midnight musings of a former exchange student

I didn't expect to continue this blog in America because I felt that the "adventures" of a 12th grader in the middle of California wouldn't be that interesting than of those of an exchange student in Germany. But I've decided to come back for a moment and muse about the experience of coming home. After all, coming home is part of the exchange year.

In all honesty, my journey home was one of melancholy and reluctance. I didn't want to leave Germany. Whilst preparing my luggage and brain for the long trip back to California, I thought ahead to the responsibilities waiting for me. There were relationships to mend, homework to ignore, news and gossip to catch up with, etc. etc. This was a coping mechanism I used to block out the inevitable pain I knew was coming in the form of reverse culture shock.

Our guardians discussed this in our end-of-the-year seminar. We were taught methods on how to re-enter our former lives and still keep with us the new person we've become. These tips were helpful, but they couldn't even begin to prepare me for what was to happen when I stepped off the plane and ran into the arms of this former life.

The thing about reverse culture shock that hits one hardest is the confusion. On one hand, we are once again surrounded by family and friends and taco trucks, and everyone is happy to see you. On the other, we find ourselves yearning for the people we found during our journey, to be wrapped in the arms of that person who's no longer just a train ride away, and Döner. We're torn between these conflicting emotions. We want to sit down for a while with no company other than maybe that of a bottle of magic and weep about the transiency of it all but we also realize that the drinking age is 21 and that we're expected (even by ourselves) to be happy about being back.

Going back to school intensified my reverse culture shock. When I first came home I was able to sometimes forget it by keeping myself preoccupied: hanging out with best friends and making guacamole and just enjoying the summer's freedom. But at the end I was thrown back into high school, where the first couple of weeks were extremely comparable to how Bella Swan felt when she was curled up in a ball in the middle of the forest after being abandoned by her vampire boyfriend. Of course, I couldn't just do that because A) there is no forest near me and B) I'm not the heroine in a YA Romance novel. So I gave myself some time to wallow but then pushed to keep busy in order to forget the waves of loneliness and panic beating against my skull.

It's gotten better now that I'm 3 weeks in and have come to realize that a lot of my classes aren't really that devastating to be in. So I did plow through. I complained a lot, but I plowed through.

Many think that the experience is finished as soon as one boards the plane, no matter how melancholic and reluctant one is. But in truth, the experience continues. One may think that there's not possibly anything else left to learn after coming back from a year in a foreign country, but one must remember that there always is.

 I made a mistake and assumed that saying Goodbye to Germany would be the hardest obstacle to overcome but I later learned that coming home is a million obstacles in itself. There's joy and pain and bliss and discontent and tears and beer cravings, but that's the most beautiful part of becoming an exchange student. We learn that everything is an adventure, and ignite a fire in ourselves to take on whatever it is in front of us, fearless of the inevitability of the day we come home.