One More Chapter
A twenty two year-old's view on life, death,
and Taylor Swift conspiracy theories
and Taylor Swift conspiracy theories
I am writing this blog post as I sit on a train that is taking me from Paris to Nice where I will be meeting with my program directors to take me to Cannes for the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. This journey marks the end of my time in Paris. I will not be returning to my homestay before returning to Boston, and there is a great possibility that I may never return in my lifetime. This fact is terrifying. How is it that I am done with my semester abroad already? After my two week program in Cannes, I will be boarding a train once again to take me back to Paris where I will enjoy one last day in what has been the city of my dreams for the past five or ten years and then board my plane back to Boston to begin the next adventure: New York City. I have to say that living in Paris has been one of the hardest and scariest things I have ever done. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have never felt so at peace with myself as I have living in and exploring Europe. Never have I been immersed in such rich culture and history. Most places that I stayed or studied in were older than my country. It’s hard to wrap your head around most of the time, but undeniably amazing. I’m sorry that I didn’t do many blog posts throughout my stay, but I often found it difficult to summarize my adventures into a short post. As it was, I had a hard time skyping with my parents because I would be asked “so, how’s it going over there?” and I would simply not know what to say. Yes, it was going fine, but there was so many things that I was seeing, feeling and experiencing that I just couldn’t express to someone who wasn’t also experiencing it with me. In these next few blog posts I am going to try and put some of these feelings into words as best as I can. I apologize in advance for the length of this particular blog, but I hope you find in interesting/helpful if you’re planning to study abroad as well. This post is going to focus on the hardest part of studying abroad that I’ve encountered this semester that I’m not sure everyone has to deal with, but was certainly an issue with me: LONELINESS And, don’t feel bad for me. As my mother often says, it’s all a learning experience. And, don’t worry, it sounds worse than it really was. But, yes, loneliness was one of the biggest obstacles for me to overcome. You see, there is a short window of time when you begin studying abroad when you establish which group of friends you will have. I pride myself in my ability to make friends fairly easily. While I can (and often prefer to) be shy and introverted, I understand that there are situations that call for me to be outgoing and open to meeting new people. For my program, this was during the first week of orientation. During this time, I found a good group of maybe five or six people that I really seemed to vibe with and whom I went out to dinner with a few times. Most of us had Wednesdays off so we would go on a different touristy adventure on these days, always mentioning in the group chat that anyone was open to join us. These trips were consistent and fun and were a great way for us to get to know the city. Often I would do things on Thursday and Friday afternoons as well with those who ended classes early like I did. It seemed like all was going great. But then our gatherings became smaller and smaller. People were dropping off like flies. One of the people in our group would always have something else to do, which was a mystery to the rest of us. Then another lost their internet at their homestay and started spending all of his free time at the study abroad office to use their internet while they were open. Another one just stopped answering in the group chat altogether and we didn’t see her for the rest of our time in the country. To this day I have only seen her once and it was when I was walking to the grocery store to grab something for dinner and I saw her sitting on the ground outside of a boulangerie, smoking a cigarette with another girl from our program who hadn’t been in class in weeks. After maybe two months, our weekly outings slowly dwindled into nothingness. I found myself posting in the group chat, hoping to get people to go out or do something, but hardly ever got a response. And, just like that, I was alone. My mother came to visit the first week this started happening and, so I didn’t really notice it too much. I was glad to have her there with me, but it was a week of unfortunate weather and I kept feel terrible that she wasn’t getting to see Paris for what is really was; a truly beautiful city. Sadly, when it’s rainy, windy and cold you tend to not was to spend a lot of time outside and, therefore, we didn’t get to stroll through the beautiful gardens and lay out in the sun at the top of the Parc de Belleville or anything like that. The day she left it was beautiful out, and every day since then. Seeing the gorgeous weather made me oddly sad because I was wishing the whole time that my mother had been there to see it. The Wednesday after she had left I put out a message in the group chat with my fellow study-abroaders. No one replied. It was like my week away had been all they needed to finally and fully fall apart. Our core group was no longer. I would continue to see posts from other friend groups in my program and people who were going on weekend trips together and that week I felt terrible. It was towards middle of April (a little over halfway through my time in France) and I was wishing with everything inside me that I could just go home. I missed my friends and family and I felt more alone than I ever had. It was awful. I called my mom and cried on the phone to her about how I felt and how I also kept breaking everything in my host family’s house (to be expanded upon in another blog). Being able to call and skype home is essential when you are living 3,000 miles away. It seemed that I had picked the wrong friend group. And it was too late to change that. I was stuck on my own for most of the time remaining in France. I relished in going to class at times because it meant interacting with people. While I hadn’t become a part of the other friend groups in the program, I was certainly very friendly with the others and we all knew each other by name, often eating lunch together or going and getting ice cream between classes together. I always made a point to eat at my University so that I would get to talk to the others. Sometimes it was even the people in my original friend group. During lunch we might talk about doing another Wednesday out, but the plans would always dissolve in the end. I made good friends with one girl, Natalie, who I sat next to in French class. She also was a sophomore at Umass and we bonded over this strange coincidence. She was in my program, but we hadn’t gotten to know each other in the first week and therefore we didn’t go out together or go on trip together. Weird how that works, right? We were always grateful to have each other in class and when I left the other day we hugged and promised to meet up if and when I visited the Umass campus next semester (I’m studying off campus in New York next semester). I often wished that I’d ended up with her friend group, but no need to spend time regretting the past. I, luckily, had a few friends who were also studying Europe this semester. I took a trip to England to visit a friend, Michaela, who I will be sharing an apartment with when I return to Umass next Spring. We spent a day in London and the rest of the time in a small, coastal town called Brighton and stayed (for free!) at her dorm in the University of Sussex. I also spent a weekend at St. Andrews University in Scotland with a friend whom I met during my trip to Los Angeles this past summer, Kittsie. She is also the person I will be rooming with at Cannes for the next two weeks. We had a great weekend and I was so glad to be with friends again and to meet some great people. One trip to Edinburgh, much earlier in the trip, I even met up with one of my best friends in the entire world, with whom I’ve been friends for twenty years. It was one of my favorite memories of this entire experience. And, just a few weeks ago, my aunt, uncle and four cousins spend a few days in Paris and I got to spend a weekend with them. The other trips that I went on (Dublin, some of my Edinburgh trip, and a tour of the Scottish Highlands) were solo trips (though, I did go to Amsterdam with one of my friends from the program). It was during these trips that I realized I really do enjoy travelling alone. I get to do exactly what I want and I don’t need to worry about making small talk the whole time or making sure that my travel companion and I got the same tickets or find hostels that have more than one bed open etc. It’s much easier to plan and I have come to really like it. I realized one day in Dublin that on these trips I don’t say anything. The only time that I speak the entire trip is when talking to a server at a restaurant or coffee shop. Other than that, there is no need to talk. For someone who could talk non-stop for hours at a time, it was surprisingly peaceful and almost freeing in a way. After a while, the loneliness factor became obsolete. I got used to being alone, and started to use it to my adventure. I got lost in thoughts, created stories in my head, truly reveled in the experiences that I was having. It was great. I didn’t feel like calling home and crying anymore, which is always a good thing. I think that what made it so hard at first was the expectation I had of making these amazing and lifelong friends while studying abroad like everyone had always said that I would. But, while I did make some great friends that I enjoy spending time with and loved getting to know, the truth is, they won’t be lifelong friends. You know when it will be within a few days of meeting someone. When I went to L.A. I made life-long friends, one of which I am heading to see right now. But, while I’m sure that most people do make these friends during their time abroad, for some reason it just wasn’t in the cards for me and I’ve come to accept this. During that terrible week after my mother left, I saw everyone posting pictures with captions about how much they loved the city and loved studying abroad, and all I could think was why am I not feeling like that? I didn’t understand why my experience seemed to be so different from everyone else’s. I wanted what they had. I wanted to go out drinking with friends, to go on trips with other people. But, I needed to accept that we all have different experiences. And, once I did, things seemed to change. I started enjoying my days again and Paris once more was the city of my dreams. But, even though I want, with all my heart, to stay here in Europe and continue exploring, there are factors that will see me home: I am flat broke…and I can’t wait to see my friends back home once again. I miss them so much is hurts.
2 Comments
Ella
2/27/2018 01:50:07 am
Hi! I was wondering if I would be able to email you about this topic? I know it's been a few years since this post, but I am having the same difficulties and would love to talk to someone about it!
Reply
Amanda
3/1/2018 10:10:14 am
Hi Ella! Feel free to email me at akeohane(at)umass(dot)edu
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
About This Blog:I started this blog as a way to challenge myself to write more over the 2014 year, but it has blossomed into so much more than that. I use it to let people in on what's happening in my life, talk about things I find important and to spread the news about amazing people, places and art. Archives
November 2017
|