Its officially been
over a week since I left Europe. I got to spend some extra time in London with
family where I got to visit Westminster Abby, Waterloo station, Big Ben, the
Churchill war rooms, Kew gardens, Buckingham palace, saint johns park, and more.
I'm thankful that visit came after the program. My aunt likes to walk very fast
and encouraged me to go explore the city in the evenings. I cant imagine trying
to navigate the city or the transportation system by myself before. I'm sure I
would of managed somehow. I had to start somewhere…
Now that I'm back in
the states I have this weird feeling that it never happened. That I was just in
a coma and it was all a dream. I have pictures and memories but it really went
by so fast. I think it also helped that my culture shock when I arrived and reverse
culture shock returning was very minimal if not nonexistent. I think the most
stressful part about the first week was navigating the public transportation
and the bathrooms. Not necessarily that you had to pay for some of them( I
didn’t encounter those until Koblenz), but the fact that the toilets were
buttons instead of flushable handles seems to really freak me out for some
reason. That and the fact that I got locked in a stall in Frankfurt not 3 hours after we
arrived. I do feel like a different person. 7 weeks isn’t a significantly long amount of time, and I'm a firm believer any permanent changes take time and
practice and patience to achieve, but I do feel different. I went in with an
open mind, ready to meet people and learn about the world and myself and I did come back with some new self
discoveries. First off, although I loved to travel and explore and meet people, I
learned that down time is a very important thing for me. I like to give 110
percent of myself in everything I do(what's the point of doing something if
your not going to really commit to it), but when the social activities and
learning opportunities come in a non-stop stream it can be overwhelming. I
really wanted to do it all, which is why I think I got sick twice. I was
pushing myself to hard to do everything, when realistically I should of just
done my research and really committed to a few experiences and allotted myself
more time to rest and reflect. I found on the days where I had to stay home
because of a migraine or bronchitis that I felt like I was missing out, where
as if I had planned time for myself i likely would of been more content with the alone time. The second major lesson that I learned is that I can(for the most part) take care of myself. AIB really wanted us to have all the resources
we needed in the case of an emergency(primarily phone numbers and German
cellphones), but in reality I really spent most of the free time on the trip relying on the people I just met at
the beginning of the program or myself. In general we had a really amazing
group of people, but there were several occasions that reminded me that ultimately I'm the only one responsible for myself. I don’t feel bad that I cant
drink like some of the people I met in the program or some of the locals. I learned the value of knowing your own limits and how important
that is. In Prague I got too intoxicated for my own good and could have had an
especially bad night if I didn’t spot some fellow ags on the way home. That was
my fault, and I think about it often. Another outcome of this trip is I have absolutely no money left. I really did not budget like I should have. That's been fairly stressful, but it was also a wake up call. I start working again in August.
A lot of people ask
me what my favorite place is and its really hard to pick one. There's so much
history and culture everywhere we went. I really appreciated having Dr. Wasser
as a professor. He really opened my 20 year old American eyes to some amazing
things. There's no way that I would think to research a random plaque on a
building or on the ground, but with his guidance it was a regular thing to find
stories in the most unexpected places. These past few weeks have been non-stop new experiences, and I think overall a very successful first exposure to travel and European culture. You can bet ill be back.
Tschuss!
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