Far away from home

A day before I left to come here in Italy I spent my day at Latin (dc school) to be with my friends and teachers before I left. One of my teachers, Ms. VerCammen, told me that I would have this exciting high for a couple of days then go through culture shock then feel this sad low. But she told me when I hit that low to try my best to get out of it or I could get stuck. When I went through my lovely culture shock after the couple of days I got here I thought that would be it...

I noticed that sometimes I would miss home but it wasn't that much and I was having a great time here. Then there were moments where I realized that this was my life for 10 months, I won't be seeing my family for holidays, I can't talk to my friends every moment because we’re all busy and there is a 6 hour time difference, and I’m missing a pretty important year of high school. Then I noticed I have hit my low.

This low was interesting and it lasted a long time. The issue was I knew I was in my low, but I didn't know how to get out of it. AFS makes you take classes before you leave, teaching you about homesickness, stereotypes about your country, norms about your country, and other stuff that I can't remember at the moment. Of course me being not the brightest of the bunch, I didn't take into account how much I would miss home (like I didn't think I would go through culture shock). So, I thought the only thing to get rid of homesickness was to just give up and go back home. And that's what I wanted to do, I wanted to give up. I didn't see a reason to stay and there were so many positives to going back to DC. The more and more I thought about home the more I pushed away trying to call Italy a second home. I thought of it just as a place I'm staying at until I go back to DC. This blog post is not a teaching moment for you all, I'm sorry to disappoint you. This is me adjusting to my challenges and trying to teach myself how to manage them.