t’s always surprising how therapeutic it can be to clean (or, rather, to clean and have a glass of red wine). It probably has to do with a sense of control; the urge to control things that are controllable. To make better a tiny corner of one’s life. After a long night dealing with the aftermath of an academic tragedy, I was feeling a bit down-scratch that-like a failure. For the past two years of my wonderful life I have, through some miraculous twists of fate, received or been accepted to everything I have applied for. I felt unstoppable. I’m pretty sure I still am (if I keep repeating it to myself, it becomes reality, right? yes. thank you.), but due to circumstances brought about in part by a lack of follow through on my part, but also in large part by a bureaucratic cluster fuck, an application that I was really looking forward to turning in and crossing my fingers about wasn’t able to be submitted.
So, sitting in my sparkling clean studio apartment in Brussels, I felt it was time to reach out to this old friend, the blog. I’ve been neglecting this blog for, I think, three reasons. One: who actually reads this? I think it’s 7 people when you double count my parents. Two: I’ve been adjusting to the pace of a life that revolves around a full-time work schedule. I think adapting to school when I get back from Brussels will be the opposite of adapting to school when I got back from Berlin. and Three: I haven’t had much time to reflect and digest life. To look at it from a different angle and see my day-to-day as a lesson for the universal. Those who have helped me with applications or have seen me attempt to partake in small talk know how uncomfortable I get when talking about myself if it feels the slightest bit like bragging. But I must go on and I must update, so, I guess, here it goes:
Everyday is filled with comparisons to my life in Berlin. Besides the fact that both Berlin and Brussels are in Europe (and start with the letter “B”), these experiences couldn’t be more different. The shame I felt when not being able to speak German in Berlin is beyond non-existent. I squeak by at restaurants and grocery stores on the four words I remember from 3 1/2 years of high school French, but it’s not crushing to my soul when I have to ask someone if they speak English because I haven’t got the slightest idea what they’re saying. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to relearn French (and I will, one day), it’s just my daily life is on an American island. I went for a run in the park after work one day and was literally so surprised I almost stopped in my tracks when I heard people speaking French. “Oh yeah! I’m not in America!” I had to tell myself. One thing is the same, however: I miss drying my laundry in a dryer.
My internship is increasingly amazing, and a career in foreign service continues to appeal to me. I’ll update when I feel like I have more important things to say about it. I’ll just say that my immediate supervisor, a young woman named Kimberly, is a wonderful boss who is a wealth of knowledge regarding not just her job, but the Foreign Service, State Department, Brussels, and basically the world. She has become, in three short weeks, someone I can confide in, joke with, and always expect to learn a lot from. It’s great to see the human face of the State Department (and a young one, too) and it’s great that she’s my boss.
I truly have been having an amazing time; I feel like I’ve lived here for months rather than weeks. Europe, as always, feels like home and my automatic intern support network has made the transition from another amazing Del Mar summer to another European fall nothing to complain about.
Bon soirée!