Half Year Mark

November was hard, but I think December and the beginning of January have been by far the toughest months. There’s a certain amount of time, probably about four weeks, when nobody wants to be here anymore. “They” talk about the honeymoon phase ending, and you realizing that maybe this isn’t all you set out to encounter, but after having been here for longer than Kim Kardashian’s marriage through the alright, the bad, the worse, and the amazing I think I’ve learned alot about myself. More than I ever would have at home. So in honor of the half way point in my senior year abroad, here are ten more things that I have learned so far.

1. If you need something, ask. I used to be more or less ashamed of needing help from people to accomplish a certain task, I didn’t like calling people on the phone, or talking to bus drivers, cab drivers, parents, friends, people on the street about being lost or not knowing something, and living here, I’ve needed help with one trillion and one small things over the course of these last four and a half months. I needed a new host family, I asked, I got it. It’s time I stop trying to make things fit perfectly, when sometimes the pieces just don’t come together.

2. Senioritis can be an actual sickness. Especially when you go to school with nine fellow seniors and 61 junior citizens. Sometimes I have a lot of work to do, so I just start a new television series instead.

3. Fluency does not exist, you just get really good. When I think about it, I’m not fluent in English, I don’t understand half of the grammar rules or know a majority of the words there is to know, so why do I call myself fluent?

4. I really would like to be accepted to college. There are strange experiences in your life where something just seems to fit, so if you’re praying tonight, give me and the love of my life; UCLA a shout out.

5. Spanish food isn’t all that great.

6. The diversity of the United States is a gift that we take for granted, diversity is one of the most beautiful things about the United States, and I would rather live in a country full of differences than similarities. 

7.  If you’re good to your friends, they’ll be good to you. Sometimes as Amerians, I think we forget about each other, business booms, and falls, there is money to be made, bills to pay, success to be had, and although I don’t entirely see the relevance of “family dinners and the fabric of your life” I believe if you make time for the people who have chosen to be a part of your life then they will be as long as you need them. SYA tells us not to spend too much time absorbed in our home lives, and I personally believe this to be a mistake. I love the people I left behind, and I would be crushed if by the time I came back I had missed so much of their growth, and were no longer a part of their lives and had lost these relationships through lack of my own determination. Your friends are important, your family is important, you just have to make time for them, sometimes at the sacrifice of success at something. 

8. I still don’t care about fútbol, la voz, or Spanish television. I am unlikely to start to.

9. I think this is the point of time where you start to assimilate yourself into the idea that there are some parts of this society you can take with you, and others you will be glad to leave behind. For instance, I appreciate the emphasis on relationships, but don’t care for the work schedule. Siesta will never fit into my life, and will never be something I do actively. But here, it’s cultural, I can respect it, and hate it and be stressed out by it just the same. 

10. Courage is not always noticable, sometimes it takes simple forms, like getting up when you just want to go home, making an effort when you’re tapped out, and trying when you just want to give it up. I see it every day in the people I live and work and share my life with. That’s what makes this year so formative, the fact that not every day is fun, or easy, or enjoyable. Some of them suck, just like they would anywhere else in the world, but it’s the push past a comfort zone into a place you’re not used to that makes you a better more tolerant and capable human being.