I think that one thing that I keep forgetting is that sense of wonder, that sense of everything being new and interesting, and that I am really lucky and have an excellent opportunity every day.
The life of an exchange student is a strange one, to be sure. There is a line to walk between using your foreignness (?) as an excuse to act strangely, and trying your hardest to fit in with whatever group you are a part of at any given moment. After reading an excellent blog by my good friend John-Louis "Master" Pane, currently in Taiwan (Check it out here), I realized that it really is rather spoiled and selfish to feel down on myself while I'm here. Obviously almost everything in Taiwan is radically different than the US, as opposed to somewhat similar in some aspects like Mexico, there is still a lot of weight and worth that should be noted in terms of the opportunity that we have as exchange students. Even more obviously, it's difficult to adapt and live without the network of our families and friends in our home countries, but now that the seemingly infinitely long time span of a year that was initially overwhelming is turning into a rapidly diminishing window of time, I really love the fact that I'm here in a foreign country doing foreign things with foreign people that will eventually become like a second family to me.
It's all about finding the differences, taking them as they are, and retaining that curiosity that landed us exchange folk here in the first place. That being said, let it be known that the bus system in México makes NFTA look like Lufthansa Airlines, but I love it so much! pictures will follow when I find a bus of people that aren't looking at me. Chau!
Cullen,
ReplyDeleteReading your Blog, I am reminded of Herman Hesse who said "Our inner compass is deflected by every book we read; every outside mind shows us from how many other points of view the world can be considered. Then the oscillation gradually dies down, and the needle returns to its old orientation, inherent in the nature of each one of us." I think this is also true when we leave our home for another place, to live within another culture so different from our own. Yet, when you strip away the media, the technologies, phones, etc, there exists the same frustrations and joys, pains and happiness (among other paradoxes... it is in a sense the human condition and the HC is universal. Thoreau said, " I went to the woods because I wish to live life deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach..." You are living an opportunity that many will not ever have in life...carpe diem!
Mr. D.