My flight from Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago, Chile to Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado, took somewhere around 14 hours. I took off from Santiago at like 10:00 on the night of the 16th of December, arrived in Atlanta at 6 or so in the morning, left Atlanta (after eating Chick-Fil-A in terminal A)(duh) at like 8, and landed in Denver at 10. So, factoring in time change, maybe the whole process was closer to 16 hours. Anyway, on the early afternoon of the 17th, I arrived at my house in Boulder and began unpacking and getting used to the United States again. An extra complication in this whole process is that in late July, after I had left for Chile, my parents moved all the way from NJ to Colorado, Where the Mountains Meet the Plains, so I had a bit more unpacking to do than your average returning study-abroader. That was the 17th of December.
On the 18th of December, the New York Times released a special Sunday edition that had an entire section devoted to puzzles in it, including the largest crossword puzzle they have ever printed. It’s like 50 by 50 or something, and has 637 horizontal clues and 626 vertical clues. For me, as a fairly regular puzzle-doer, this was like the Holy Grail. I started it last night (the 18th) and have somewhere around 50 of the words filled in so far. I anticipate this will take me most of winter break, and I’m very, very happy about it.
You know how crosswords seem to play out, where you go filling in the table subsection by subsection? You can get a whole block, but the two or three clues that connect that block to the rest of the puzzle are just not ringing any bells, so you’re stuck in one area until one finally clicks? Keep that in mind.
The combination of these two monumental journeys in my life, one being studying abroad (and returning from studying abroad) and the other being moving to Boulder, has been a decidedly funky experience. Because not like since May of last year has anything been familiar to me. I lived off-campus in a new-to-me house from May to July, went to Chile from July to December, and am now here living in a city that I had never been to before it became my place of permanent residence. In January, I’m going back to relatively familiar Tufts but living once again in a new house, then in June moving into another house in Somerville. By that point, it’s likely that my parents will have moved to another house in Boulder that is closer to the university where my dad works, so you get the point. Unfamiliarity is basically the only thing that is familiar to me.
This blog is for potential college students, so let me talk about the college-y aspects of what I just said: when you come home from studying abroad, it’s almost as unfamiliar as it is when you first arrive at your study abroad destination. My first moments in the US were just, like, strange. Seeing everything in English, hearing English, not being concerned about speaking English in public, these are all just totally new sensations. It’s hard to describe. When you first go abroad the switch to a new language is objectively difficult, so there’s a way to rationalize your brain hurting and the culture shock that might hit you. But when you come back to the US, you’re back in your native tongue. You have no more communication problems. But it still feels weird, it feels off. Things like having cellular data, or buying things with a credit card, things that are totally normal to you and always were in the past, feel different all of a sudden. (Ah! I have found a very good connection: This feeling is a lot like the feeling you get when you visit an old school that you have graduated from, but just recently. Going back to your high school when you’re my age, three years into college, just feels alien, but when you graduated 6 months ago, going back to high school is this weird mix of familiar and totally new. This is the same sensation.)
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that a lot of the everyday parts of my life now, after returning from Santiago, seem to be weirdly detached from one another. I learned so much and did so much while I was abroad, and now upon my arrival into the US I’m working to take all of those things I learned and did and put them into the context of the rest of my Tufts- and US-based careers.
So you see, this all ties in because I’ve got certain sections of this crossword filled in completely, with words like Van Nuys and Swan and Yoga Pants and Evian all filled in perfectly overlapping one another, and of course there are vast swaths of this crossword that are completely empty, and on the other side of those vast swaths there are more filled-in blocks, and now what I’m trying to do is to get them to connect. Is this metaphor a little cheesy? Maybe. But what I’m saying I guess is that this is kind of what it’s all like. The experiences you get while you study abroad (and, frankly, throughout your whole College Experience) sometimes don’t seem to fit very easily into the rest of what you’ve already established. And you’ve got this huge huge disgustingly huge crossword puzzle of a life to fill in, and you’ve got to work a little bit to find the right place for them.
Or at least I think that’s how it works. I just got back a week ago, so hell if really I know what the long-term fallout of returning from studying abroad and re-assimilating into college life is going to feel like. Stay tuned for future blog posts after January 11th, when I make my fateful return to Somerville. I’ll keep you updated. But now, what I’ve got is a crossword that’s 50% filled-in, and I’ve got to start taking some guesses as to where these Abroad Experiences belong in the mix.
You, potential Tufts University/other college applicant/student? Your metaphorical puzzle is totally empty. So start reading the clues.