Hey All!
Let me be honest with you, I have no idea how to start this blog post. I suppose I'll start by stating the obvious facts. Before I get going with my nice little list, let me let you all know that I am SUPER happy to be back. This post is to show you a little of what is going through my head as I get used to LC again after being abroad. All though transitions and re-transitions can be tough and I'm about to sound a bit like a negative-Nancy I am mostly jazzed to be here. So, here we go...my list of things...
1) I have been back in the USA for a little more than a month and back at Lewis & Clark for almost 2 weeks. It's weird because most days I still expect to wake up in Chile, but in some ways it also feels very distant and like I made up the whole semester.
2) Reverse culture shock (or whatever you want to call it) is a real thing. Coming back can be more difficult after being abroad than your first time arriving on campus. Some of it is what campus feels like right now. It makes me a little sad to walk around campus and recognize way less people. If you think about it, all the Seniors I knew graduated, a lot of my class (the Juniors) are abroad, and a whole new class of Freshmen have arrived. There are so many people on campus now that I don't know! And it's not like the beginning of the year when all the Freshmen are confused and lost and still wearing their ID's around their necks; these Freshmen know what's up. They've had a semester under their belts are are mean lean LC machines. This time I am the one looking around like a lost little alpaca. HOWEVER, I am confident that as the semester zooms ahead I'll get into the swing of things.
3) For the first time I am living off campus. I now live on what we call "The Hill", which is the immediate area around LC. It takes me 15 minutes to walk to class. It's a bit of an adjustment from the 3 minutes it took when I lived on campus, but less of one from the hour it took in Santiago! I have five roommates one of whom is still my roommate from Freshman year! We still live close enough to get to campus to take the Raz (free LC bus also sometimes known as the Pio) to Fred Meyer or downtown which is super handy. It's both nice and annoying to have to cook for one's self; most nights I like choosing and making what I want to eat, but sometimes I still wish I had dinner always waiting for me.
Alright, that's enough for now. Next week you get to hear about my classes and things of that ilk.
As always send me all your thoughts and stuff at smiller@lclark.edu!
Sara