I've been home for about two weeks now and every day I have been thinking about writing this blog... my closure post, but I have been so tired or busy that I have just kept putting it off. Today I finally came to terms that I just wont write anything but I don't like to leave things unfinished so here it is. I don't really have a theme or an idea that I've been thinking about which would normally create the post or I would try work in so bare with me if it is a bit scatter brained.
I'm home and its hot.
I had a swell last three weeks in DK. The first week was Christmas which has been covered in another post and the later weeks consisted of spending money, sleeping... a lot of sleeping, a comedy/magic and orchestra new years concert and finally catching up with Host families, a few friends with an odd Rotary and Inner Wheel meeting thrown in for good measure.
Gosh, being back in DK was just so refreshing and so normal. It always feels like coming home. I just kept being reminded after every visit to my host families how fortunate I was to fall into this little community and have these people in my life. Never has my heart felt so full and happy. I get this warm feeling and I just have so much love and appreciation for them.
and I guess that's what this whole venture has been about these last ten-ish months. I've really found that the world is filled with wonderful people and if you open yourself- your heart, the world comes flooding in. Sometimes you have to filter out the bad and make choices to find the good, but there is good there and I feel fortunate to be breathing the same air and sharing the company of these wonderful people. I have always known this I guess- it's not a new revelation but it's just something I really felt this year. It comes from being able to call a strangers house a home, it comes from spending Christmas with a family you barely know and being spoilt rotten, it comes from a stranger holding the door for you while you struggle up the tiny hostel stairs with 20 kgs of luggage or a few strangers adopting you for the night because you are travelling on your own. I have had so many wonderful encounters with people from all walks of life on all sorts of journeys and I feel privileged that our paths have crossed. The more people we can understand the smaller the world gets. The smaller prejudice and intolerance gets.
It feels different coming home this time. A wonderful lady mentioned to me that this time she thought 'I was calmer' or 'more ready' to be coming home than I was when I was coming home from exchange. I definitely get that, I definitely feel that. My whole life was changed after exchange and because it was my first big venture and everything I had left had changed. I had no idea what I was coming back to and if I was ever getting back to DK. a whole 'era' had ended- that's what scares me really about life, how it can be so one way and then so not. Time just moves on. However, I do find peace knowing I know what it takes. I know, how easy it is to come back and to create something so wonderful, I think that's why I am calmer, that's why I'm not so devastated. I just feel strange because this time is all over. I've spent my whole life really working towards this and it feels strange that its been and gone. Travel and living overseas is something that I have always been aware of mainly because of my British side. I've always known of the countryside in England where my relatives live, I've always known about my parents 18 months spent living overseas and various other relatives travelling, so all I have ever envisioned was spending a 'gap year' living and travelling overseas. I always thought about university and relationships and all that domesticated life that happens later but I never really saw past my 'gap year'- my dream. I'm almost 21 years old and I've achieved really all I've ever dreamed of doing and now I don't really know where to go from there. I'm working on a few new aspirations but I know it wont be long before I am back venturing.
I have discovered through all this that I love starting fresh, starting new and creating a life somewhere else- even if it is just for a while. I feel that is definitely something that I will spend my life chasing and delving in and out of. I find my home within my self and my happiness. I find my home in streets, landscapes and in smiles of other people. It is lovely to have familiar hugs, the sound of our whinge-y accent and the company of my family but you know what, I know I'm ok when I don't have the familiar. I can survive and I can be happy.
I'm excited to see what this next chapter of my life brings. I'm not too fussed on going to university or be back in aus, but I do know that I am grateful, that I am lucky to be able to come home. I am lucky that I have education easily available to me, that I have family and friends that welcome me with open arms, I am lucky that I am healthy and I that I have choice and opportunity, purely the opportunity to do well in my life if I choose to do so and that's, that's more than enough for now.
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