07 May Life lessons

It’s less than 3 weeks now before I leave for the Netherlands. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it. I have been looking forward to it since the very first day of my exchange. XD But as a real fighter, I made my decision not to quit under any circumstances and was fully dedicated to ‘making things work’. I simply couldn’t afford myself to pick the best exchange option and fail to have a good time. So I ended up fighting the situation for months. And I would probably succeed if… I had a bit more luck. I just kept getting into trouble: losing money (due to my own naivety), having some racism incidents, almost getting robbed and many other things. And the dirt, smell and poverty of the city only added more to my already ‘damaged’ impression of the environment I was in.

Even after all these things I kept pushing and doing all kinds of stuff that I thought was right to do as an exchange student: going places, making friends, posting pictures (at least I didn’t embarrass myselef publically with hashtags like #ParadiseOnEarth, #BestPlaceOnEarth and #BlessedToBeHere), pretending I was happy… I wanted it to be GOOD. I really struggled to let things go until… I got really exhausted of trying to make things better and (as I like to say it) ‘embraced’ the situation. Sometimes experiences have nothing to do with ‘liking’. Neither do life lessons.

Besides the lesson on how not get robbed, I learnt another one (a very expensive one!): I realized that I should follow my heart more often. When I had to make a decision where to go for my exchange, I doubted a lot so I relied on other people’s opinion and picked the most popular option, although I had someting different in mind. I thought: ‘If everyone says it is good it must be good!’ It’s just like an iPhone. =) Obviously, I am not a ‘main steam’ type of person. =)

So… a little piece of cliche advice that you never asked for (you ‘’love’’ those, don’t you?). Follow your heart if you don’t want to end up with an ‘’iPhone’’ . =P