Hello again, friends. It’s been a long and complicated year since I returned from my year abroad. I spoke often with my roommate in Long Beach about the manifestation of reverse culture shock, the culture shock you get when returning to America after living abroad. More often than not, the reverse culture shock is the more difficult of the two. The sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, changes in the everyday life of a repatriate are not met with the same excitement and blind acceptance as the analogous changes experienced by a new expatriate.
But, like all American students, I returned to my homeland and, at first, struggled to fit in, and later felt as though I’d never left. I once again excelled academically, leading the CSULB Model United Nations team through another fun-filled and successful season. But even with a school sponsored trip to Germany to participate in the Model United Nations, the travel bug continued to bite and the unscratchable itch of wanderlust proved impossible to ignore. So I found my self once again sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, hesitantly writing a letter of motivation and filling out an application for a program I was sure I would be politely denied from. That seems to be a tendency of mine. To apply for lofty programs to which hundreds of other, better qualified students must also be applying. On that March day, I sat, and I wrote, and I crossed my fingers, pressed submit, and laughed at my own audacity. The program? A 10 week internship with the US Department of State (the section of American government that I find most interesting and the department formerly headed by my idol, Madeleine Albright) at either the US Mission to the United Nations or the US Mission to the European Union, whoever (if either) would have me. A couple of weeks later, I received an e-mail requesting a phone interview, and after a pleasant, short, and way easier interview than I had prepared for, I was offered the position of Fall Intern in the Executive Office of the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels (Belgium, just to clarify).
As I write this, I’m somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean with one last Del Mar sunburn not wholly befitting my final destination. An air of trepidation lingers vaguely somewhere in the future and half of my heart hasn’t quite left Del Mar. It’s a funny thing about travel, how right before you leave your mind is already there. The way you view your present and your surroundings seen only through some sort of magical fog of that place you’re headed.
After a summer of extreme procrastination (I haven’t quite figured out my housing situation as of this moment, just to name one example), I once again head off into the wide wide world of Western Europe. At the behest of my father, I will again be posting updates and musing from abroad.
Welcome back!
Update: Since writing this while in flight I have made it safely to Brussels, lugged over 150 lbs of luggage around, walked the city multiple times, and am now headed to Bruges for the night.
