Update: I am leaving on a plane back to the US in less than twenty four hours. Reality is starting to hit. What should I do on my last day? How should I feel? Did I forget to pack something?
Am I excited to go home? As it usually goes in college, at the end of the semester you are prepared to get the heck out of there! Then, the ‘feeling’ creeps in, the feeling of ‘wait…I’m going to miss the people, cram sessions right before a test, and the late nights in which you feel invincible’. See personally, (if you’ve been reading my blogs for a while now) Prague definitely had its ups and downs, but more downs than ups. Susquehanna also brought me struggles don’t get me wrong, but I was so surrounded by people I love and whom love me. Prague didn’t bring that sense of community, it felt like a cold city if you weren’t with the right people. It was bitter-sweet when in the last two weeks I finally made friends whom I connected to on a solid level. I have started to laugh like my old self again, go out more, enjoy my time rather than counting it down. Prague was just starting to feel like a place I could call home… and as soon as I realized that, it was time to pack up and head to my next adventure. Who knows what that will be?
I have heard that a common shock when arriving back on campus is your peers. I should probably explain; as someone put it to me: while you have gone on these amazing journeys and adventures, learning and growing, everyone else has stayed put. Of course, these people that I love have grown, as we all do. Except when you go abroad, your perception of the world and life have altered significantly. Believe it or not, Europe has a very different version of life.
To be honest, I began to enjoy learning Czech in my semester course, and I loved being able to pick up pieces of a conversation on a street. Czech is such a beautiful language and it saddens me that I won’t casually hear it on the streets anymore. If you do go abroad, I beg of you to learn their language.
I think an important question to ask myself is “Would I do it all again? If I did it again, what would I do differently?”
So let’s tackle the first question. Would I do it again? Yes. Without a doubt. But, more importantly, what would I do differently? Quite a bit. I wouldn’t change the struggles that I went through, as they made me stronger than I thought I could ever be. I’m no stranger to the idea that you ‘grow through what you go through’. That doesn’t mean that, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t change my approaches to this program. I think I settled, and rather unhappily, with friends within my first week when I should have been searching a little harder and longer for people whom I actually enjoy spending time with. I would have learned some more de-stressing, meditative techniques for sure, as it would have helped tackle the small problems before they became big problems. Overall though, I think each and everything that I did while abroad made me learn and grow. Even in the ways I didn’t necessarily want to.
Since this is the last post, I think it’s only right to share my best and favorite pictures from my journeys to Budapest, the UK, Belgium, and of course the Czech Republic!
Just Czech-ing In 