This is intimidating.
I’ve been here nearly three weeks now. It seems a lot longer
than that, already. I’m so happy and just obscenely grateful to be here, I
still can’t believe it. Honestly, it’s still hard a lot of the time, though. I
feel really out of my element here. That’s not to say I’m unhappy, but I’ve
come to realize that I am very comfortable with myself within a certain
context.
Over the past couple years, I’ve really grown as a person
and become a lot more confident in myself and comfortable with who I am. That
was such a long journey for me to get to that point of being really happy with
who I am and where I’m going. Because I had reached that point, I wanted to
keep pushing myself, becoming better and stepping even further out of my comfort
zone… that’s why I wanted to study abroad.
I’m definitely out of my comfort zone here; I’m unsure of
how just about everything works, and that’s a very difficult realization to
come to. I keep alternating between exhilaration, panic, excitement, and exhaustion.
I love that I’m getting this experience to push myself and learn, and it’s also
pretty freaking intimidating. I cycle through these emotions constantly, I can
tell you I feel all of them even within a bus ride, every day. This is a big
change; it’s a big step, bigger than I thought it would be. This is a really
amazing place with really amazing people, it’s just not my place and my people yet.
Yet.
I can come out of this as such a bigger person, with more
experience, more knowledge of the world and its people, and a new perspective
on all of that. I’m feeling like a fish out of water, but I look at these five
months with optimism, and I know I’ll look back at them with gratitude.