12 Apr Homesickness

It’s funny, everyone talks about their ‘third-week slump’ when they go on exchange. You know, that time just a little bit in where you start to miss everything about home and you realise you still have so long to go before you’re back in your mum’s arms. Maybe it’s not at three weeks; maybe it’s one month, two months or three. Whenever, it seems to happen to everyone. But apparently not me.

I don’t think I’ve ever been a person who is particularly tied to one place. Maybe I can attribute this to the fact that I moved houses seven times before my tenth birthday. Maybe it’s got something to do with my relationships with friends and family, I don’t know. Either way, I don’t get homesick.

I tend to see this as a good thing. While most of my exchange friends have had at least a day, or a week, where they’ve just wanted to be back home in their own bed with their loved ones surrounding them, I’ve been able to fully appreciate every single day that I am here, independent. And honestly, I’m loving it. I feel no pressure from anyone to be the same person I am at home, no pressure to work in order to support myself (luckily I worked hard before I came to afford that luxury) and no pressure to think about my future further than finals and summer travel.

That being said, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been moments where I’ve longed to hug my dog and have a bedroom all to myself again. There have been events that I have missed, like good friends’ 21^st birthdays and my grandma’s surprise 80^th, that have made me wish I could fly home just for one night. But then I think about the things that I am doing here on those nights and I know that there will be plenty of opportunity to party with my friends and family at home, but only one chance to make the most of my exchange.

I think everyone goes through homesickness differently, there’s no set rule about what you should do or not do in order to make the most of your time here. It depends on who you are, or how close you are with your family and friends at home, or even what stage of your life you’re in. For me, especially with all the drama I went through with friends the year before I came here, this exchange just seemed to come at a great time for me. I’m at an age where I’m thinking about moving out of home, so this has been an amazing taste of what it will be like, and has allowed me to see that making new and different friends isn’t that daunting. My advice: just make the best of every situation you have, no matter how much you might be wishing you were back home. You may never get the opportunity to do live like this again.