I am extremely lucky in that I spent the last two years of my life living in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. However, my parents still live there, which means I haven’t seen them since they dropped me off at UVA in August. I spent fall break in my dorm while my friends went home, parents weekend as a straggler with other people’s families, and Thanksgiving with relatives instead of going out to eat with my parents because no one celebrates Thanksgiving in the UAE. My hall mates are excited about the holidays and spending time with their friends and family, but the excitement they feel is that of people who saw their families just two weeks ago. The break between semesters is a welcome relaxation time for all students, but for me, and other international students, the break is not just a time to veg out on your own couch with your high school friends, it is an opportunity to cram in as much quality time with your friends and family as possible. The people who now live in completely different time zones will finally be in the same room together for the first time since summer and the last time until summer of 2015, and there is a lot of pressure to pack in as much fun and story sharing as you can in the short amount of time you have together plus spending time with your family.
Not only do I have to try to spend as much time with my family and friends as possible, I also have to deal with a lot of other added pressures that going overseas causes. I have to worry about an 18 hour flight there and back, plus the extreme jetlag caused by a nine hour time difference. The cultural change is also something to combat since I have not been in Abu Dhabi since July, and the culture is so drastically different from American culture in general, not to mention the culture of UVA. Going home to a place that is so drastically different than where you have been for the past three and a half months would be hard on anyone, and international students still have to deal with the same problems other students may face when going home, such as having to answer to your parents about your whereabouts or when you will be home.
International students have more, or at the very least different, struggles to face in terms of going home for winter break than non-international students do, but we also have a bigger payoff. We have so little time to spend with our friends and families before we go back to being separated for months, so the enthusiasm and joy at being reunited after such a long separation makes up for the fact that I will be so exhausted from jetlag on the first night out with my friends that I may fall asleep in public. Spending time with family and people you care about is so important, and international students really get to understand that in a way that students only a few hours from home do not because we get so much less time and so many fewer opportunities to see our loved ones than other students do.