15. Farewells

I have a confession, I have had this post written for nearly two weeks.  I just couldn't bring myself to post it, because it meant saying goodbye to Ghana officially.  I tried to post it a few times but I was too busy crying, and Ghana was actively thwarting me via internet issues.  So here is goodbye- I get on a plane in 7 hours....

Even though I once thought New York was the once place I’d feel at home, from the moment I arrived there. I daydreamed about filling suitcases and hopping planes.   I flirted with New York but never gave it a commitment.  It was a love affair I refused to consummate, not matter what the city promised me, no matter that I had picked it, and not the other way around. Instead I drowned myself in all the joy and heartbreak I had brought back from India and pretended it was New York’s fault. Eventually we realized it wasn’t working out, New York and I, and I took my nomad heart elsewhere. I needed to find out if my love for my adopted home was singular, or if I would fall in love with anywhere I traveled.  On a whim that I later justified by academic relevance, I packed my bags again, and arrived in Ghana.
Ghana only reminded me my heart had miles yet to go until I figured the world out.   It was not an earth shaking revelation but rather snuck up on me while writing blog posts, stewing over photo assignments, and as I tried to motivate myself to at least go out and get a beer.  There were flashes when I saw the Ghana my friends had fallen in love with, but even when I loved those moments it felt like cheating.  If India was a love affair, we broke up after figuring it wouldn’t work long distance, but the feelings are still there. I’m not sure I can love anywhere else again; it’s ruined me for all other places.  To go back to see its familiar streets felt like going home, but it also felt like stepping into a dream.  It also felt like sobering up, washing my face and remembering what real life is.  In hindsight, I know I did not spend the semester learning about Ghana but rather learning about myself, how to be myself, and still leave bits of me wherever I go.  How to carve up chunks of my heart and leave them places so they can give me something in return, if only the feeling of having missed something.  I came to Ghana to run away, to disappear and press pause on my racing heart. Since wherever you go, there you are, all I found was an insatiable desire to be everywhere at once.  With too many plans and no idea where they will take me, I have taken these past few months to remind myself of all the things I had forgotten since I left that small town north of Boston.  Some people go home to locate themselves, and to remember home; I went to Africa.
            Seems right to me. Ghana changed how I thought about myself, how I contextualized myself.  In the eye of the hurricane, on the cusp on coming and going, ko bra, I stand on the wreckage of my former self.  I remember this feeling all too well, knowing that you’ve changed but not knowing how, that breathless anticipation of returning combined with the ache of leaving a life that you absolutely cannot go back to.  Its bittersweet but mostly it is addicting, beguiling you with exotic images of the things you have seen while causing you to confidently forget for just a moment all the small wrenchings of the heart that one experiences when living elsewhere.  Compared to the biggest wrenching of all, the tearing of the new you from your current context, every moment of boredom and sadness disappears, and you are left with a glow constructed of every happy memory, of new friendships and days drunk on sunlight, nights just drunk.   The glow of feeling down to your soul of sheer wonder and exhilaration of everything, everything new and everything possible, every time you step on and off a plane.  That glow has become my addiction; it the particular shade of limelight that matches my pale complexion. 
Before I came to Ghana, my concept of myself was narrow, limited.  This semester has put me in my place, rightfully, with far less self-importance and far more wonder.   About to step back onto a plane, rocketing toward my old life, I am drunk on wild possibility.  This time, I want to make it last, take it back with me and grow it in the greenhouse of my soul, let the sun and make it grow instead of locking it back into myself.  When I came back from India, I was so scared; of what, I am still not sure.  Of being too different, of losing identity in order to gain a new one.  Now, suitcases packed and out on the sidewalk, I am laying claim to my wandering heart and feet, which will lead me to new continents and a new selves.  Beverly gave me a base to stand on, India gave me my locomotion; Ghana may give me my wings.  Maybe I won’t know what Ghana has given me until I arrive in Buenos Aires, seasoned study abroad student and travel extraordinaire.  Or maybe I’ll have the wind knocked out of me and replaced with the Spanish languages, and I’ll start the process of confusion again in Prague.  Locust, nomad, tornado, I am whirling through the world and coming to rest only when I have spent my dervish energy, and I refuse to look behind me.  As Kwame Nkrumah said, ever forward, never backward.  Now, going backward and forward at the same time, my impulse is both to hold on tight and jump into the fray.

The picture is mine, from the final group trip to Wli Falls.

The biggest problem I faced with this course was most definitely remembering to keep posting. However what I really liked about this course was reading about the experiences that all the other people studying abroad were having both at my site and different sites. I liked that through the course we drew connections between our experiences although we are all spread out across the world. The fact that we are all students with different backgrounds who came from studying and living in New York to studying in different countries and that we come together to share thoughts over the website is almost like a very interesting social experiment in which the experimental variables are culture, nationhood, and travel.

I think the most rewarding aspects of the experience was improving my Spanish and learning to be comfortable expressing myself in another language. I feel like studying in Spanish has improved my communication skills as a whole and expanded my understanding about communication theory in general.  In my courses, not only have I had to do the same type of critical thinking that I normally do in school, I also had to read and understand the reading in Spanish, listen to lectures in Spanish, and express my thoughts in class in Spanish. When writing or speaking in English, I often want to mix Spanish words in my sentences that express my ideas more precisely than any word I can immediately think of in English. However more generally I feel that by studying another language I have been forced to think much more about words, sentences, and grammar as tools of communication because I suddenly am using a whole new set of rules to communicate that are not built into me from youth. 

I haven’t yet thought about what I think will be different in me when I return home. I will definitely know much more about Argentina and the Spanish Language, that’s for sure. However I wonder if I will rethink about my own country, our language, our politics, and our cultural norms. I am so used to studying these things here that perhaps the comparison will make me understand the “United States” in a different way, or at least all the different United States I know: New York, California, and the rest through literature.

After my experience here I know that I want to come back someday to travel through South America and see the other Latin American countries and people. I can’ help but imagine what it wil be like to be back in Buenos Aires when I return in a few years… 

Wow, I’m not even sure where to begin! I’ve been trying to postpone posting this farewell post in the hope that doing so would maybe – just maybe – make me feel as though I don’t have only three weeks left in Buenos Aires, this wonderful, slightly-strange (usually in the best kind of way) city that I have come to call my home for more than three months now. Alas, it’s true that my time here is coming to an end, which is only making my head swim with a multitude of thoughts and fears about all the things I still need to see and visit in the next three weeks, the projects and tests that need to be completed before I leave, the planning that I still have to complete for my trip to Chile and Peru after the semester end… but most importantly, how to figure out a way to find myself back in South America in the next four or so years.
 
Anyways, I think I may be getting a little ahead of myself. I find it hard to think about the time I have left in the city presently when the future seems to loom ahead of me so frighteningly. When it comes to thinking about the most rewarding part of my experience in Buenos Aires, I think of a few different things. I am so glad to have been able to study Spanish here, and though I’m still far from fluent – not being able to understand half the jokes I’m told or talk to a pharmacist about medicine a few things among many others – I think I’ve made a good amount of progress here and will continue studying Spanish for the rest of my time at NYU. Besides the language, the most rewarding aspect of Buenos Aires has been the city itself and the people that inhabit it. I know that sounds like a really vague statement, but being able to navigate the intricate bus system here, give people directions in Spanish, coming to know so many different cafes, and having fantastic conversations with complete strangers – taxi drivers, retired teachers, foreign travelers, hostel workers, students, tango dancers, the list goes on – has made me really confident in my ability to adapt to a completely new city and environment.
 
This course has really helped me along in reaching these conclusions as well by forcing me to record my experiences (and I say force in the best kind of way!) and also move beyond them by pondering the different meanings associated with travel, as well as its different facets and the idea of travel as an art. However, I know that I have not been the most habitual blogger, for which I apologize, though this part of the experience has taught me that in order to become a more aware traveler, I need to make more time to record my experiences. In the end though, this course has been a fantastic way for me to feel connected to a larger community of fellow student travelers, and I’m glad to have had you all with me through thick and thin.
 
I could go on for pages and pages about my experience here and what it has taught me and what I’ll remember in the future, but I don’t want to make anyone fall asleep. The final thing I want to mention is that this experience has shown me that I’ve had a passion laying close to me for all these years, really hidden until this moment. I am completely in love with the Spanish language and learning about the multitude of cultures that speak it. Being here has shown me that this isn’t some passing fancy now and that it never was in the first place; I have been learning Spanish in bits and pieces since elementary school and even though I continue to struggle studying it now, I am totally dedicated to the challenge. And not just the challenge of the language, but the challenge that all of South and Central America hold for me as well.
 
I do want to travel as much of the world as I can before I die, but I’m pretty sure (and this makes me shake and smile and the same time as I write this) I have found a home here. Not necessarily in Buenos Aires, but somewhere in this continent definitely. When people ask me why I like to travel, the first thing I tell them is that travelling is in my blood. My great grandparents came from various part of Europe and eventually found their ways to England. My parents were both born in England, but realized that though it was their homeland, they could not call it home. Now they have found their happiness in California. My older brother realized that the US was not where he wanted to stay and has since lived in Berlin with his girlfriend and they are planning to move to Europe once again, this time for good. My family members have each found places with which they can identify and in which they are truly happy, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that South America may be that place for me. For me, my return to this continent (and this city) is not a question of if or how or why, but simply a question of when.

I still have four full weeks until I return home to the States, meaning the end is looming near, but I still have several days to explore and participate in activities on my list of things I want to do with my time here. Then, inevitably, and as is the case for most NYU students right now, school will take over with final papers, projects and presentations. I’m trying not to think about all of that right now, however, and enjoy my last month here in Buenos Aires.
 
By semester’s completion, I will be able to say I’ve been to two cities in Chile, two in Uruguay, and three different provinces (many visited cities within them) of Argentina.  Although these destinations may not be as extensive a list as others’, I’m still pretty impressed and more than pleased to have those passport stamps and stories to tell.  I’m seriously going to miss everything that is South America, everything that will become my memories of South America (preemptively making memories is such a silly game I play, or perhaps, a terrible habit I have).  The somewhat embarrassing self-picture I have posted here is from the trip I took by myself to San Carlos de Bariloche in Patagonia.
 
And throughout it all, I have been incredibly thankful to be in this course.  I haven’t been enrolled in a writing course since freshman year, and am pretty horrible at keeping up with personal writing if I’m not forced to do so.  And although I have not been all that great about the regularity of my posts (as is something to be learned about the ‘art’, per se, of blogging), I always find the time I take to sit down and write them enjoyable.  And in this last post, I find the time I have taken to look back on my old posts even more enjoyable, if not a shock, combined with humble moments of reminiscing.  I find it a fair generalization to say that all of us have certainly changed throughout this semester because of our experiences, and are able to notice these changes based on our recorded first memories and our knowledge now.  Is not that the point of a journal, or the public version, a blog?  Tracking these changes and these experiences has been, I think, essential, and that is why I am, as I will reiterate, thankful for this course.
 
Beyond this blog, I also have a more personal blog, conducted through blogspot, where I repost these pieces along with adding some other ones every now and then (when I can, and when I feel the need to – you can read these other posts here).  And if I didn’t have this course to be a starter’s guide or a source of things to post on that other site, I would not have been quite as ambitious.  Another reason to be thankful.
 
Now here comes the hardest part of all: having to end both of these sources of public writing, having to end my adventures abroad, having to say goodbye to a city I have come to know and love.  As already mentioned, however, I still have time to make my farewells, but am most certainly not looking forward to it, no matter how much I want to see my friends and family at home.
 
I am more than happy that I decided to take a semester abroad, however.  It is something that is much more widely advertised for college students in our generation, just as it should be.  The encouragement comes with good reason.  I was scared to go at first, almost reluctant.  And now I think it crazy that I ever doubted coming to Buenos Aires.  The stories I have, the things I’ve seen, the new ways of living I plan to carry with me for the rest of my life, will be with me forever (I feel that goes without saying).  And I know, above all, that I will, one day, be back.  So perhaps this farewell is more of a “goodbye for now” type deal, because I find it inevitable that one day, I will return.

It’s funny to be writing this because I don’t know where to start.  This whole semester has gone by so quickly (as I knew it would).  How do I process that I’ve spent the last four and a half months living in France and travelling around Europe?  I am so lucky to have gotten this opportunity. 

I can’t say that it was or wasn’t what I expected because I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived here.  Funnily, I think it will be easier to see the differences that I have gotten used to here once I go back to the U.S. and those things are different.  Of course there are obvious things like the grocery stores close earlier here and the drinking age is 18 but I’m excited to maybe experience a little bit of “culture shock” as my one friend also returning from studying abroad put it.  Then again France and the U.S. are not as DRASTICALLY different as say the U.S. and Cuba (where my friend was returning from), so my shock will be much less than hers if anything at all.

I’ve been thinking about how to say goodbye to my host mom and I actually have no idea how it’s going to happen.  We aren’t incredibly close but we are close enough that it’s weird to think that I may not ever see her again (or at least not for a very long time).  She’s been lovely to come home to and to have dinner (and desserts!) with.  What do I say to her to let her know how grateful I am for my time with her?
           
In general, leaving France was never something I thought about.  It was always about going to France never returning from it.  How do you say goodbye to a place that has seemed like a dream from the instant you got there?
           
I think I thought I wouldn’t be sad leaving Paris because I wasn’t sad leaving the U.S. but I actually don’t know how I am going to feel.  It’s just getting sunny and springy and now I have to leave?!  New York is wonderful but they speak English and their bread is sub-par to put it nicely (okay that’s an exaggeration but I am officially super pretentious about baguettes).
           
In the beginning of my time in Paris, I thought I wanted to live here forever.  Although that is no longer the case, I know that I want to come back for extended periods of time.  I can’t imagine being here just on vacation for a week or something.  I’ve lived here and I hope to do it again someday for some amount of time, if for nothing else than to be a stone’s throw away from a fresh baguette.

Wow, is the semester really over already? I can’t believe that it was only four months ago that I was cultured shock by the major differences here in Florence. I remember feeling overwhelmed with confusion as I would try to find my way through the city center streets. Today things are completely opposite, I am able to give tourists directions and find my way from anywhere. I have picked up some Italian habits and can blend in among the locals at the store or on the bus.
I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to come abroad and am so lucky to have had such an amazing experience. As much as I wanted to be able to be fluent in Italian, I didn't expect I would get very far in my elementary level course. However I surprised myself last week when I was able to have a full hour conversation with some locals in Milan about the differences between Italians and Americans. This was most definitely the most rewarding moment because my semester abroad brought me to that point of success.
I have had no regrets about my time abroad except if I could do one thing differently I wish that I could have stayed longer. This is because my experience didn’t become genuine until the last months. I think if I have the chance to travel again I would stay in one place for a long amount of time to be able to immerse myself fully.
The Italian lifestyle has introduced me into a new way of living my day to day life. Not only am I enjoying the moment and won't stress about the future as much as I did before I got there, I also learned to “take it easy.” There is no rush in Florence. People’s schedules are never as strict as they are in the US and I will take this back with me so I wont have to worry about spending hours at lunch or dinner with my family and friends.
This experience is something I will always look back on and cannot wait to tell my children about the time their mom lived in Italy. When people tell stories about their past, they tend to tell only the good parts and ignore the unattractive parts of traveling. However for the majority of my experience abroad my memories have all been positive.
I remember going into my semester pretty nervously about my home stay living situation. I wish that NYU prepared the students more for the type of immersion and stressed that this is one of the best options. I feel that many students I have met wished that they had chosen the opportunity to live with a sweet family who cooks for them each night.
This blog was a great opportunity to reflect on my experience abroad. It is hard to keep up with so much going on each week. However The Art of Travel let me appreciate and learn about the importance of living in a foreign country.

If Flaubert wrote Kincaid's article I think I would have liked it more, taking the same approach, and even similar 'you' acusetory style against a conventional traveler. It would probably seem funnier, more self depricating or induldgent, and more charming - but over all a completely worthless thing to think about. For any number of reasons he wouldn't and couldn't write the same piece, but I like to think that if he did I would enjoy it more. Beyond the events of the trip themselves, I am interested in the person telling the stories in those situations.


We started off the begining of the class discussing if it is possible to ever have a trully authentic foreign experience - because the travlers themselves are contaminating the experience of being there with their own foreign prescense. This contamination is different between people. Some traveling in a foriegn land (or as some others on the site have argued - your home land with fresh eyes)  bring things with them and leave a mark. Some people bring their own solid belongings to carry around like comfort objects,  or gifts for people to remember them and experience them by. These contaminations are unshifting and concrete reminders of the other place, the place in which the traveler makes some sort of sense. The role of the object is to tie travelers back to their origins and make the traveler themselves the consistent element of these travel narratives. The main character - the hero of the journey. Even in cases where the narator themselves is rarely mentioned they are still the main character - their oppinions and views being the ones that have changed by the end of the experience - and in more cases their beliefs and belongings they bring with them resisting the changing environment.

Which seems the point of travel. To find yourself, or build your own story, to escape society, and to become something new in the eyes of others. It may be possible to change behavior, and become a foreigner but at the heart of it, even the liquidy travely inconsistent part of you is you. And this is what is the strongest and most appealing part of these narratives. Hearing the people themselves, more than the locations.

And this is what was the most fun, and the most terrifying part of class. Reading what other people thought about the same readings is the same as reading Flaubert and Mahoney (obviously traveling at different times, but through the same location manage to leave intirely different impressions) on Egypt. But reading the other's work as they might be reading yours. This was probably the most rewarding and terifying part of the class, and also played a large role in the ammount of posts put up. There is too much staked to my name, and the idea that everyone in class (if not the web) will know who I am and what I think about things I don't necessarily want to talk about.

The travel narratives give the author the right to choose the details they wish to accent or relive, but sometimes when writing these blogs, the only thing that comes to mind is the thing I don't want to talk about the most. We can force people to look at us, or try to not use I - we - us - you and try to blend in, and unless you yourself are awesome - or think you are, good luck traveling around with you, and the stuff that either makes you better and more you, or distracts people from you.


Image from - Backroads With Betsy: Girls Just Want to Have Fun! - Good times at the Laughlin River Run - By Betsy Huelskamp - 6/6/2009

My days go on in the way I’ve become comfortable with: class in the morning at NYU’s downtown campus, working at my Al-Mamoura office for hours, squash at the Sheraton Corniche, dinner in Sama Tower, studying and socializing late into the night, six hours of sleep, and it all starts again.  My weekends offer some breaks to the cycle with meals out with various acquaintances, more time for schoolwork or finding something fun to do in the city . . .  but it is all changing now.  My nights are full of goodbye dinners with colleagues and others I’ve met outside of NYU, classes are slowing as final papers and projects begin, and every day it gets a little bit sadder with my friends.  And today, the remaining ones have hit single digits- 9 days left. 
 
This semester has been my best by far.  I’ve felt constantly inspired and I’ve been endlessly learning.  The city makes very few things stressful- no traffic, cheap prices, clean infrastructure, and lots of cultures to explore.  The people I’ve been around have pushed me to think in many different ways, my NYUAD professors and students, my colleagues at work, and the various others I’ve interacted with, whether briefly or for extended and multiple periods.   Overall, I love Abu Dhabi because there is so much to do, so many issues to think about, and so many people who it is incredibly easy to meet.   Most importantly, I’ve forged deep friendships and established many mentors. 
 
What I’ll miss the most when I leave is just the culture of Abu Dhabi how complicated and unseen it is.  I’ll miss the sights and sounds, the different foods in the air, the Oud, and seeing the fancy cars and beautiful abayas and kanduras.  I’ll also be sad to leave work- I’ve loved the company I’ve been involved with, they’ve taught me more than I would have ever expected and really respect my input.  The hardest part will be leaving my friends.  I’ve made many but have a close group of seven or so that I’ll miss a lot.  Luckily, many will be studying abroad in New York next semester- but the four months between now and then will be sad.
 
I’ve really enjoyed this course because the prompts and the readings have given me an extra layer of reflection on my time here in the city.  I always write about my different experiences, but it has been nice to be pushed to think about new subjects and in new ways.  I recommend this course to anyone studying abroad and I recommend Abu Dhabi- though it isn’t for everyone.  It takes hard work to see its beauty and a strong mind to maintain certain ideals in the face of difficult situations.  Regardless, this semester has been one of great thinking, and I’m sad it will be ending. 
 
Hopefully though, I will be returning to Abu Dhabi when I graduate in December.  I would love to spend two years or so here working and learning about the city in a different way.  It really feels like home.

The semester is coming to a close, but the end still seems so far away. The last two weeks are always the roughest. Final papers, projects, and presentations are all still looming on the horizon of next week. Everything seems to have fallen on the same week this year. I need to push hard this next week and get everything turned in. Once these large projects are out of my hands I think I’ll be able to focus a little more on finding some closure and saying goodbye to Ghana.

It’s easy to ignore the fact that I’m leaving in just 18 days when so much is going on. I push the thought to the back of my head and simply focus on school. This tends to be my way of coping with most things. I divert my attention onto something else and avoid it as much as possible. These next couple of days are going to make that very hard. We have a “re-entry workshop” on Thursday to help us talk about and put into perspective what going back to America is going to be like. Then at the beginning of next week we have a farewell dinner for the entire program. All of these goodbyes are quickly approaching.

When I think back on the semester my first thought is how it blew by. I can’t believe I’ve been gone for about four months now. I think back to all the things I’ve learned and the experiences I had. How community service filled a big void in my life and how patient and more tolerant of people I’ve become. How much my photography improved and how much confidence I have in myself now. Overall I feel like a much stronger and matured human being.

This semester definitely had its downs as well. Struggling to adjust and adapt to being a minority was probably the biggest. Even small things like the heat, smells, and traffic of Accra were all adjustments that I felt myself fighting at the beginning, now it’s just second nature. These tough moments are what helped me grow and are probably some of the strongest memories and lessons I’ll take from living here.

I’ve talked with my roommates a little about how our mentality might change when we get home. I’ve heard people say that it’s going to be hard and that things will be weird. I think the biggest challenge is going to be staying positive. After spending so much time in a place that needs so much help, our problems back home don’t seem like such problems any more. The hardest thing for me right now is the fact that I am leaving a place that could use my help more than the place I’m leaving it for. It tugs a my conscious knowing that so much could be done to keep Ghana on the positive path it’s on and yet I’m leaving that all.

In the end, I’m definitely ready to go home and spend the summer with the people I love. I know that one thing is for sure, I will be coming back very soon. 

Though I still have a month left in Argentina, it’s incredible that my year here is drawing to a close. My relationship with time has been very interesting. For one, I feel as if coming here was something I’ve looked forward to for so long. At times it seems as if I’ve been here forever and simultaneously, this semester has flown by.
The most rewarding part of my abroad experience has been learning a city – its language, customs, inconveniences and culture. I’ve lived in three homestays, totaling eight months of observing how Argentines are behind closed doors. Through this, I’ve learned things that would otherwise be impossible to know from being publicly acquainted such as truly knowing what the Argentine diet consists of (meat and very few vegetables) or the rule about wearing shoes to dinner. My current madre has truly let me into her family, referring to me as her otra hija (other daughter) and bringing me to her country home to do asado (barbeque) with her family. As I said in my last post, I truly have a sense of how the Argentine upper class lives.
I hope to maintain the relaxed air I’ve developed here. I want to remember to spend time with people and that being a few minutes late is not life or death. On the other end of this vain, however, I hope that I’ve not completely lost the drive and work ethic that is evidenced in New York. I think here it’s a mixture of having less to do and a more leisurely culture, but I hope to strike a balance once I’m back in New York.
I hope to remember my Spanish but, sadly, I know that the day I leave Argentina is probably the best my Spanish will be in my life. This fact is unfortunate and I’m still searching for ways to keep it when I’m back. I’m very open to ideas and suggestions.
I’m not sure what my overall takeaway from this experience will be, I think only time and distance will reveal the most poignant aspects. For now, the strongest elements are friendship and thankfulness. I’ve become an incredibly proud US citizen, not in a gun-waving way, but I’m so happy to come from a country that has a comparatively stable and functional government. So many things that I took for granted are now things that I profoundly miss and appreciate about the US. For example, I cannot wait to not have to pay for water at restaurants or constantly watch my feet when walking down the street for dog poop.
I’ll deeply miss Argentina. It’s lovely and a fun-loving wonderful place. I encourage everyone in this course to visit at some point; it’s like nowhere else.
The picture is Eva Peron's grave. I find this to be a fitting last photo. 

When I first signed up for the Art of Travel course, I was not sure what to expect. I knew that the class would focus on my experience abroad, but other than that I knew nothing. However, as the semester comes to an end, I am so happy that I enrolled in this course. Blogging once a week has really allowed me to keep track of my semester and reflect on the amazing experiences I have had (something I would not have necessarily done otherwise). After getting the hang of the blog, I began to pay more attention to details, in an attempt to share something exciting and interesting with my fellow bloggers. I have also realized how important taking pictures is. I have a newfound love for photography, as it is a way for me to document my travels and share them with my family and friends. The biggest problem I faced while abroad was definitely the language barrier, but having Italian four times a week definitely encouraged me to learn and speak the language. I will never forget the amazing art I was surrounded by. Living down the block from the David has been unreal. Although the flocks of tourists can often be annoying their excited and love for this city is contagious. Not only has living in Florence been the experience of a lifetime, I have also been fortunate to travel all over Europe to some of the most amazing and beautiful cities: Brussels, Budapest, Lisbon, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Venice, London…you name it. Studying abroad has been the experience of a lifetime and I would definitely recommend it to everyone. I love and appreciate Europe, but I also definitely miss New York. Being away for four months has made me appreciate America that much more.
 

Ideally, I would be able to say that I partake in activities that better my perspective on the world and on the experiences that happen around me voluntarily. It is said that journaling about your experiences have a calming, analytical effect on one's perception of the experiences that are happening now, that have happened, and will happen in the future. And as much as I wish to say that I do this of my own accord, I feel as if I partake less and less of reflection about what is happening around me unless forced to by necessity. Too much have I understood the world around me through a forcedly short perspective: as if my instant gratification needs to be satisfied when and how I want it to be. But, upon taking this course and upon traveling abroad, it has made my place in this world known to me in such a humbling way that I needed to write out to understand fully. For this reason I am extremely grateful to have had the experience to supplement my study abroad term with this course to force myself to reflect and piece together exactly why the things I had been experiencing were important to me and my shifted world view. 

It just seems to be interesting to note that my perspective about my own propensity for instant gratification has changed significantly. I used to consider myself a patient person, able to understand my position in the world as a relatively small part of a greater whole, but with abilities that make me adept and able to adapt well to given situations. I had this perspective upon coming to Berlin. And, boy, how I was shown the truth of the extent of my own abilities. 

It is said that given the time to be alone and to experience things alone that the individual learns so much about themselves that they did not know before. It is hard to explain this to someone who has not had that opportunity to listen to their own thoughts echo around their heads, to have an internal dialogue about the nature of certain problems and how to fix them without another to discuss them with, to have certain problems that one has never experienced before except in possibility rear their ugly heads and incite the necessity to react. Nothing can be said to adequately explain how these things will happen, or the things you learn about yourself. The only way I could explain it is that my knowledge about my potential self and my scope of influence deepened. My abilities and weaknesses were thrown into high contrast against the harsh glare of certain experiences upon being abroad. It really is an experience that will show you things about yourself that you never knew before. But it is not clear until it is experienced for oneself. 

I do not say any of this to be pretentious. I simply wish to highlight the humbling aspects of being thrown into a brand new world, a brand new state of being, and a different standard of normalcy. Becoming a world wide citizen requires the individual to be more malleable in their understanding of their own capabilities forged to be used in a different culture, and for this reason it is hard to even describe what is garnered from this experience. I simply know that I am extremely grateful that I have had this experience and it will influence my perspective for the rest of my life. Good luck to everyone on their journey back, and to those who are just embarking on their experience, embrace everything you can and take nothing for granted.