Final Post

Time to go home!

I am coming home tomorrow! I’ve finished up my time in Italy, and I fly back in the morning; soon, I’ll be in Norman, no doubt watching sports and mindlessly scrolling Twitter on the same couch I wrote my first post from four months ago. When I wrote that post, I was an anxious wreck, trying to pull myself together before stepping into a completely new world. I said I wanted to leave hopefully, instead of fearfully. I knew I was going to fail a lot, but I prayed “that in sacrificing comfort and capability I will gain something else.” Now that my time in Europe is drawing to a close, I want to take some time to inventory what that “something else” was, and to thank God for His faithfulness in meeting my insecurity with His goodness. 

First, the obvious: I got the primary thing I went to Spain for, Spanish practice. It really is amazing how much immersion does for language-learning. In one semester, I’ve gone from scared to order a coffee to excited when I meet a Spanish speaker who I can chat with. I’m proud of my newfound bilingualism. The thing about immersion, though, is that it’s not an issue of effort. I didn’t get better at Spanish because I spent hours staring at conjugation charts or drilling vocab, I got better because of the patient friends who bore with my stammering, broken questions and egregious mispronunciations, who repeated themselves over and over again until I could pick out the words that blurred together to a soupy mess in my slow ears. Immersion was the process of a kind community pulling me up towards them until I got my feet under me. The path to a little bit of belonging was sounding like an outsider hundreds of times and letting those patient enough to help show me the way in. I’m grateful for the skill, but I think the real lesson was seeing the anatomy of inclusion in a new way; overcoming a language barrier was a product of patience from my host mom, bread guy (shout out Gabriel, who taught me the name of a half-dozen Spanish pastries), coffee shop companions, bus drivers, and so on. Belonging in a place and becoming part of a community wasn’t something I could earn myway to, so much as it was something I had to be given — I want to bring that experience home with me and apply it to the communities I’m part of. 

Speaking of home, going abroad gave me a new appreciation for the people and places I left behind. In the four months I have been in Europe, I can’t remember a single day I didn’t feel at least a little bit homesick. Sounds a little sad, maybe, but it isn’t. I have had some amazing experiences here; I walked the streets of London, climbed the Eiffel tower, saw Rome from the top of St Peter’s Basilica, stood at the base of Mount Vesuvius and explored the ruins of Pompeii. I got to walk past a plaza built by Romans every day to class in a 500 year old  monastery, and I spent my weekends either traveling Europe or just relaxing in a city with great coffee and cheap beer. I did things that people in books do, and that not many people in real life ever get a chance to. How lucky am I to do all that and still miss where I come from? The homesickness and fear of missing out that made me so anxious before I left turned out to be an incredible gift, because now I’ve seen the world and still want to be in Oklahoma. On that note, the time abroad spoke to one of my deepest insecurities in an extremely healing way. I always worry that I’m little more than an incidental figure in other people’s lives, at best a pleasant accessory that can be easily replaced. Instead, my friends and family stayed in touch, checked in on me when it was challenging, and showed me the same love that they’d been sharing with me all along. Instead of pulling me away from my friends, time abroad has given me new ways of being close with them, whether through facetime, regular texts, or a game of Age of Empires a few times a week. It’s been a joy to connect with them across an ocean, and as excited as I am to come back home, I am going to miss the unique ways I’ve gotten to bond with people this semest.er 

I can’t believe how fast the time went, now that it’s gone. I’m really glad I did this (thank you to all the people who told me I should!) and I can’t wait for whatever’s next. Thanks to everyone who’s been reading this! I appreciate people taking the time to read what I have to say, it’s very gratifying. I’ve enjoyed trying to push myself as a writer, and having an audience helps with that - obviously I’m done with travel blogging for now, but hopefully I’ll come up with something else to fill your inboxes sooner or later. Until then, thank you for your attention and I’ll see you all soon!