Bringing It All Back Home

My god, what happened to February? Did January even happen? And now it's April. I turn around and all of a sudden it's spring break and we're registering for next semester and I go back home in two months. Home... remember home? I thought I remembered home, but now I'm not so sure. Home sure feels like the place that I sleep, where I return to after a trip and where I write these posts. Home is where the heart is, and for sure I will be a leaving a piece of my heart in England.

A long, long time ago, on a lake far, far away... someone told me that my study abroad group would become a kind of family. I didn't believe them. Traditionally I haven't meshed well in big groups and I knew I was taking a gamble - but I lucked out. Seriously this has been the best seven months of my life and it's in no small part due to the people I'm with. There's no way I could have predicted pretty much anything that has happened so far, and I've always had someone to cheer with or complain to. It's pretty great.

At some point in the last month the impermanence of our situation started creeping into our thoughts and conversation. We all know that this nine month experience will end eventually, but it's making me really sad to think about it. This is the way I see it: in a year or two, most of us will be graduating anyway, and then we will all scatter into the great diaspora of life. Why rush it? After we get back, most of us are going back to Duluth, so why shouldn't the friendships we made here survive the trip over the Atlantic? So I keep telling myself, though I know that real life isn't quite so simple.

Above all, I will take this opportunity to enjoy what time and trips I have left. This past weekend we went to York. I suppose it's fitting that I visit the original York before New York, where I someday hope to live (at least for a little while.) It's a testament to how comfortable that I've become with these people that I worked up the courage to make a video featuring people other than myself. The videos are generally a lot of fun to make, and they're a great way to share what I've been doing to my stateside audience. But, of course, my videos serve another purpose: they document my year in a way that text never could. Thanks to this uniquely 21st century technology, I will be able to look back at myself in decades to come and really remember what a great time I had with my friends.

And who knows? Maybe we'll still be in touch.

All At Once

It was a beautiful early spring day, and after three hours of purgatory class, I walked down to my favorite park and watched the sun set over Worcester. The sky was clear, or at least, clear by English standards; what clouds that remained were bathed in pink and orange light as the sun made its slow plummet towards the horizon between the Malverns and the Cathedral. I was reminded of the last time I had watched - really watched - a sunset: August 29th, 2012. That night I had driven out to one of my favorite places to watch the night fall, for less than 12 hours later I would be leaving for Duluth, and everything would change.

See, I wasn't used to change. In my eyes, I haven't changed since like middle school. I mean, once I discovered the Beatles and got my first computer, the stage was pretty much set for everything that came after. Even most of my clothes are 4+ years old. But the thing you have to realize about change is that it has a nasty habit of sneaking up on you...

Accomplishment

I've put off writing this post for a long time. I've gone through so many iterations of this post in my head that it has apparently looped back around to writing this post about writing this post.

But anyway. Let's talk about goals.

I had a turbulent summer, and in the middle of it I created a list of goals for my upcoming year abroad. It is an interesting and eclectic list, but it is well-balanced with a few easily-achievable goals and a few stretch goals. I was not in the best place when I wrote it, so even as I arrived in England I wasn't sure if I was going to take it seriously.

Soon after I got back from Barcelona, I opened my neglected, 50-cent Walmart journal and looked at the list once again. It surprised me to see that I had completed a fair few of them since coming to England:

Stay in a hostel

Go to Spain

Go to Stonehenge

Travel by train

Spend Christmas and New Year's Eve with cool people

I certainly have never considered myself a goal-setting person, but being able to cross those particular items off the list felt pretty good. Since coming here I've been in constant fear that I'm wasting my nine months in Worcester by taking the occasional chance to relax. Barcelona was fun, probably the best thing I've ever done, but I don't know how ready I am for another big trip. I've come to realize that I have no reason to be ashamed of what I do or don't get a chance to do over here, and measuring my successes against what others are doing is probably not going to end well. It wasn't really a big revelation, but I feel like it's an important one nonetheless.

All that said, I have seen some really awesome places. This past weekend I went to London with the UMD group and I got to spend some quality time on the London Underground, chasing the dreams of my past lives. It reminded me of the first time I was really in a big city - Chicago, 2010, band and choir trip. Back then, I said I wanted to move to a metropolis only because I knew I wanted to leave where I was. That feeling certainly hasn't disappeared, but it has mellowed a bit. I think I've come to respect that the choice between an urban and rural lifestyle is not a dichotomy. Being in a big city, surrounded by people and tall buildings and more life than I have ever known gives me a completely different feeling from the isolation that driving on unpaved roads through fields does. And I know these feelings are complementary, and they will be with me forever no matter where I go.

Ultimately, I have but one goal for this year, and it is simple: don't come back as the same person that left.