:::Previous entry:::

I want to write about what study abroad has meant to me. I want to write about how I look at things in a different way, understand Americanism, feel the struggle of the world under American culture, and understand in a deep and important way that I am not the center of the universe. I want to write about how I've been deeply affected by this cultural dousing, that I want to become Danish, run away with a tall blonde man and name my children S�ren and Mette. I want to want that. Because then it would be a validation of my entire time here, that yes -- it's all been worth it. That the struggle to be something, anything, in this soup of American college students and a Danish family has really made me a better person, made me something I've always wanted to be. That's why I went to Denmark, you know. To be something different, to be what I've always wanted to be, the self-assured world-loving open-minded traveler. I went because I could re-invent myself again, I could just plant myself here, and who would know who I was before or how I got here? Not a soul. I could be anything. Not something ridiculous and hard to pull off, like a super-cool Euro chick, or a native New Yorker snob, or anything that would require a new birth certificate and possibly an extravagant web of lies. No, I just wanted to be a more distilled version of the me I know I am, the one who is confident and open-minded and smart and funny. I just wanted that to be closer to the surface that everyone sees every day.

Unfortunately that's not what happened. I've gotten thrown for a loop, off-track, spiraling a little, maybe in a flat spin sometimes too. I haven't thought about what it means to live in Denmark, or how I want to spend the rest of my life, or whether I've grown in deep and important ways. I've just thought things like, how am I going to get home on the night bus? How am I going to make it to the bakery and back before class starts? How am I going to write this paper when I can't even bear to think about it? How am I going to make it up all those stairs because I just ran three blocks to get here? How am I going to find friends exactly like the ones I already have? How am I going to ask my host sister a simple question like, "What did you do in school today?" How am I going to order off of this menu, when I don't know what the majority of these words mean, and heaven help me if I end up with a plate of liver paste. Maybe when I get home it will all hit me, the magnitude of what I've done or how I've changed. But I don't think I'm going to change. I think I'm going to be exactly the same person with perhaps a greater affinity for black bread and tea. I think that the whole thing is a crock, a big lie, about how you go away and oh, the wonders that you experience!

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I just won't give in to that romantic college-student stereotype of going off to a foreign land and suddenly being worldly and cultured. I just refuse to be that. I refuse to even attempt to be that. And maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe I shouldn't wonder about home anymore, or want to go back to school, or feel that ache thinking about someone I used to love a lot. Maybe I should just throw myself into that stupid stereotype and come home all snotty with tons of great Europe stories about the time I tried to order a hamburger and was served lamb brains instead. But I don't think I will. Because that's not me. Then again, neither is this.

2/20/2001 04:17:15 AM

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