Reunions, Reflections

...FAMILY

...friends,

...and Joey!

After just over two weeks of being home, I have been surprised by how quickly I acclimated to familiar routines. In the first twenty hours or so, splitting my time between unpacking, party preparations, and lavishing attention upon a certain needy dog we all know, I felt detached from the big event of coming home after months of living in another country, and seeing doing more international travel in one autumn than I expect to do again for the rest of my life.

So, what have I learned? All I know for certain is that I will discovering new ways to answer that question for the rest of my life. I don't think that I can know, so soon after coming back, all the ways that my perspective has been broadened, my horizons very literally expanded, or my sense of self sharpened. That is probably why I have struggled to sit down and write this post. Rereading journal entries from just before I left, expecting to see all sorts of changing between my thinking then and now, I am surprised to find that I seem to have come full circle. I left embracing the mystery of the experience, trying to avoid nailing down specific expectations. Now I'm back, and even though I lived through every day of it, the experience still seems like one vast mystery.

I can't easily catalogue a list of regrets. I know that I spent time being homesick and withdrawn that I could have spent relishing every moment, visiting every inch of Cork City, researching the countries I would later visit, learning to step dance (e.g. "Riverdance") or play the bodhran. But at the same time, I now better know myself and my limitations. I needed to deal with the emotional taxes of leaving home for the first time, and leaving it so completely. I needed to struggle to figure out who I was supposed to be, surrounded by strangers and not people whose expectations of me I know how to meet. Hindsight may be 20/20, but even when I was indulging myself in brief bouts of depression in my little Irish apartment, I knew it was a waste of time. That didn't make it easier to avoid. Regretting how I spent part of my time in Ireland, then, seems useless; I can't regret being who I am. I'm her, she's me, we have to live with one another for a while yet.

I can, and do, list accomplishments. I made eleven good friends, began to actually enjoy shopping for clothes, and learned about Irish culture from Irish instructors in my literature, music and history classes. I got lost in Brussels, ate an authentic Belgian waffle, and walked the medieval streets of Bruges; I ate pretzels in Germany and saw my international musician auntie perform; I touched the broken stone of the coliseum in Rome by moonlight, climbed the 400 stairs to the top of the duomo in Florence, and learned Venetian history from our gondoleer; I went to a London show with Kim and laughed until I cried with Rich; I saw Flamenco dancers, learned how to make Sangria and paella from a genuine Catalan, and spoke Spanish in Spain. And sure enough, each time I came back to Ireland, I became more comforted by the lilt of the Irish accent in the airport terminal, the sound of fiddle music leaking out onto the street from the warm interior of centuries old pubs, more relaxed by the walk along the River Lee that brought me back to a place that felt like home.

I think this will always be the biggest prize of studying abroad; not to have lived in Ireland, exactly, but to have made a home there. To forever feel a pang of recognition at images of its stunning natural beauty, from the lush cattle pastures of Cork to the majestic cliffs of Moher. To forever feel a small measure of ownership for a place that mesmerizes so many - that mesmerized me, the entire time I was there, and gave me the gift of a lifetime of memories.