Goodbye for Now!

So here I am. It’s a full six months after my first post and settling in to write my last blog entry. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about my time in Belfast. It’s funny because I can distinctly remember dropping off a friend at her car the night before I left for Belfast and the sinking feeling I had as I drove away. I was absolutely petrified of leaving my friends and family behind and going to a country where I knew no one.

However, that feeling didn’t even compare to what I felt as I rode in the cab to the Belfast airport. While I love the city of Belfast, the manageability of its size and the multitude of pubs and bars, that’s not what I was sad to leave. The friends I made, from all over the world, are what I cherish most about my experience abroad. That is something that I wish someone would have told me before I left and just maybe I would’ve saved my energy getting upset over leaving the friends I would see again in six short months.

Getting home made me realize that I didn’t really miss out on anything, like I was afraid would happen. Instead, so little has changed that there are moments when it doesn’t even feel like I went abroad. Luckily there are two things that always remind me of my time abroad. First, being home has heightened my consciousness of the ways my experience has changed my outlook on the world and, like I hoped, my outlook on my own future; second, I am able to keep in almost constant communication with the people I met in Belfast.

Adjusting back to life at home has been challenging at times (I have a whole list of songs that fall under the “Memories of Belfast: Do NOT Play” list) but I am doing my best at fostering my new friendships and allowing my experience to shape where I take my life from here.