Life after Erasmus: The Return
21:24 |
| http://ifanboy.com/podcasts/make-comics-podcast-50-now-what/ |
So I started this blog as a way of documenting my year abroad and now it's finished I'm slightly at a loss at what to do. Not just with the blog but with my life in general. My first two years of university led up to the year abroad and the last year was spent living it. Now it's over and I feel like I should be sad. Thing is, I'm not.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't jumping for joy the day I left France. It's just that, while something definitely feels different, I don't really feel sad. This is good but quite surprising. My year abroad was unequivocally brilliant and I was fully expecting to have to break out the King-size pack of tissues and the Victorian-style mourning dress when I finally had to leave it behind. I had accepted the fate of spending July in the throes of post-year abroad blues. They turned out to be more like mauves or turquoises, depending on which part of the colour spectrum you feel encompasses happiness and normality, and they faded pretty quickly.
I thought that the Great Return would be a dramatic event of culture shock, nostalgia and separation anxiety but it's much easier than that. It's just a question of re-adjusting to life in the UK and I never realised how many things there are to re-adjust to. There is certainly no shortage of positive ones. If someone in the street asks me for directions, I can now give them without worrying that I've misunderstood and accidentally sent them to the nearest steel factory when they actually wanted a swimming pool. Being able to read a menu in a restaurant without the fear of accidentally ordering some strange local delicacy made out of goat liver is extremely comforting. Not to mention all the British goodies that never made it across the channel. I've spent most of the past month consuming my body weight in cheddar, pork pies, Dairy Milk and baked beans (not at the same time; I'm not a weirdo). The rest of it has been searching "pre-emptive heart transplant" on the NHS website.
Life is just that little bit more exciting when you've taken a break from it for a while. Eavesdropping no longer requires concentration. I'd forgotten how it feels to sit on a bus and understand what everybody's saying (apart from the drunk guy at the back with missing teeth). I'd forgotten about regional accents. I'd forgotten about my favourite shops and bars. Seeing friends becomes more important and you have so many more stories to tell each other when you haven't met in six months. The excitement of fourth year lies ahead. For me, this is the first time in a year that I'll be living in a house that has a communal living area and a city with clubs that play decent music. These things sound trivial but they were sorely, sorely missed.
Life is just that little bit more exciting when you've taken a break from it for a while. Eavesdropping no longer requires concentration. I'd forgotten how it feels to sit on a bus and understand what everybody's saying (apart from the drunk guy at the back with missing teeth). I'd forgotten about regional accents. I'd forgotten about my favourite shops and bars. Seeing friends becomes more important and you have so many more stories to tell each other when you haven't met in six months. The excitement of fourth year lies ahead. For me, this is the first time in a year that I'll be living in a house that has a communal living area and a city with clubs that play decent music. These things sound trivial but they were sorely, sorely missed.
There is one aspect of Erasmus life that I actively miss, aside from the obvious things like my friends and the endless cakes. That is being a foreigner. The media keeps telling me that Europe is being swept into rampant xenophobia by a wave of far-right, anti-immigration sentiment but my experience didn't reflect this at all. In recent years, the British have enjoyed a boost in popularity in mainland Europe that our history and politics don't merit. I rather enjoyed going into a shop and having people start conversations with me because they liked my accent. No one in the UK likes my accent - mostly because a lot of them have the same one - and I feel much less special here than I did in Italy and France. Being foreign makes you interesting and unique. Now I'm back in my native lands, I'm going to have to actually become interesting and unique to get people to like me, and who honestly has the time?
Coming back after a long time away almost feels like moving to a new place again, without the fear and uncertainty. Yes, my 18 000-population hometown isn't going to have changed much since I left, but I still have to get into a new routine and live in a different way. With all the old friends to see, I've barely found the time to miss Pavia and Aix-en-Provence. It feels less like I'm leaving them forever and more like I've discovered them. They will still be there for me to explore further next year when I'm no longer tied to the UK by education. I can be happy because I know I will be going back one day. The only thing to be sad about is that it will probably be with Ryanair.
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