Let me just start by sharing my December 2nd with everyone. My one class that I have on Wednesdays was cancelled and there are quite a few other people in my program who also only have that one class or one in the evening so we essentially had a free day today. Somebody proposed that we take a beach day and when I found myself at 9:30 this morning with nothing to do, I said why not. We spent 1000 shillings on transportation round-trip and usually it costs 3000 to get into the place but I guess it was free today so we got to relax on the beach on these nice chairs and then float out in the ocean (in a part that was actually fairly clean) for a couple hours while fishermen floated by us in their boats. Only three of us went, but it was just very relaxing and an awesome day on the beach. It blows my mind to be sitting here, tomato red from sunburns, remembering my beach day and realizing it’s already December. When we got back, a couple of the girls who stayed behind were even talking about listening to Christmas music. Crazy. What’s even crazier though was the hotel that we accessed the beach through and used their chairs. When you come in, you pass the water park that they have, then the go cart track, then walk past their awesome fountain and their nice front desk. It seems like a really cool place for honeymooners because each room had floor-to-ceiling windows with ocean views. It was so cool and easily the nicest hotel I’ve been to – though that Busta Rhymes night was at a pretty nice place, it wasn’t the same kind of nice.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The Study Abroad Experience
So I’m writing this blog post tonight and I still haven’t done the second part of the safari post yet. I’m sorry for a failure in chronological order here or if I don’t ever get around to the second part, but honestly the good stuff was mostly in the first part. I’ve titled this post the way I did because I’ve been figuring things out a lot lately. The last month or so has been a time of transition and change in my life. Everything you ever hear about study abroad is that it molds you as a person and changes your perceptions and so on. This is something that is definitely true and something that I expected to happen, though it most definitely hasn’t been occurring the way I expected. Mind you, I’ve still got a long time to go here and I’m still going through a lot of personal changes, so I don’t know what the outcome will be like or if it will more closely resemble my expectations from before I left. Everyday is a new experience for me though and I generally feel a little different when I go to sleep each night than I did the night before. I feel like most of my blog posts are just stories of events that happened and you don’t really get to see the transformation occurring which is actually probably much more important than just an account of things that happened. I think I started this wanting to get more of my thoughts about the study abroad experience and life experience here in general broadcasted here so that this process of change in my life could be documented and those reading could witness it. I guess I have sort of feared revealing a lot of things publicly that have been going on mentally for me and this is going to result in huge gaps in the overall story of my experience here for that reason. If you really wanted to know what this whole trip has been like for me, you probably aren’t going to find it in any of my old posts. They make alright day-to-day accounts and historical record or what went on, but they don’t actually capture what it has been like personally for me. For this, I apologize.
Tonight, as I write this, I’ll try to share a more insightful perspective of what it has been like for me to be here really because I think this would be far more informational than just reading an anecdote of giraffes and wildebeests. I’ve spent more time writing lately than actually doing my schoolwork and this is a problem, so I don’t know how deep I’m going to delve into these things before I get to working or even where I’m supposed to start on this whole thing. Let’s see… where to start? I guess I could start before I even left.
My expectations for this journey were many. I think I expected to get first-hand experience in a place that I’ve only ever read about and really get some experiential learning this way. I assumed it would be completely different and surprising to see poverty in person and that all of the problems I ever read about would be painfully obvious as would be their impacts (this hasn’t really been true). I thought I would find more inspiration to join the Peace Corps and pursue a career overseas working amongst the people most affected by growing global inequalities. I was expecting to get tougher, gain some street smarts and change to become a more globally aware and radical individual. As mentioned above, this hasn’t been the experience… at all. In many ways, the opposite has been true for me. I mean, there are still quite a few things that I haven’t done yet and I haven’t even been here for two months yet (Saturday marks two months). Still though, this isn’t about the change I haven’t gone through but rather the changes that have occurred.
I think most people would agree that I’ve changed significantly since I left high school. I came out of there with a firm sense of right and wrong and complete confidence in my beliefs. It only took one academic year at UBC and many lengthy dorm room conversations to completely eradicate all of those things from my world. I spent the next summer wondering what had happened and missing that old foundation that I used to stand so solidly on. I still have never gotten that back and it’s true that I definitely miss thinking I had all of the answers. I’ve spend the last few years just having fun and getting educated it seems instead of thinking deeply about my life and forming principles to follow on a daily basis. It’s been weird not having anything like this anymore and I think there’s been a lot of doubt in such unwavering beliefs that has caused me to avoid forming any altogether. I used to have such a clear focus on long-term things and I used this to guide how I lived everyday. Now it seems like I’m just trying to make it until tomorrow and then go from there. I’m not captain of the ship anymore but just sifting through the wreckage, trying to find something firm to hold onto around which I will be able to one day rebuild once the storm has passed.
I think that’s actually a pretty accurate analogy and I didn’t mean to make it sound like I haven’t had anything to guide me since I left high school because that’s not true, but it is true that what I had as recently as two months ago is now gone. The last several weeks have been immensely confusing and there has not been this much uncertainty and doubt in my life for a while. When this happens, I tend to lose sight of those guiding principles that make it easier to get through every week and instead get bogged down in all of these crazy thoughts. Slowly, I am recovering some of those things that gave me the perspective I originally and brought me to this place, though it hasn’t been an easy process. I’m writing this now from a position where I believe that I am getting better and over these things so I’m climbing out of the trough… for now. I still definitely don’t know what’s coming next and I can’t say for sure where all of this ends up, but I no longer want to have anyone reading this blog excluded because it should put things into perspective much better and more realistically. I won’t go into full detail about everything that’s been troubling or what it has been like to go through this, though I want to make it a little more clear what I have been talking about so far.
For the last year and a half or so I’ve been planning intently on joining the Peace Corps directly after graduation and after that ends in 27 months, finding work internationally with some NGO. I transferred universities because I thought that going to U of O would position me better to accomplish these goals. I’ve dismissed thoughts of long-term relationships because of this and differences in career wants. I’ve basically set this as my goal and organized my entire life around accomplishing this. Of course, this had to be the thing to change one month into a ten month journey meant to only prepare me even more for this planned future. Outstanding. Fate just has excellent timing, doesn’t it? I’ve been conflicted by feelings that didn’t disappear as I had hoped they had. Instead they did the opposite and brought all of those things I was so sure about, so dead-set on, into question. A battle of wants and needs took place and as hard as I had tried to fight one way, they only went the other. I couldn’t tell if it was that I lose either way or that I win either way, I guess it’s just a matter of perspective. All I know is that it would have been a hell of a lot easier to be here now if everything had gone according to the original plan. This is the point of study abroad though, right? Not to affirm your already standing beliefs but to present you with new possibilities and challenge your past assumptions. How pleasant! Sure, it’s easy to hear stories from people who return from abroad but to actually go through them yourself can be an absolute nightmare. A complete paradigm shift is not an easy thing.
There have been days where I’ve felt like I’m in the absolute wrong place I’m supposed to be right now. Days where 10 months seems like an eternity (even making it to the evening from the morning would take forever). Days where I felt absolutely weak and unable to make it anymore and that I should just quit and go home because I felt a little robbed of my entire life purpose. If I’m not going to pursue a career abroad or in the Peace Corps, what in God’s name and I doing here? Impossibly far and out of constant communication from what I love most and by my own idiotic choice? This is the last place I want to be. Why could I ever be so stupid as to come here and abandon everything that I love? Just times where I felt down and out. Trapped in a foreign land and not enjoying my time here at all.
Things have been looking up though lately. 10 months does still seem impossibly long, but I’m considering other options for my second semester that wouldn’t involve remaining on the island that is the university. Today, while floating in the ocean and dealing with my daily internal struggles, I had flashes of my old self come through and give me a much needed kick in the ass. Accept your fate. Enjoy your lot. Things aren’t as bad as I’m making them out to be. Moping and whining will not improve anything but only drive you deeper into this pit you’re digging. This is childish and pointless. A lot has already been accomplished and there is still so much more opportunity available. Seize this time while you still have it. This is a unique scenario that will only happen once and it’s time to move beyond this nonsense over which you are powerless and stop ruining this experience. Only time can solve my crises so I don’t know why I’ve been so obsessed with trying to act like this was untrue.
Even writing this now is making me feel even better.
I’m not sure how many of you, if any of you, even knew that I was going through this and it’s probably better, now that I think of it, that I didn’t share it with everyone until now. There were times when I was hopelessly worried and could have actually used somebody to lean on. I’m not spectacularly close to anyone here and I wouldn’t want to dump all of this emotional baggage on people anyway. Especially if I’m doing it so constantly for a month, it’s not their responsibility to carry me. Still, I’ve been trying to keep in mind that this whole thing is a process. Every time I’ve ever been really sad, in my entire life, better days have come and personal growth has resulted. I don’t want to worry anyone by posting this and I hope that if you’ve made it to this paragraph then you realize that things are already on their way back up (for now.) I just want to shed some knowledge on you all and put you into my head for a bit here. Show you what it’s really been like for me to be here. I’m trying to just tell it like it really is because hiding the facts and the reality isn’t going to help anyone. Of course, there are plenty of things I have left out here but I’ve come clean about a lot of things too and it feels good. Our lives are great, and if they’re not, a time will come when they get better. Most pain is only temporary. Enjoy the good parts, knowing that they will one day end as well, but never think that the lows are a permanent thing. It’s not easy. It used to be something I was better at too. I think this is all just part of my maturation and aren’t you all so fortunate to get to read about it right here (sarcasm). I’m sorry this is so personal, maybe even too personal, but this is my journal and it’s a huge therapeutic thing for me. I’ve relied on it quite a bit since I’ve been here and it’s your choice whether you want to really see what’s going on with me or not. I appreciate those of you who have been sticking by my side through this though and I look forward to seeing you all again when this is all over. In the mean time, I think I’ll just take you along for the ride.
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So I need to comment on one last thing before this gets wrapped up. I said that I’m considering doing something else with my second semester instead of staying in school here. For some reason, the idea of leaving Dar es Salaam Tanzania
Hoping everything works out for the best,
Scott
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We love you and appreciate who you are and who you continue to become. Enjoy!!!
Teresa and Dad
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