We last left off one week before I flew out of Geneva, so hang tight while I quickly recap:
June 1st: I took a road trip to Annecy. The day was ridiculously hot, and a friend and I rented a paddle boat and made our way out to the middle of the lake, arriving right before one of the sets of pedals gave out. Unfortunately for me, the set was not mine, so I was stuck doing the pedaling for both of us to get us back to the docks in time. But hey, the view was to-die-for, and I definitely earned that afternoon's glace.
June 2nd: Thighs still burning from the previous day's thigh workout of the year, this genius child decided to hike up a mountain, just for old time’s sake. My friend and I motivated our way up the slope with the promise of a delicious lunch from the shelter at the top. You can bet that I ate every last bite of my enormous salad.
June 4th: My last Rotary meeting! One of the Rotarians is a hairdresser and, after seeing my (insanely thick) hair down at one of our earlier meetings, had offered to do my hair for our last réunion. After swimming with friends at the lake, I hitched a ride into town and the coiffeuse gave me a beautiful chignon.
June 5th: My friends and I had a potluck picnic/spontaneous French-music-only dance party in the park.
June 6th: This was a Thursday, and the last math class I had with my whole class of premières. My math teacher had us stop the lesson early to take a self-timer photo of the whole group. I cried as soon as I left the room.
June 7th: My last day of lycée did not, surprisingly enough, involve much actual work au lycée. The premières were having an end-of-year celebration and were sweet enough to invite me, so, with my real and host parents’ permission, I left school one period early (*gasp*) to go faire la fête. One of my friends has an outdoor pool, so we hung out at his house and backyard for much of the afternoon. We eventually moved down to the lake, where we stayed until the blue skies turned threateningly gray and cloudy.
That evening, I had one last soirée with my group of wonderful amies françaises. We cooked way too much food, ate, danced, cried, took pictures, exchanged cards and presents, sobbed, and embraced. Finally, I waved goodbye to some of my very favorite people, being careful to stress that this au revoir was not an adieu.
June 8th: I spent my last day packing and hugging my host sister, before saying goodbye to my house to have a final sleepover with Sofia and Marion, two of my best friends. Sofia’s dad had offered to drive me to the airport at 4 am when my host parents could not, so we all slept at Sofia’s house. Before going to bed, Sofia and Marion convinced me that a bathtub haircut was just the thing I needed to calm my pre-flight nerves. Luckily for me, Marion’s meticulous caution and attention to detail balanced out Sofia’s readiness to chop off as much hair as she deemed “nécessaire.” My hair emerged only slightly shorter, and I looked ready to take on the craziness of the following days…
June 9th: Mickey, Sofia’s dad, woke Marion, Sofia, and myself up at 4:00 to drive to Geneva. My flight left at 6:10, so after tears, hugs, and promises to call as soon as I landed, I was off through security. In Geneva, I connected my boarding passes to the Wallet app on my phone. (This detail seems irrelevant, but you will understand in a moment.) The flight to Lisbon was calm, but, despite the fact that I was absolutely exhausted, I found myself unable to sleep. I landed in Lisbon and checked my phone to see what time my next flight left. The Wallet app said 11:55, and my sleep-addled mind shushed the voice in the back of my head whispering that something seemed wrong. I told myself that I must have gotten the departure time mixed up. Why would the boarding pass on my phone lie to me?
If you guessed that a twist was coming, you were right. As it turns out, the Wallet app does not understand how time zones work and ended up adding an hour to the departure time on the boarding pass in some twisted attempt to compensate for the hour difference between Geneva and Lisbon. Long story (extremely) short, I ended up spending the night in a hotel located 20 minutes from the airport by subway. I had grown used to navigating foreign cities independently, but these cities tended to be francophone and I had always had a working phone. This time, I was in a Portugeuse city with no 4G. Nevertheless, my hours alone in Portugal were among the best and most memorable of my trip.
On the way to my hotel (which I found with the help of a very nice German backpacker and his Google Maps), I spotted the Museu de Lisboa - Palácio Pimenta. After peeking inside and spotting a peacock in the gardens, I rushed to the hotel, dropped off my carry-on bag, and returned to the museum to explore. I spent about two hours wandering through the long-term exhibition, the gardens, and the short-term exhibitions. The permanent collection was closed off when I visited, but there was more than enough art and history to keep me curious for another few hours, at least! The long-term exhibition about olisipography (“the specialist study of the history of Lisbon,” according to my museum pamphlet) was extremely detailed and informative, but I especially adored the two short-term exhibitions: one on “the faces of interculturalism [...] in medieval Lisbon,” the other a provocative investigation into the First World War, notably its intersection with Dadaism. The WWI exhibition, titled “Ni le soleil ni la mort” (French for “neither the sun nor death”), draws inspiration from the DADA movement; the movement, a transformational artistic and political venture instituted in 1916, “destroyed conventional language,” a concept that the artist applied to the “dissensions that led to the insanity of the war.” After beginning to feel that my brain, running on three hours of sleep, was reaching its limit, I said “tchau” to the woman at the front desk and headed into the metro.
One of the perks of not having cell service is that I was forced to ask for recommendations instead of leaning on Tripadvisor. Looking at the map of the metro lines, I realized that I had no idea what stop would take me into the heart of Lisbon. So, looking like a lost puppy, I’m sure, I tapped on the glass surrounding the information desk. The woman behind the window looked up from her book and raised her eyebrows before beginning to speak in rapid-fire Portugeuse. Presumably tipped off by my bewildered stare, she stopped, huffed, and switched to English. After a few minutes of pointing and a solid effort on both of our parts to be understood, she pointed out the stop I needed. I thanked her (“thank you” is “obrigado” in Portugeuse! I looked up a few key words while still on airport wifi) and ran to catch the subway.
That evening, I wandered right into la Praça do Comércio (Commerce Place), Lisbon’s main square. The southern end of the plaza is open, and its direct access to the Tragus river was historically used by ships as Lisbon’s “door” for commerce. After dipping my toes into the water and admiring the animal sand sculptures on the banks of the river, I popped into a side street to hunt for food and souvenirs. I ended up picking out three decorated pencils — small, I know, but I was working with very little space in my backpack— and having one of the best dinners I had ever tasted. Granted, it might have helped that I had barely eaten since the previous night, but I digress. After one last European gelato, I meandered back to the metro. As soon as I arrived at the hotel, I the set an alarm to go off excessively early the following morning, slipped into the king sized bed, and drifted off to dream of peacocks, accidental stopovers, the twilight of one adventure abroad, and the sun rising on another at home.
La suite: I was waiting at my gate an hour before the time on my physical boarding pass said that I needed to be there. On the flight home, I was seated next to an Indian engineer working in France, with whom I spoke only French. Because of him, combined with the previous day’s “Ni le soleil ni la mort,” I barely felt like I had left France until I touched down and ran into my mom’s embrace.
On Readjustment:
I have now been back in the States for three whole weeks. Surprisingly, one of the most unforeseen and difficult elements of my whole exchange is currently taking place, a fact that would have shocked me had someone warned me about it ten months ago. In the exchange community, we talk a lot about "culture shock" in the context of our arrival in a host country. However, a less well-known piece of the puzzle is the shock we feel upon returning "home." I am totally and completely delighted to be with my family and American friends again. However, I am also having a great deal of trouble re-assimilating socially, as well as struggling with being very far from some of my very favorite people.
While abroad, I stayed in touch with my American friends. I was under the impression that I had remained, if only from a distance, up-to-date on their lives and included, at least partially, in the equation regarding shifting social dynamics. And this may be true. Nevertheless, I have never felt so lost and uncomfortable with my place in a community as I do right now. I have heard that this is natural. I have been told that it will change, or that I will learn to accept this as the new normal. And it very well may, and I very well might. However, since landing in America, I have experienced a more severe culture shock than I ever did in France. My friends are still the same wonderful people they were when I left. I love them very much, and I am grateful to those who have made an effort to make me feel welcome since my return. I want to stress that I do not blame anyone for the way I am experiencing my readjustment period. Life back home did not pause when I went away, and I did not expect it to do so. However, the understanding that idea conceptually is very different from living the reality.
I have decided to share this in the hope that, on the off chance that an outbound exchange student comes across my words, they will remember them and feel less alone when they return. It is okay to not be the same person who you were when you left, and it is okay to not want the same things that you did before. As one of those aforementioned far-away favorite people said, when one leaves home, one changes, grows, and matures at a very accelerated rate. For most people, this emotional "growth-spurt" happens after high school. For me, it happened at fifteen. I have so much more discovery and development left to do, and so many things that I have yet to learn and experience. Even so, I view life and what I want from it very differently than I did before, and it is therefore quite logical that I struggle to fit back in where I did before. What is the solution? (Does there even need to be one?) I am not sure. The only thing of which I am certain is this: it has never been a good idea to try forcing a square peg back into a round hole.