Meditations on Goodbye: How to Stay Connected with Study Abroad Folks

While exploring Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Aotearoa New Zealand at large, I've been constantly astounded by the riveting landscapes and strange customs — gas station meat pies, calling hikes 'tramps,' phrases such as 'keen' and 'sweet as.' Of course, studying abroad goes far beyond the classroom, or even the institution you study at: it means folding yourself into local culture and learning by living. I'd be remiss to say it's to 'find yourself.' That is a vast oversimplification. In reality, being overseas cultivates your interests and reveals what, at the end of the day, is home. Is it in yourself? Is it in others? (See Joan Didion's 'On Self Respect' for more on this!).

This is all to say that in venturing toward the unfamiliar — in picking up your life and hauling halfway across the globe — the connections you kindle along the way, within and outside of yourself, are paramount for your trajectory. My IES Abroad program has 10 or so other students, ensuring I wouldn't be entirely alone when I stepped off that flight back in July. During mid-semester break, I went to Rarotonga (re: my earlier blog, 'Rearing in Rarotonga') and quickly befriended a handful of IES Abroad Christchurch folks, too. As a result, I had a place to stay on the South Island. Yet, the flock of other international students in my accommodations — Stuart McCutcheon House — have also influenced my time here across road trips, tramps, and coffee dates. This fails to mention the many locals I met through my courses and clubs. Every person opens up a door to something completely novel: I thoroughly exercised my extroversion here.

Now that the semester is winding down and I churn through the last of my exams, I've had to confront the dreaded 'Goodbye Tapes,' as poet Eileen Myles coins. Four and a half months just flew by. To be pragmatic, I won't see a majority of these people again. It's an incredibly bitter and turbulent time — especially here in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, where there's no definitive end to the semester. Some stay to backpack and WWOOF, others hitch a ride home right when exams end (guilty!). You'll see your friend's Instagram story at the airport and wince, just a bit. 

I offer this article as a sort of antidote to this simultaneously dull yet sharp pain, so 'for once, I can smile and I feel really free' (Myles). I don't want to treat my time here merely as a blip or detour from the highway that is my early adulthood: that includes the gratitude I shared along the way. If anything, I promise to keep this corner of the world — Aotearoa New Zealand — constantly floating in my head. Really, it's a piece of my home now, and I need to keep that in my life — just like the amazing folks who helped define it as such.

Thankfully, we live in an era of mass connectivity: Instagram, Discord, WhatsApp. It's hard to be completely isolated — and, perhaps, that's the main drawback of social media. True quiet is hard to come by, like unpolluted skies with views of the Milky Way. Earlier this year, I fostered some connections in London during another abroad stint, and I've found that mindlessly scrolling on their timelines and liking their posts every so often isn't a real way to engage with them. To be honest, it feels more isolating that way: a sort of endless white noise machine of images from a life so-far-removed from you now. I am guilty of this. 

Yet utilizing these technologies for their original purposes — maintaining friendships miles upon miles away — is very much doable. Instead of catching up by the passivity of Instagram posts and stories, I enjoy scheduling monthly calls and writing longer letter-style messages to people back home. While these are less often than a quick two sentence text everyday, they feel far more intentional. This will apply to folks I meet over here, too: I intend to keep those I care about here updated to the same extent as some of my home friends. Really, I could even consider some of the people I've met here 'home friends,' too. 

As a music snob and writer, I also keep my ear attuned for images, melodies, and styles that remind me of the panoply of people circulating my conscious. Through messaging, I'll send songs or passages from a book that remind me specifically of a certain person. It's a nice way of signaling to someone that, of course, you're thinking of them — which is always sweet! I know that when I receive a message in this vein I smile. You can even extend this to entire playlists, albums, or novels. I have a home friend who bounces between Europe and America, and we set up this pen pal playlist system: we construct a ten-song mixtape to send to each other about where we're at in life at any given moment. When I listen to hers, I imagine all the incredible things she's doing and seeing. It also helps we have similar taste!

In a similar, cataloging vein, I slowly am realizing how international my circles are becoming — not only here in Aotearoa New Zealand, but also from London and fellow travel bugs from home. If I ever return to these places I've fostered connections in — which I fully intend on doing, no doubt about it! — I know I'll have friends to reach out to and catch up with. Or, alternatively, if someone from overseas comes to my ends, I can show them around and provide a couch to crash on. It's nice to say that many of my friends here are also American, making a cross-country road trip to visit them quite plausible. 

It's easy to get caught up in the intangibility of the future, especially in the ambivalence that defines endings such as these. In simpler terms, things won't be like this ever again — for better or for worse. I am leaving a lot behind in Aotearoa New Zealand. Yet in that same breath, there is so much awaiting my return back to the States — my own whānau, for one, and the rest of my undergraduate tenure. As study abroad proves — and as fellow Wisconsinite Bon Iver sings — 'how everything can change / in such a small timeframe.' Really, nothing is fixed. Paradoxically, what is constant, though, is the ever-changing gratitude you can express on the individual level: toward the folks you meet, and toward yourself, most of all. 

Keep that flame burning alive. It's less of a goodbye: more so a take it easy, think of me from time to time.