Coming Home
The one stand alone memory of this trip for me was exploring London with my boyfriend and his friend. My boyfriends best friend in highschool, David, is originally from England but he has lived all over the world due to his father's job. He is living in England again just after graduating from uni and he lives just south of London. We met up with him around Thanksgiving and had the most incredible few days. Although David hasn't been to London tons of times, he still knew how to get around the easiest and quickest ways and was able to show us nearly the entire city within a few days. If we wouldn't have had him with us we wouldn't have been able to see even 1/2 of what we were able to see. For accomodation we simply made the hour trip back to David's house where we slept and his mother made us breakfast. I've been to David's house in the states and his house in England was so different. It was so interesting to see the differences in how he lived in the states and in the UK. Although his house in the US was bigger, his house in the UK ismuch more expensive. He still lives with his mother and father even though he just graduated uni. His older brothers also do. It's not like the US where as soon as possible you move out from your parents house and begin to live on your own... they take things a little more slowly and relaxed over there -- it's not rush, rush, rush.
I think the greatest learning and growing experiences come in a non-academic form from studying abroad. The most amazing thing that I have learned from my overall experience is that fundamentally, we are all the same, living on the same earth, hoping for the same general things. Yes, each region of the world has its own unique culture and way of life, but no matter where you go at the core we are all very similar. Even though people are living in different time zones all over the world, time is essentially relative and we're all living in the same time. Even though people are scattered all throughout the world and are adapted to their own environment, way of life, culture, etc., we all share a commonality as humans living on this earth in relation to it and eachother.