20 Dec What a Year it’s Been

What an interesting year it’s been. When I arrived in January, I expected to stay for only a semester, but as the Summer break approached with increasing rapidity it became more and more apparent that I wanted to stick it out for an entire 12 months. It’s been challenging, but I’ve had a great deal of incredible experiences, learned a ridiculous amount about life and my ability (or lack thereof) to focus and operate under pressure, and I’ve made an array of friend from walks of life it’s not likely I’d have been exposed to back home. I’m very glad I stayed.

I can’t recommend spending an entire year abroad enough. It’s simply a very different and more fulfilling experience. A semester rushes by and feels more like a strange holiday than having ‘lived’ in a new place. ‘Living’, according to my new understanding, means having enough time and being involved enough with a place, it’s culture, and its people, to really absorb their influence and have them shape your self or outlook in some way. That was not the feeling I had after a semester, but after a year I can say that my time in San Francisco has made for a very significant, very memorable life experience.

It makes the prospect of going home more exciting, too. I definitely experienced a sense of dissatisfaction after those first few months when it seemed that the experience was coming to an end. Both because I felt that I had more to fulfill here, but also because I hadn’t spent enough time away from home for my sense of the place to develop the strangeness, allure and mystique that colors it now. It’s been a while, and I much as I love this wonderful city and many of the people I’ve met, my appreciation of the place I’m from, my understanding of what it means to me, and my positive feelings about how I’d like to go about life when I get back have all blossomed. Stay for a year. It’s a good thing.