A Beacon article that (dear old) Barracuda considered spam...So it shall appear here, instead. (a couple days late)

Thanksgiving has come and gone, December has arrived, a phenomenal weekend has been spent in the Cabana (go read two posts down the list, to hear about that one), our final papers have been written and turned in, and we have gone through pre-departure re-entry exercises to prepare us for the ordeal ahead.

It hit me hardest last night: in under a week I will leave Romania and return to the United States.  I’ve known about this all semester— December 6^th, a day to look forward to seeing my friends and family, a day to sit on 3 different airplanes for 14+hours, a day to not forget anything… and now, very honestly, a day to mourn.  Romania is beautiful and hospitable, it is loving and unique and my home and I don’t want to leave.  The people I have met are incredible, the culture, peering past the broken bloc remnants of communism’s legacy, is rich and deep, and the mountains surrounding my Lupeni home are breathtaking.  And tomorrow we will move out of our respective homes in Apartments Lucy and George (Noooo!), tromp off to Bucharest for the weekend and on Monday afternoon, begin flying west towards home. 

Kadie, our amazing program administrator (I start tearing up just thinking about say goodbye to her), found this beautiful quote (From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi) which aptly sums up what most of us seem to be thinking right now: “You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place…like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”  It is nice to have words to describe at least that piece of the jumble of thoughts stomping through my brain, a weekend before the end.  

There is no way that I could summarize my semester for you in 600 words, so instead let me urge you to go find out for yourself, perhaps not in Romania (although I would highly recommend it to some people!), but somewhere.  You have a unique opportunity, as a college student, to spend a piece of summer or a whole semester off-campus.  …You’ll need at least that many credits worth of electives eventually anyway AND it fulfills your cross-cultural Gen-Ed requirement—or pick a program that fits your major and the list of great academic reasons gets longer— it’s an opportunity well worth taking!  Enjoy your Northwestern community, but remember that the world is so much bigger than we sometimes remember in the jostle of classes, homework and campus obligations.  The walk to and from the caf seems endless sometimes, but outside the edges of campus, a bigger world awaits (and I don’t just mean Orange City…or even Sioux county). And with such a diverse range of opportunities just an application away, it seems a shame not to at least consider experiencing a new place, a new subject matter and a new vision of life in a way you might not have the chance to ever again.  I mean, seriously, how many of us will have the chance to just up & move to a country of our choice for 4 months ever again…and with scholarships, to boot!  You might learn a few things about the difference between knowledge and understanding.  You might be stretched by thoughts you didn’t know were out there.  You might be captured by the beauty of the earth, the diversity of the human race, a new way of seeing…who knows, you might even fall in love with a place, a people, a way of life.  You might discover another place that you will remember as home.   I have.

So goodbye until Monday, Northwestern, and be prepared…because ready or not, here we come with all our stories and our excitement (and our reverse-culture-shock-combined-with-jet-lag-crankiness!  Oh boy...).