I have been thinking about my time here thus far as merely a vacation, when today it hit me: I have much more time here. I kept thinking that i'm running out of time. As if I NEEDED to get comfortable immediately. I have time to grow into this place, to make this experience count. I like that feeling. There's power in the words "there's still time for that".
The mindset of this experience as a vacation suggests that it was like an escape. Isn't that the point of a vacation? To escape? Like the exotic nature of the new location will wipe away whatever past dirt-stains i've received or whatever blood i've got on my hands. And maybe that was the way I was thinking before, as if going off to a foreign land would make me a new person, with no outside influence, and as if I could come back home different from how I left. And maybe that's still an expectation that I have, but i've realized something: This isn't escape. I didn't go abroad to run from anything, and I think i've limited myself thus far to thinking about Scotland that way. There's more to this semester than to get away from myself.
I suppose most people like to think that there's answers that we search for in life. Going abroad, I realize that there is no answer that i'm looking for over here. I'm not trying to find myself among the castles, beer, and thick accents. The only thing that i'm looking for is what I know is already here, what I already have, but haven't fully explored yet.
Maybe it's time to go out and see a bit more.
Until later,
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