Homeward Bound

If you're reading this, chances are I'm back at home with my family in Upstate New York. Although my time in Vienna has come to a close--as I write this, I have only one full day left in the city--it hasn't fully dawned on me that I am going home. Finals are almost over, my suitcases are halfway packed, and I have a cab lined up to take me to the airport, but home feels almost as foreign as Austria did a little more than four months ago. This isn't to say I'm not excited to see my family, because I am, I'm more excited than I've been for anything in a long time. But now that I know and am relatively used to Austrian culture, I hope I won't have too much trouble getting thrown back into the American lifestyle. At least I speak the language in the States.

My sense of time regarding this semester has been totally shot. I feel like my stay in Vienna lasted both forever and no time at all; I was just at home, and have never been there.

I don't necessarily want to spend this post reminiscing about all of the things I will miss in Vienna, because there is nothing I can do about missing except remember. I would rather reflect on what I learned and what I didn't, as both of which are many. To start, I now have a much better sense of what I want for my life in the future. Before the semester started, I thought that maybe I would want to live in Vienna someday. Although Vienna is wonderful and I did live there successfully, I no longer see myself with a future in a big city. Vienna may be small as far as capitals go, but it is still too big for me. I think I am much more suited for a smaller town with less people and more open space, somewhere where I have a place in a community of people I care about.

Another reason I chose to study in Vienna was to see if I might want to focus my future career on music. I discovered that, although studying music has changed my life, English literature and creative writing are ultimately what I live for. I can't not work with words; ever since I was little, "Kelsie" equaled "writer" in my mind, and that association has only strengthened over the years. I am so glad I studied music this semester, and I wouldn't have done it any other way, but I realize now that it is not a path I plan on going down.

As for the bigger issues, those of a more personal nature beyond career choices, I'm not sure I can talk about them yet. Did I grow as a person at all? Am I more independent, more confident, more curious? I don't know. Maybe it is too early to tell. Maybe growth is something you can see only when you aren't in the thick of it. I don't know.

Vienna is among the most breath-taking and most interesting places I have ever seen. It is a city of culture, a city of influence, and a city of survival. I will never forget the things I have seen and done there, regardless of how much they may or may not have changed me. But I'm ready to go home. So, auf wiederschauen, Wien. Und bis bald.