I am having a hard time believing that I am nearing the end of my last full month on exchange. In a week I will be off on a seventeen-day adventure around Europe and then after a week of laundry, packing, and saying goodbye, I will be returning to my house in the USA. It is exciting, stressful, exhausting, tear inducing, and fabulous all at the same time. I spent a year trying to learn a new language, understand a new culture, understand myself better, and build relationships with host families and friends and suddenly I will be placed in old familiar settings again. It is both a comfort and sort of scary.
I am excited to see family and friends and begin college, but it is a strange feeling to leave my home in Sweden. Northfield was my universe before left. Now that I have left for a year, I feel my life has many more dimensions and my view of the world is exponentially larger. As always though, the more I learned in Sweden, the more I realize I don’t understand about my own country and the world. This just makes me want to continue travelling. Many of my exchange friends have also gotten the travel bug, and we joke that we will need high paying jobs in order finance all of the trips we are planning to take.
Right now I am in a bit of a confused state trying to think of a way to describe how I feel about going home, what I have learned, what the purpose of this year was for me, how I have changed, and how this year will guide my future. These questions have been swirling around in my noggin for several weeks. Perhaps after Eurotour, and during my final week I will have some answers, or perhaps I won’t know until I return home, or several years from now. But what I do know is that this year has been wonderful for me. It allowed me to take a pause from the stresses I put on myself, as well societal pressures. I have been reminded that I don’t have to conform to peer pressure or other peoples’ views of the world. I realized that sometimes it is just my mindset and imagination that creates obstacles. I simply spent a year living and exploring. I was able to discover the landscape and architecture of a new place, learned to communicate in a language I had never studied before a year ago, I befriended some really extraordinary people, and I am left in awe at the kindness and love my host families and real family have given to me. I am able to call another place home.
Since the last time I updated, I have visited Stockholm for the first time, took studenten (Swedish graduation which included a week of activities, including a ball and dancing with my class on the bed of a dump truck as it drove slowly around town to extremely loud music), spent a few days at a exchange friend’s summer house with her host family, visited Lund and Helsingborg to say goodbye to two exchange friends, visited Växjö in Småland, where my first host sister lives and studies (We visited the immigration museum and it was interesting to read the Minnesota displays), went to Göteborg for a few farewell fikas and a lunch with all of the exchange students, and celebrated my host sister’s birthday with a picnic at the lake near my house. I have been savoring my last few months and weeks in Sweden.
Gamla Stan, Stockholm
Balen!
Studenten!
My host sisters and Naomi
Singha: The most charming host dog in the world
At the sea visiting a good exchange friend's summer house
Saying goodbye to two lovely exchange friends from India and Germany in Helsingborg.
No comments:
Post a Comment