Going back to being Bex.

In less than 4 weeks time I get to go back to being Bex.  I get to go back to being the "normal" me, and not the "normal" that I've become over the last 10 months.  Over the course of this year I'm pretty sure I've been a different person, and not one I particularly like I must admit.

They say that you'll come back from the year abroad a different person, but that is because you're meant to be more confident and outgoing, better travelled and more experienced but I think something quite the opposite has happened to me.  Over the last two years at uni, and to an extent some of my time in 6th form, I have managed to shed the shy person I used to be, I am a lot more confident, will get stuck in and involved with anything and everything and really enjoy meeting new people.  Somehow over the course of my year abroad that person has gone into hiding.  I get wound up over little things, complain about things that would never usually bother me and get upset totally needlessly.  I've never been an unsociable person but I've certainly spent a lot more time on my own than I ever have done before, and I'm not even entirely sure why that is.

During the first semester I convinced myself that it was because I was in a French speaking country and that it was my weaker language and so I was bound to feel uneasy, but I realise now that was utter rubbish.  I was surrounded by Erasmus students that I didn't have to speak French to  if I didn't feel able to, so why couldn't I make myself do that?  Here I am coming to the end of semester two, in a country where I am a lot more capable of speaking the language and yet has there been any change?  No, it's been just as hard as the first time round.

This is one of the overriding reasons why I am looking forward to going home, I come home and start a new job for the summer, I go back to meeting new people and doing new things.  Then I go back to Lancaster where I am involved with societies and have a job which constantly has me doing new things and meeting new people, just the way I like it.

Why this year hasn't given me that I just can't explain.  I'm not saying the experience hasn't given me other things, and I'm sure I'll see these in hindsight, I've been to some great places and seen lots, I'm certainly a better travelled person, and have learnt things, but other than that?

Anyone that has met me for the first time this year will have almost certainly have met a different person, it's not a bad thing, but she's certainly not the person I know and won't have any problem saying goodbye to her at Malaga airport in just under 4 weeks...

What happens when your year abroad doesn't live up to the hype?

This year has been a big one for me in the realisation that just because everyone else says something and does something it doesn't mean it has to be the same for you too.  There were so many things that people said before I left Lancaster and whilst I was making my plans for this year that I felt so strongly that in order to make the most of this year I had to stick to them.  It has taken until now for me to realise how wrong I was. 

Everyone says that the year abroad is going to be the most amazing year of your life, you’ll make loads of new friends, your language will come on leaps and bounds and that you’ll never want to go back to the UK.  Well, that just isn’t always true.  Yes, for some people it is a great year, they have a fantastic time and the thought of going home fills them with dread ,but for others of us it isn’t the case, we get homesick and just spend the year wishing away the weeks.  I’m not going to tell you that I’ve not enjoyed this year, because I have, I appreciate the opportunities it has given me, and have had fun seeing new things and travelling to new places.  But I cannot and will not tell you that it has been the best year of my life, because it quite plainly hasn’t.  Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means complaining about the year abroad and the opportunities it has given me, I am just saying that it hasn’t lived up to the hype that surrounded it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?  With it I’d have gone to a place where I knew more people, or not worried so much about living with native speakers or all those other pressures that get placed on us.  I’d have done as many of those things that we were told not to as I wanted, knowing that it might not be the best for my language or my “experience”, but that I’d have felt a hell of a lot better for it.  In October I decided to go to Lancaster for a weekend, but that decision came after a lot of umming and ahhing about whether it was the “right” thing to do.  I should probably have made more decisions like this one, that were for my happiness not what I felt I should be doing according to everyone else.

I have not found this year, so far, easy.  In fact, I have probably found it harder than I have let on to many of you whilst I have been hiding behind the part of me that thinks that I am on my year abroad and so I have to have a fantastic time.

I guess that all I’m trying to say is, to all those people that are planning their year abroad, or are on it and sharing my experience.  It doesn’t matter.  We all have hugely different experiences on the year abroad.  Some love it, some hate it and some just have an “ok” time.  It doesn’t matter. 

Please don’t try to put a label on the year abroad, it can’t be done.