I always thought I'd get sick this semester, with all of the traveling I've been doing and the bizarre food (fried blood sausage, anyone?) I've been eating. So far, I've been super lucky.
However, all that has changed over the last couple of days. I woke up Monday morning with, well, one of the nastier head colds in history--runny nose, stuffy nose, swollen nose, clogged sinuses, headache, general ache, the chills, a fever--plus terrible, terrible food poisoning-type symptoms. Fan-tastic.
Being sick in college for the first time was hard enough--where was my mother? Where was the carefully buttered toast and the TV remote?--but here, it's a whole different story.
Not only do I literally live on top of two other people, one of whom--Thanks, Christine!--gave me the cold (she, presumably, caught it from our third roommate), but on top of that, Monday was to be the day I got things done--grocery shopping, a little day trip out to an old hunting lodge castle, some writing on my Field Research Project. Instead, I found myself lying on my back, moaning till noon, craving applesauce, baby carrots, and toast--all of which are totally foreign here--and downloading episode after episode of "Sex & the City."
This shallow yet addictive show (movie to be released May 30th! Exciting!), really, has been the crux of my life for the past few days.
That, of course, got me thinking about sex, marriage, babies, and drinking too much at posh New York City clubs.
It also, however, got me thinking about how I want to lead my life once I get back home. I have no answers. I do know, however, that it will NOT consist of a pasta-and-rice diet, like mine has been here (being that, save meat, which I don't trust, and gouda cheese, that's all I can find here to cook) and it will, certainly, involve a fair amount of biking, swimming, reading, smiling, and general happiness (and hopefully my body weight in Chipotle chicken burrito bowls. My GOD.).
This semester has been something of an exercise in self-denial. Sure, as declared to me by my now beyond obnoxious residence director, Beata, Poland "is a civilization!", but still, I've missed a lot about back home. And perhaps, more than I've gained. I'm not sure yet--I haven't exactly been doing anything academic over here, and my math skills, save converting Polish zloty into the ever-plummeting dollar, have most likely suffered. What I'm attempting to ask myself is this: Has study abroad been worth it?
That I can't seem to answer, either. I have now just over three weeks left in Europe. Over the course of the last three and a half months, I've seen
a lot: I've been on sixteen different flights and eight train rides, and have traveled to twelve countries, ten major European cities, and probably about two dozen villages. I've wandered through world-class museums, gotten lost in a field in Ireland, eaten thousands of calories of wonderful pastries, had dozens of glasses of beer (most with juice, which is how I like to drink it here in Poland--they put a shot of ginger or raspberry or cherry flavoring in it, and you drink it with a straw. It's truly fantastic), taken about 20 gigs' worth of pictures, and set foot in at least a half doezen UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
I've watched the sunset on a ferry with dolphins chasing us away from the Aran Islands, on waves crashing against the westernmost point of continental Europe, on a train track in Amsterdam, on a dusty park in Poland.
It's been unbelievable, truly. Why do I feel the need to complain? It seems that this semester has held for me a life of extremes. Never have I seen more and done more, but never have I cried more, and never have I been more lonely, more afraid and anxious and, frankly, more broke.
Throughout the semester, I've tried to tell myself to "live in the moment," and relish each and every experience as it comes. This has been more difficult than I would have imagined--one, because it sounds like a fuckin' Hallmark card, and I have trouble taking myself seriously, but two--because of a lack-of-resources--people. With only four people in my program, and barely any way to meet people I actually, truly, find interesting (and who find me likewise--I am one fuckin'
boring individual to many people, I've found. No, seriously. I. Am.
LAME. MAN, I need to incorporate binge drinking back into my list of favorites, me thinks.--what a hit on the self-esteem
that discovery was.), it has been an awfully lonely and dejecting semester.
Never have I valued
people more than now, when I've been oh-so-cut-off from them. I mean, of course, I miss my family and my friends...and my dog...terribly. But it's not even that--I miss people I don't even know very well. I miss my acquaintainces--those people that I
should be friends with, but have never had the time to really get to know. I miss those ones just as much as my friends back home, perhaps even more, because I haven't--and how could I?--kept in touch with them. I miss being able to walk up to someone I've met twice in class and have an actual conversation with him/her. In English. And it being, oh, I don't know--
interesting. engaging. intelligent. I haven't had a conversation like that in so long.
Maybe that's it: Maybe
that's what I want to do this summer--just...talk to people. Hopefully, a pair of four hundred dollar shoes can be incorporated into this plan, but, Ms. Bradshaw, I'm not holding my breath for that one.
