal in coming here was to get through it. To know that I could live in a foreign country for a semester and survive. That I wouldn't need to get on a plane back home and give up because of loneliness or homesickness or the difficulty of the language. My goals progressed way beyond that and they became what my semester became. A semester of challenge, of learning, of seeing culture, of a better understanding of the world, of making new friends, of enjoying myself, of perceiving and learning through every step of every day, of traveling, and traveling, and more traveling, of seeing God's beauty and creation and people, a semester of experiencing constant new-ness and being completely and totally in love with it.
A constant refrain heard between my friends and I was, "Is this our lives?" As in, are we really this incredibly and totally blessed to be experiencing this kind of thing? Is this really our lives or is this a dream? I feel like when I return to the United States this may seem like a dream, and in a way it was, but also, in a very important way, this is my life.
A constant refrain heard between my friends and I was, "Is this our lives?" As in, are we really this incredibly and totally blessed to be experiencing this kind of thing? Is this really our lives or is this a dream? I feel like when I return to the United States this may seem like a dream, and in a way it was, but also, in a very important way, this is my life.
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