It feels like just a short time ago that I was ripping open my letter from the abroad office, and unreasonably worrying that, because it was so thin, the envelope would come bearing news of rejection. It feels like just a few minutes ago, I was stepping onto the plane, wrapping myself in the thinly threaded Virgin Atlantic blanket, and making small talk with the bubbly girls on either side of me. And now, after just my first few weeks studying abroad in London, it feels as if I have been here forever, with friends I have known for years.
Over the summer, I said that I was far from nervous to travel miles across the Atlantic. In fact, I said that I was excited to explore a foreign city as a resident and to have many opportunities to bus, train, or fly myself to various other European countries. I had no trouble making Boston University a second home, so to me, studying abroad seemed like it could be another easy transition into a different aspect of college life.
But I was wrong. In some terrifying ways and some great ways, but I was wrong.
First of all, I was immensely homesick. After just a week, it hit me like a gust of wind from the River Thames: I am not coming home for Thanksgiving, I am not going to spend time with my friends in Boston this semester, and I am not eating in the Hundo Bay Dining Hall (this last part is more important that you’d think! Being vegetarian, on a budget, in a foreign country, having to plan and prepare meals three times a day… it really takes a lot out of a student!).
Furthermore, I felt lost. My SIM card was not delivered for a couple of days (a couple of days too long! Not to be a princess, but I need my viber and instagram), and I needed data for Google Maps and Hop Stop. My computer broke in a confusing and possibly change-of-voltage related episode, and I nearly broke down myself. Not to mention that the currency exchange made my mind hurt, and I probably blew a few too many pounds, feeling elated that a purse was “only fifteen bucks” (15 quid aka around $24.00).
Yet I learned. I tagged along as everyone rushed to the supermarket, and I taught myself to compare prices and buy store-brand names. I packed peanut butter and jelly for lunch, saving myself a few pence everyday while some students bought tasty sandwiches from Pret a Manger. I allowed myself to get lost, walking for hours around South Kensington with fellow students, getting to know the area at my own pace while getting to know some new friends. And I used notebooks in class, absorbing the material more accurately through handwritten notes rather than from the dim light of my laptop.
Before I knew it, I was feeling more comfortable around the people and places that I had previously felt so far from. I had been hovering, as if my mind had not yet landed in London the way my body had, as if I just needed the whirlwind of new to clear, so that I would feel at home.
Now, I can fully appreciate all that I had anticipated. Those bubbly girls on the plane are now my friends, the ones that I can plan trips with to Paris, Madrid, Dublin, Amsterdam, Rome, and Prague (no really, I hope to go to all of these places, if not more). And this city is now one I can explore, each market, museum, tea house, club, or garden at a time, on a tube system I now understand.
I know that this time abroad will change me; I know that it already has. And I cannot wait to send letters back home, ones my friends cannot wait to tear into, to share all that I have experienced.