Closing Thoughts

For fifteen days I have been back in the U.S., and for a handful of these days I have been pondering what I wanted to write about in my final blog post. To be completely honest, I have been at a loss when I begin to think about what I want to share with everyone about my experience. How do I put 5 months of experiences, thoughts, people and places into a single post, and do so eloquently?

Ever since returning home I have been missing those 5 months of experiences that I was lucky enough to have. Before I left New Zealand, I thought I was going to get home and be incredibly excited to be back in the familiarness of it. I expected that after a few weeks that excitement would wear off and I would begin to miss New Zealand immensely. But, to my surprise, after around 24 hours of being home, I realized that I already missed New Zealand and being home didn’t hold as much excitement as I had hoped and expected that it would. Sure it has been incredibly nice to catch up with my loved ones and have some time to relax, but Indiana is no New Zealand in any way.

The mountainous terrain of New Zealand that was full of summer life has been replaced by the flat and dead winter of Indiana. The fun filled adventurous weekends, have been replaced by lazy and mundane ones. When I was still overseas, I appreciated my surroundings and experiences, but now that I am home, I wish I would have appreciated and soaked up the last moments even more. Before I left, I was so excited to get home that the last few weeks I feel I didn’t fully appreciate the experiences that I was having as much as I could have. Of course, there is no need to look back with negativity considering it is in the past, but I just find it interesting how my perception changed now that I have returned.

Unfortunately, my mind is in jumbles right now, along with my sleep schedule from the time change, so my writing and reflecting is pretty stuck, but, that is life and I hope that soon I will snap out of the writers block funk I am in, because I want to give New Zealand and my time there the proper reflection that it deserves.

Since I don’t have much to say, I just want to end with a huge thank you to everyone who read my blogs this semester, I am truly full of gratitude for the opportunity I had to write and reflect on my journey to study overseas and bring people along for the ride with my words.

For a final time,

Xxx- Bella