There are moments in your life when you know you are in the right place, with the right people at the right time. Secret Santa, this night, was one of those moments. This entire semester, I grew closer to people and drifted farther away from people more than I thought I would. But sitting around the table with my closest friends, I knew I did something right.
The period of time between Thanksgiving and now felt like it was that period of time when your favorite TV series is winding down and there are only a few more episodes before it stops. And you try to cherish every single episode you possibly can, trying to remember every single moment. That’s the way I felt. I was once walking down the street with my boyfriend, holding his hand, just like any other happy American couple would, but then I realized that the amounts of times I would be holding his hand were fairly limited. I held back my tears with all of my strength as I knew the show, that was my own life, would change.
This night sitting around the table. with people I felt like I knew my entire life, was exactly the same feeling. I walked down the stairs and saw my friends prepare a surprise “Going Away” party for me. We each opened our gifts and I saw the glassiness of tears in one of my best friend’s eyes as I finished opening mine caught my attention. He was one of those people, you meet your first week of orientation and you just grow to know each other more and more through the semester until you can mimic his storytelling ability, and you feel really weird when you haven’t seen him in the past three days. These are my people, these are my friends that I call my family. And I am not going to be with them for a long time. My one roommate has told me the same exact sentence every day for about the past two months. “Erica, I am realllly going to miss you, not like an, oh yea I miss hanging out with Erica. But more like what am I going to do without Erica in the same room.” I have no idea what to say to that every morning because part of me does not know what I will do either.
I have utterly no clue what lays ahead of me. I am constantly getting asked the questions…
“Do you speak French?” No.
“Why France?” I am an Art History major and I have always wanted to go. (But…I can totally get that language requirement done.)
“Do you know anyone in your program?” Nope, I’ll probably be the youngest one there.
“Why did you want to go abroad during your sophomore year instead of your junior year?” Because I can. (Honestly, the best answer I could come up with on the fly)
“Have you even been to Europe?” No.
“Wait have you even been out of the country?” Yea…Canada. “Erica, Niagara Falls does not count.” Actually… it was the West Coast of Canada. “Oh, I guess that counts.”
“Like do you even know what France is doing now, is it even safe?” Yes, yes I do. I check my CNN notifications probably way too much. I can tell you that France has declared War
(Which is usually what they are referring to, but France has done some pretty cool stuff after that). In more current news…Paris also was the location for the Environmental Conference where they crafted a new Climate Change Agreement with 200 countries signing that is pretty amazing in my opinion. Is it safe? Who knows? I mean in the US, Like 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted on a college campus, and do I even have to mention the 2016 presidential race. So, I can only suppose France is relatively safe in some aspects.
Now, I ask myself. Why? Why now? Then I think of my younger self, that little girl who would watch House Hunters International and the Travel Channel for fun and build a café for her Barbie dolls. That’s why I am doing this. I want to take art history courses that I cannot take back in Gettysburg. I want to improve my language ability, even if I look like the hopeless American. I want to see the world outside the cornfields of small-town New Jersey. I have no idea what the next semester will look like, I pray that I can make friends, and I really hope I can master my coffee order in French. I am scared and excited all at the same time. I have heard of people going abroad next semester, being “so ready” to leave Gettysburg. I don’t know if I am exactly ready; do you ever really know if you are truly ready for something until it actually happens? But I have decided that it is something I have to do for my younger self. I cannot let the younger image of myself down.
I cannot say that I come from a super traveled, or even adventurous family. But I do know that I was raised to not give up, and face my problems independently. I never thought leaving the land I have always known would make me want to run and cover. Freshman orientation week, I was nervous and scared like everyone else, but once I walked into Schmucker for my advisor meeting, I felt like I was hit with a brick wall. All the feelings of nervousness were gone. I knew I was in the right place at the right time. I really cannot describe the feeling. Present day, I had the same experience. I was walking down the stairs to turn in my final exam, for an art history course; I realized this was not going to be the stairway that I would commonly walk down. But I felt that it was ok, that it was my time to move on in my life and explore something new. I walked out of the same doors that allowed me to have a huge sense of peace and did not look back.
Please, or should I say…”s’il vous plait” read my study abroad journey as I travel to the South of France. This adventure is likely to follow, possibly the least stereotypical Jersey girl making a ton of mistakes, getting lost, eating a lot of bread, trying to find the best lavender in all of Provence, definitely missing home at times, eventually traveling to see my “little sister” in Spain, and most importantly quite a bit of sass. Au revoir.