Homesickness

For this post, I have decided to write about a thing that I think most study abroad students will deal with at some point during their time abroad. And that thing is homesickness. At the meeting of all of the study abroad students who are going abroad in the upcoming semester, for me I think it was back in December or January, they give you a warning about this. They gave us all a graph showing excitement versus homesickness over a semester abroad. They told us that intitaly we probably would not miss home, because we would still be to excited by all the new things happening. After awhile, they said, that we would probably become homesick as the initial shock of the newness of everything wore off. I believe they said that this would last something like 4-6 weeks. Then after a while this feeling would fade, as we became acclimated to our new circumstance. And one we went home, we are likely to experience culture shock once again, as we go back to our old lives. So far, there prediction has not been that far off.

When I first got here, I was swept up in meeting new people and doing new things. I did not miss being in Arizona at all, other than the people that were back there obviously. But I am used to being gone from Arizona for months at a time. For the first 18 years of my life, I spend almost every summer in Ohio visiting family, and in college I have spent every summer away because I worked in other states fighting forest fires. I can only recall spending one full summer in AZ in my life, and that was right after highschool ended. So one month passed. Two months passed, and I stilled only missed the people I had left behind. I am used to this feeling, however, for the aforementioned reasons. Then my family came for a there visit. We had a great time, saw a lot of cool places and made new memories. But then they left, and that triggered some pretty bad homesickness. At this point, about two weeks ago, it had been just over three months since I left AZ. This would be the point in time that I normally return to NAU from fire season, so that also did not help.

Having my family here reminded me of my life back in the states, and made me miss that life. I missed spending time with my friends around flagstaff. I missed doing redneck things with my best friend and roommate. I missed spending time with my significant other, and my family in Flagstaff. I also missed just random things that I can not do over here, like taking back roads through the forest around Flag in my truck. It made me feel like I no longer wanted to be where I am, and I wanted to go home. This is not because anything had gone bad in my life over here, the only problem was that Konstanz is not my home.

There is no way to really overcome homesickness, you just have to let it pass. I kept living my life and doing the things that I had been doing. I think that I am now pretty over this feelings, and once again want to be where I am at. Konstanz is great and my life over here is pretty great as well. I have been, and am, having a lot of great experiences and am seeing a lot of new things. The place or my life here was never been the problem.

My advice to anyone facing homesickness is just to wait it out and keep living your life. There is nothing that you can really do about it, because your study abroad location is not your home. It is a place that you are for a limited amount of time, so you should enjoy that time as much as you can. Home will still be there when you get back, and so will your life. Don’t let a bit of homesickness ruin your once in a lifetime study abroad experience.

Enjoying some time in France