Thoughts from a friend.

I know you've heard about my good friend Jennifer who was an ETA with me in Franken last year. I know I also mentioned that she and I have very similar European history.

But just to recap our stories go something like this: We studied German in college and never had any real intentions of a big study abroad at first. But somehow we both ended up on year long exchanges to beautiful alpine regions - Jennifer in Salzburg, Austria and me in Zürich, Switzerland. When we returned to the US we both did everything within our power to get back to Europe. Which is how we both ended up as ETAs in Franken last year.

I might have also mentioned at some point that Jennifer keeps her own really amazing blog (that you should all check out!) and she recently posted an amazing post on the truly disorienting effect of an exchange year. When I read this post, I'd never been able to relate to anything more, so I wanted to share it with you. When you read it just replace "Stillwater, Oklahoma" with "Athens, Georgia" and "Salzburg, Austria" with "Zürich, Switzerland" and you have my story. 

Jenni Austria Germany - On Contentment

My response (which is in the post's comments) was: 

I've decided Study Abroad years rip you of the ability to be content. 

My Europe love-history timeline looks almost identical to yours. And after having a second less thrilling go at Europe I've realized that I never wanted to just be back in Europe. I wanted to be back in that first study abroad year. With those same people, in that same place.
And that's why studying abroad, while probably the best year of my life to date, has pretty much ruined me as far as being content with where I am.

But hey, better to have loved and lost.... right?

 

Now, to be fair, I am loving being in Germany and I'm at that point where I am not ready to even start thinking about leaving. But I cannot deny that right after my return last year it took some time to accept the fact that, although I'd returned to Europe, it wasn't Zürich.

June 25, 2008 - Zürich, Switzerland