I’d intended to be more diligent about updates during my last few weeks in Prague. I made a list of things that I wasn’t allowed to do until after I had finished all of my schoolwork, and at that point I wanted to put together an update so badly that “writing a blog entry” very nearly topped the list of forbidden activities. However, (risking the possibility of a truism here) life is unpredictable. When I finished my last essay (a nasty 10 pager on rent regulation in the Czech Republic) with a little less than two weeks left in Prague, it became startlingly clear to me that not only would there be insufficient time to write a blog entry, but also that there would be no way to completely satisfy my appetite for Prague life before leaving, regardless of how efficiently I used my time. So, at this point I decided that I would just start enjoying my time left and keep enjoying it until the last possible second. Though there’s not a thorough written record of my last few weeks, I can say without any reservation that they were some of my favorite weeks abroad, and some of the best weeks of my life (though I suppose all of my time abroad in Prague falls under that particular category).
Right now, I’m torn between attempting a shoddy summary of the events of the past few weeks and just letting them be. Hm, I don’t usually do this, but I think in this case I’d rather just move forward with the blog.
SO. Moving forward: I have now been back in the United States for approximately two days, and back home for about a day and a half. The transition has been, in some respects, exactly how I imagined it would be, and in other respects, entirely different. Certainly I underestimated how hard it would be to leave the city. It’s a bit of a dual adjustment: Prague is a city that will grab hold of your heart, so it was difficult to leave for that reason alone. In addition, though, I moved in the span of 24 hours (almost exactly 24 hours) from a European city to a college campus in Hampden-Sydney, VA, currently characterized by mostly empty dorms, my silver ’99 Nissan Altima, lots and lots of green, and lots of English. It’s not a negative transition, of course. With the exception of my summer in Richmond last year, I’ve spent every summer of my life on this campus. If it makes sense, the fact that I came back from four months abroad and felt such instant familiarity, picking up on old routines like I hadn’t been anywhere different at all, was in a way more of a shock to me than anything else. I think that part of me was hoping that I would be hyper-sensitized to my life at home and notice details about it that I’d not noticed before. However, it was that case that I was halfway through dinner with the family before I realized that I hadn’t had a meal with a family in a dining room for months. And even when I realized it, the situation didn’t seem any less normal. In fact, yesterday was an absurdly normal day in Farmville. I had breakfast at the computer, had lunch with mom and Nitra at the Hitchin’ Post, went to Wal-Mart to pick up some groceries, and lounged around until dinner. Actually, normally there would have been a trail run between noon and dinner, but jet lag won out in that particular fight yesterday.
Ah, so before the digression into daily home life, I was going to follow up the comment about it being harder than I expected to leave Prague with another about how terribly hard it’s going to be to have left friends in Prague. I was talking to a friend yesterday who insisted that it couldn’t be that bad leaving friends in Prague, because surely they weren’t “better” than my friends back home. And I have to agree with that particular claim. I have stellar friends here (including two who picked me up at the airport with some pretty sweet signs for some back-in-the-US Richmond adventuring). But I missed them when I was abroad, and I’m going to miss my friends from Prague just as acutely, if not more so, simply because there’s no set “June 7” date when I get to hop on a plane to go back and see them all. Anyway, that said, I’ll take missing great friends over the alternative of not really missing anyone that much any day. Meeting so many awesome people in Prague was a defining element of the whole experience.
Some final thoughts: I will be in Farmville for the better part of the summer, and then I’ll be back off to Richmond for my senior year. Keeping this blog in Prague (Prague Blog! Haha) was a highlight for me, and I’m not entirely ready to let this blogging deal go. While my worst nightmare is turning into THAT person who feels the need to blog regularly about their most recent trip to the grocery store, I think I may try my hand at some occasional life updates, perhaps tying things in to my semester in Prague where relevant. Sort of an experimental “life after Prague” endeavor. Could be interesting. We’ll see.
Hmm. I feel like I need to end this one on a cheesy note (since Prague is the love of my life after all- still going strong!). I guess I probably couldn’t help it if I tried. Prague was best thing that could have happened to me. Came at the perfect time, and I wouldn’t trade a second of the experience for anything (except maybe that time or two that the washing machine broke and gushed water all over the kitchen. Might be willing to bargain for those seconds). It goes without saying that I would like to get back there at some point, maybe for a longer period of time (like a year) if I can find something useful to do there. Transitioning back to life “on the other side of the pond” will be an interesting, sometimes challenging, experience, but (to get really, unapologetically, vomit-inducing-ly cheesy here) I think I’m ready for whatever’s up next. [Taking suggestions for an appropriate “end of trip” line to insert here.] Na Shledanou Praha! Ich liebe dich. J
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