I would say the experiences changed me much for the better. I'm not even going to try to address everything in this post, because I would rather share things a few at a time so that I leave myself time to process everything before I write about it. But I will tell you I learned a lot about myself and the world around me. Namely, my level or lack thereof of patience, my inability to communicate with everyone (it gets kind of frustrating when we don't speak the same language) and conversely my ability to make almost anyone smile, my breaking point (insert around week two of this adventure when I found myself nearly crying myself to sleep) and then again the point when I rose like a phoenix from those ashes and decided not to waste a moment of precious time (I'll credit this to the children I met over there), my comfort zone and how I redefined it completely 8,000 miles from home. Not every moment was beautiful, but by God there was beauty in every moment. I hope I broke a few stereotypes--try being the smallest member of your team and also a female in a country not comparable to the states on gender equality--and rewrote a few that I even held. I will never forget the faces of that place, but even more so the kindness they showed me. I discovered my passion for travel, and I hope I get to live that passion out one day. I promise to give you more stories over time, but I have only been home three days now, and I am still working through a lot of what happened over there...
But as I write this at 5 am (yeah, my body still wants to sleep at 7pm and wake up at about 4am) I want to touch on where I am in life right now. I find myself nostalgic for the summer as mine ends today. I go back to school today for peer advisor training week. I would give anything to be back at my kitchen table pouring over my studies and singing country music. I would go back in a heart beat to my family cruise and even more so to our visit to Atlanta for Peachtree Road Race as that was one of my last family memories before I left the country. Take me back to the moments when I had the freedom to call up my best friends any time I wanted so we could talk on the phone forever. Don't get me wrong, I am very excited for junior year as I have dubbed it "THE YEAR". But at the same time junior year means growing up and growing up means change. Which I'm apparently not a fan of. I am discovering that nothing lasts forever, quite literally, and every moment soon becomes a memory. As sad as that makes me feel right now I keep telling myself you never get "new" moments if you keep holding on to "old" ones. And I think this is around the time my Father says, "little girl, let go of the reigns. I've got big things in store for you if you quit fighting me." And I don't want to fight those big things anymore. Bring on the good and bad of junior year because I think I am strong enough to take it on :)
God bless. SO GOOD TO BE WRITING RIGHT NOW!
K
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