It Comes in Threes
Germany - Year 2, Month 7
They say homesickness comes in waves of threes. After three weeks on a tour bus cavorting through Europe at age 16, you start to miss home despite the amazing old buildings and beautiful people surrounding you. Three months into your exchange year, you wonder if you can really hold out for another seven months with a family that works so differently from your own and wonder just how much extra Spätzle weight will fit into your favorite bell-bottomed chinos.
Today, day three of being cooped up in the house with a cold, I realize that year three is quickly approaching. That's a whole other ball game than weeks or months. That's way past crushes on your Spanish tour bus driver (who may have been gay) and longing for automatic cars and good Tex-Mex food.
Strange thoughts are entering my head these days - I complain about taxes, chat on the phone with my mother-in-law, wonder about the future of my career and whether it will ever fulfill me. I see peers having babies and wonder about eventually having my own. I cook Maultaschen once a week because, "sheesh, it's 9 o'clock already and we haven't eaten yet?!"
"Adulthood" has crawled its way into my life. I know this happens to everyone (to every single idealist college graduate who ever lived). But what is it supposed to look like for people living in a foreign country?
And how do you explain yourself to people back home? Isn't my life so full of ancient fortresses and beer fests and a well-developed social system that everyday life should feel like I'm traveling? Shouldn't I be appreciating and taking photographs of everything I see?
I fear that's how my U.S. friends and family view my existence: Laura Beth's life can't be normal, or even that bad - it's an exotic European adventure-filled life, and after all, it's one she chose. If she's living her dream that far away, what right does she have to complain to us folks, stuck back in Missouri?
Of course, I can't read their minds. It's just a fear.
Year three is approaching. The jury is out on whether this will be a homesickness wave of hurricane proportions, or if it will instead imitate the currents of the Bottwar creek, where my husband grew up sailing boats made of leaves and sticks. I don't know what's coming. But I'm slowly coming to know that fulfillment won't ever come from my physical surroundings. I have to figure out a way to pack it efficiently into my suitcase, and then not forget to unpack it wherever I land.
They say homesickness comes in waves of threes. After three weeks on a tour bus cavorting through Europe at age 16, you start to miss home despite the amazing old buildings and beautiful people surrounding you. Three months into your exchange year, you wonder if you can really hold out for another seven months with a family that works so differently from your own and wonder just how much extra Spätzle weight will fit into your favorite bell-bottomed chinos.
Today, day three of being cooped up in the house with a cold, I realize that year three is quickly approaching. That's a whole other ball game than weeks or months. That's way past crushes on your Spanish tour bus driver (who may have been gay) and longing for automatic cars and good Tex-Mex food.
Strange thoughts are entering my head these days - I complain about taxes, chat on the phone with my mother-in-law, wonder about the future of my career and whether it will ever fulfill me. I see peers having babies and wonder about eventually having my own. I cook Maultaschen once a week because, "sheesh, it's 9 o'clock already and we haven't eaten yet?!"
"Adulthood" has crawled its way into my life. I know this happens to everyone (to every single idealist college graduate who ever lived). But what is it supposed to look like for people living in a foreign country?
And how do you explain yourself to people back home? Isn't my life so full of ancient fortresses and beer fests and a well-developed social system that everyday life should feel like I'm traveling? Shouldn't I be appreciating and taking photographs of everything I see?
I fear that's how my U.S. friends and family view my existence: Laura Beth's life can't be normal, or even that bad - it's an exotic European adventure-filled life, and after all, it's one she chose. If she's living her dream that far away, what right does she have to complain to us folks, stuck back in Missouri?
Of course, I can't read their minds. It's just a fear.
Year three is approaching. The jury is out on whether this will be a homesickness wave of hurricane proportions, or if it will instead imitate the currents of the Bottwar creek, where my husband grew up sailing boats made of leaves and sticks. I don't know what's coming. But I'm slowly coming to know that fulfillment won't ever come from my physical surroundings. I have to figure out a way to pack it efficiently into my suitcase, and then not forget to unpack it wherever I land.
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