psychology

As time in your study abroad destination passes, you grow more and more comfortable with your new city and all it has to offer. You understand your way around the various winding streets. You know the exact time it takes to walk to your favorite restaurant. You greet your neighbors by name and have become a regular at the local cafe down the street where the grinning boy behind the counter knows your order by heart and blows you kisses as you walk out the door. The sun is shining. The birds are singing, and this is all just a dream.

Reality is, as much as you try to fit in and become a "local," you will always be American. It's just a fact. Yes, you will learn much more about your abroad city and may even know a few civilians by name. Yes, you may become a regular at a local shop down the street, but you are honestly much more likely to get a blank stare than a kiss as the waiter struggles to understand your foreign accent and walks away shaking his head when you mistakenly say, "Me want cappuccino," in Italian. While I may have just crushed many of your dreams and aspirations, I also just knocked most of you back down to size. However, don't worry, because I'm about to pick you back up.

You see, you're American. When in a foreign country, almost everything we see and experience tells us this labeling is bad. The innumerable contemplations of our appearance or the subtle smirks at our accent or even the awe at seemingly ordinary aspects of this new world play some psychological trick to make us believe our true home and true culture are just not as glamorous.

Maybe they are right. We don't have architecture dating back to the years before Christ. We don't have some of the world's most famous artworks from the most renowned artists resting in our buildings. We don't even have the fattest country anymore, but we do have the good ol' red, white and blue. That's good enough for me.

Studying abroad is a complicated mix of emotions. It is full of excitement and adventure, but along with the package comes heartache and anticipation of its end. Crossing oceans and moving countries is an agreement to sell your life away. You walk foreign streets wearing your heart on your sleeve for months, pouring every ounce of yourself into making moments you will never forget. It is hard to leave pieces of your heart lying in a city 3,000 miles away where you may never venture again. However, that's part of the deal. It's the business of it all, the dirty little secret, because you have to come home.

On the other hand, there is a certain comfort and sweetness to finally coming home. After being so far away for so long, home is the one place where the thrill seeking adventurer and willful wanderer can come back to the one fixed reality. No matter where we go across the globe, it is always there, and as the customs agent looks you straight in the eye to say, "Welcome home," you'll never feel more proud and lucky. You belong.

Here is where the psychology comes in and where our complicated human emotions get so tangled we can't decipher any of them. Believe it or not, despite the many emotions you'll feel and the countless hours of processing your mind will undergo, this is one of those subjects you are most likely going to fail, because it just doesn't make sense. If you are like me, you will board that plane to come home with tears welling up in your eyes as you leave a place you have grown to love and adore. Then, hours later, you'll feel the drops running down your cheeks again, but this time they are out of pride as you stare up at the American flag hanging above your head in the airport welcoming you home.

I can't say where your heart will land. I cannot tell you if it will be sadder to leave or to come home, but I can tell you it will be hard either way. However, that is also the beauty of it all. It is the tell-tale sign you really lived and loved and went into the world with your eyes and ears wide open. You may fail at some things and barely pass at others, but if there is one subject you are a master at, it is the art of truly living.

So, welcome home. It's time to go back to real school now.

Class officially dismissed.