like a wave on the rocks, lessons crashed down on me.

There was an urge to update everyone on this quarter.

After study abroad, I came back to the states and expected too much out of my return. I was expecting fanfare and drastic changes in the familiarity that I left. Because I was surrounded with unknown and spontaneity in this fascinating new adventure I called England, I was hoping when I returned that things had changed.When I figured out things were still the same from when I left, I fell back into complacency. I hate that feeling. Being complacent is almost as if I'm settling with things and not wanting to change. I did want things to be different and I hate the feeling of complacency.

Many of you think that because I was only taking 2 courses this quarter because my study abroad rolled over to fall quarter that I had a really easy quarter. And in certain respects, I did. I was able to focus on my classes and try and focus on relationships. Unfortunately, everyone close to me has been preoccupied with their new acquired romantic relationships. I've been feeling lonely because I have felt that I've been glossed over and forgotten. With all this time I've had to mull over my self-pity and loathing feelings, I figured out that I can't not be who I was before. Although God changed me in ways I can't express or even convey to friends, I have to continue being that person God created me to be.

There are some people who rely on being cheered up by someone and typically, that person was me. Before I left, I remember being told that I "lit a room up when I walked in" and that I was always cheery which helped the day look brighter. Recently, a friend approached me and asked "Why have you been so grumpy lately?" It didn't hit me until this person asked me this that I've been slacking. Each person has their God-given gifts and mine is being able to encourage and help cheer up. Being that somebody to talk to. I've been slacking in this. While I've been trying to figure out my feelings and sort things out internally, I haven't been that person people can come to to talk to like before.

I've been closed off and bitter towards those who have found recent happiness or too busy to have one-on-one time. I've held grudges towards those who I felt haven't made time to be friends with me and those who haven't bothered to ask me how I'm doing. That part is always hard for me. People come to me and just expect me to want them to dump their problems on me but there are days where I can't handle it. I do have my own problems and would like someone to talk to about them without any judgement or glossed over remarks. I want someone to be able to recognize I need someone to talk to also. Like a therapist needing their own therapist who needs their own therapist. You get it. I have felt like I've been forgotten until someone needs to talk to me about something. I feel like I've been glossed over and taken advantage of. And no one really to express these feelings to. But I realized that it's not about me. It shouldn't be about me.

So, in these past couple weeks I've been fighting this new "Sarah" with the old Sarah and trying to intertwine qualities of both "Sarah's" to fit the needs of others.

In all of this, I wanted to apologize to those who have felt like they couldn't come to me as of late. I'm sorry for not being there for you and being held up in my own feelings to recognize your hurt.

Concluding remarks

Hey everyone! Thought I'd take some time and catch everyone up since my study abroad trip.
I've been home for almost a month from my London study abroad and I have to be honest, it's been a rough 3 weeks. Not necessarily because of life situations or anything within itself but because of the reverse culture shock I've been experiencing. That's weird for me to say since I was only in London for three weeks and I'm the kind of person to not like to over-exaggerate feelings. So let me explain a bit.

This was my first "abroad" trip if you don't consider taking a trip to Canada for a few days. I came back home and was all over the place. I didn't have time to relax and rest up like you could imagine or how I hoped. I came back hanging out with friends, getting ready for school and five days later, school started. With the jet lag, I was able to recover within two or three days- I was really thankful for that.
For the first week and a half I was gone, I was homesick. I wanted to go home so bad to my familiar place, my familiar friends, and my familiar culture. I use "my" intentionally. But then it got closer to our departure date home and I didn't want to leave this wonderful place. I realized I loved having something to do everyday and loved the new. This experience was incredible. And the people I was on the trip with were incredible. Especially on a trip like this, we weren't sure how our relationships would change when we got back home because of us shifting back into our familiar place.

So I came home and fell back into my original routine. My molted place in life I left when I left Washington.
I was dissatisfied. I didn't like going through the motions. But when I came home, I didn't realize I did that. I fell back into my pattern as if I didn't go to London. I came back changed.
New romantic relationships formed among friends over the summer and it was nice getting away from that in London. Don't get me wrong, I was SO happy for everyone and as long as they're happy, I'm happy. But at the same time I was thankful I was able to do "just Sarah" when I was gone. Getting out of the familiarity was something I desperately needed. I needed that time to find out more things about myself and be able to do things that I wanted to do. It's hard to explain but when you're with your close friends all the time, you start to mold together and become one person. When I left for London, I was able to be Sarah. It was refreshing.

Anyways school starts and I'm so wrapped up with seeing familiar faces and feeling nostalgia for the previous school year. Old friend here. Old friend there. New friends everywhere. It was fantastic.

After the new school year hype wore off, I started to feel "depressed". I use that term lightly because there are those who are clinically depressed and so I don't want to label myself with a serious condition. I came back and felt empty and I could not figure out why. After I was able to sit down and think was when I started feeling down.
Only a few days ago was I able to pinpoint exactly why I was feeling the way I was. There are a couple reasons why.
1. As some of you may know, my parents are no longer in my life because of poor decisions they made. This has greatly affected me. Their absence may have happened years ago but, as a professor who was on the London trip told me because he has gone through similar things, the pain never goes away. Time may make it fade but it never stops bothering you. Which encouraged me, in a strange way, because he wasn't denying my feelings and wasn't diminishing the pain I sometimes feel. He was affirming the way I feel. It's times when I do a big thing where the absence of my parents greatly affect me. To reiterate how this trip came about that I wish my parents witnessed:
     They didn't see my trip get fully funded because of donations or purchases of my bracelets I made.
     They didn't see me in the process of writing donation letters because I wasn't sure how I was going to make the last couple thousand dollars when, in fact, the next day a check came in the mail for the amount of money I needed.
     They didn't see me pack.
     They didn't see me off at the airport.
     They didn't kiss me goodbye.
     They didn't even know about this trip.
2. When I left London, I left a piece of me there. I was changed in indescribable ways. God worked in me in ways I didn't know until I had a conversation with a couple a few days ago. It was almost an "aha", epiphany, moment when I realized that God did have a bigger purpose for me on that trip. It may have been just "study abroad" but God taught me the meaning of faith. There were questions I had for years but on the trip when those same questions were asked again, God spoke to me answering those questions. If I wasn't on that trip, I probably wouldn't have had those questions answered. So, a number of things happened there that couldn't have happened at home. I understand that now. Because of these things happening there, I left that there. I marked my place in that place and London has made its mark on me. I may not have gone for the purpose of a mission trip but it did change me. I witnessed a different culture for the first time and experienced newness.

3. I had no summer.
    I worked 40 hours a week.
    I worked straight from finals of spring quarter until august 31. That was tough.
    I came back from London and 5 days later, school started. I haven't had time to catch my breath really. For me, this does a toll on me. In all technicalities, I've been on the go since spring break. That's a long time.

Now that I've been able to reflect and process everything that has happened in the past couple months, yesterday was the first day I actually felt myself. I even had friends noticing that I wasn't acting like my "usual" self. (But to be honest, I can't be expected to act the same way all the time so in turn it annoyed me knowing I was expected to act one way and if I didn't, it freaked people out. I'm still Sarah, just not the Sarah you want.) Now I feel myself and it feels great.

School has started and I've gotten in the routine of things. Trying to make my friends find time to hang out with me is difficult but I'm so thankful I have them around nonetheless. I'm thankful for this wonderful opportunity and I'm grateful for the support I received through this.




 

Holy cow. I just realized how many days I've missed from blogging. I apologize for this.
Now that I have some time to get everyone up to date, here goes!

Last week was a busy one. From Bath to Stonehenge to Oxford to having a very bad cold for all of last week and weekend, I haven't had any time for me.

Let's start with Thursday.
Thursday is when I felt my throat feel very sore but not yet wearing me down. Nothing really special happened on this day.
Friday is when the 20 of us traveled to Bath, England to see the Roman Baths and the different style of architecture between London and Bath. The Roman Baths were incredible. First of all, I was trying to absorb everything since I thought I would never see these things in person in my lifetime but a lot can change in a year. Or 6 months. Or even a week.

 We woke up at 6:30 and was on the train to Bath at 9 in the morning so you can imagine it was a very long day for us. This was when my cold really started hitting me. Because this was an overnight trip only, we had a lot to do in a very short amount of time.
When we got to Bath, we were staying in a hostel (not a hotel) so we put our things in a room and got told to meet at a certain place at a certain time. Bath is very uniform. The buildings look the same and the streets are the same. It was actually quite amazing.
The city is built around a city central and the city central has anything between a church, an outdoor shopping mall, fudge shops, coffee shops, and a town center where gypsies and singers perform for money. It's amazing.
Around 2 o'clock we had a walking tour and at this point my cold had gotten worse. Unfortunately, there is no sun in England. In fact, this country gets about as many days of rain as Seattle does. So the walking tour was in the rain. I didn't feel myself and I feel like I completely skipped the Bath experience because of my illness. From what I retained about the walking tour was Bath was taken over by the Romans and they built the city to their liking. That's why there are Roman Baths in England.
The tour was about 2 hours long and took us around the city. It's a very small city. After the tour we went on another tour of the actual Roman Baths.

After the tour of the Roman Baths, my friend and I went back to the hostel where we both crashed. It was about 6 when we got back and we both slept until 9. I slept completely through dinner. Around 9:30 I went back asleep until the next morning when I woke up at 8:30. So.. pretty much, I missed the Bath trip. Or at least, I slept through the trip. All because of a dang cold.

We hopped on our shuttle back to London and on our way back we made a stop to Stonehenge. This was a remarkable site. 

We were here for about an hour and it was cool to see. It was smaller than what I've seen on movies but at least now I can brag I've been there :P

On Sunday my friend and I took a spontaneous trip to Oxford to visit a friend who is attending there for the year. It was a gorgeous place to be and sort of reminded me of University of Washington with how the school took up so much space. I saw some of the places where Harry Potter was filmed and I especially saw a girl I haven't seen since June and probably won't see until next year at some point.

But overall, it was a packed weekend and
today was the first day I felt good and myself again. This cold has finally decided to bug off and leave me be with a week left of the trip and a week left until my birthday.

Overwhelmed

Lately I've been feeling very homesick. Coming to a new country with people I'm not familiar with has been a tough transition for me, personally. I'm someone who enjoys one-on-one interaction because having a bigger group leads to exclusion and cliques. I like knowing I have a voice and an opinion when it's just me and one or two other people rather than going with the flow and being dragged along. That's how I've felt for the past few days. Like I'm just a toy that a little kid is pulling along and eventually drops out of boredom. But for the most part, everybody has stuck with each other and has tried to listen to the other students. The only problem is there are just TOO many people. I don't have a say in anything. Where we go. If I know where we're going, nobody listens to me. So, I'm slowly learning to keep quiet. Maybe this is a lesson from God. I don't know.

I'm used to having a smaller group of friends that I'm familiar with. People that know my sense of humor and know my heart. I've been feeling lost and isolated. I didn't think I would struggle with these bouts of feelings but I have. I'm trying to figure out where I belong and where I fit. Like a puzzle, I can't place myself in a slot I don't belong or the puzzle gets damaged.
I've been trying to stay in the Europe rather than connecting with people in the states since I want to make the most of my time here. But I skyped with one of my close friends because I REALLY needed it. And I felt better afterwards. I talked to him about what's been going on and he told me he'd pray for me.

So last night I told my roommate how I was feeling and we prayed together.
There's something about community prayer.
It's different.
It's powerful.

And I felt better today. I'm not completely okay but I'm getting there.

Transitioning to what's happened today now.

We had a class session where we talked about the universe and God. Then we were sent off to the National Art Gallery, which is FULL of famous paintings. I was very excited for this outing.
My freshman year of college I took an European art class and all the paintings I saw in the book were in this museum. I walked into the gallery and was so overwhelmed I was almost crying. To see these paintings in person was so much different than seeing them in a book. It's the tangibility that I was experiencing. I was standing 2 feet from Monet paintings and Van Gogh. I was standing 2 feet from these HUGE paintings that took up a wall. It was incredible.

Later on tonight I'm going to King's Cross Station to see platform 9 and 3/4.

There once was a mouse who lived in our housing and there were 5 girls who wanted to kill it.

So we bonded over how to make homemade traps because of frugal living.

In other news:

Today was our first class session and we visited the British Museum. It was so amazing because I saw mummies and saw, in person, the actual, the real, Rosetta Stone. It was incredible. I was almost to tears. For more than one reason.

Reason 1: It's a stone that helped decipher a language. That's remarkable. I saw the stone that uncovered so
                many mysteries.
Reason 2: I never thought I'd see it in person. To be there. To take a picture. To see the carvings. It was                       incredible.

Trafalgar Square/ National Museum

I spy with my little eye ;)

We were so excited to try some butterbeer (sooo good!!)

Old Bank of England

I have a few moments of down time so I thought I'd try and catch you up about my adventures so far.
First of all, London is a beautiful city. The people here appreciate the history that comes with the city so they try and maintain the buildings in the same architecture as it was in the 1600's. The buildings here are incredible. I cannot even describe how gorgeous they are.

Day 1: Meeting at London Heathrow Airport

Flying into Heathrow was incredible. Seeing Parliament and the London Eye and Westminster Abby and all these other well known buildings from bird's eye view was surreal. But after 12 hours of traveling, me and my traveling companion, Emily, were exhausted. Apparently it's nearly impossible sleeping on the plane when you're in a middle seat. I didn't sleep at all on our longest flight of 7 hours so we got to Heathrow and I wanted to crash. But I couldn't. (By the way, the immigration people at the airport are mean. Just fyi.)

We rounded up the other people who arrived at the airport and headed towards our housing which are some flats on Farringdon Road. I have 4 other roommates who I'm so blessed to be housed with. We had a few hours to get settled before we had to meet for a orientation dinner. My roommate, Phoebe, and my flatmate, Amy, and I took a stroll along Farringdon road and discovered some coffee shops and a few boutiques. It's interesting, here if you ask for a "small coffee", the English don't know what you're talking about. So the coffee experience here is different coming from a coffee city.

The group met at 6 to go to our orientation dinner which was held at the Old Bank of England located on Fleet street, next to Sweeney Todd's barber shop. (If you don't know the story, Sweeney Todd is a barber who made meat pies but the meat were humans).

The next day we had plans of sight-seeing on a tour bus while doing a scavenger hunt. We met at St. Paul's Cathedral and the way we had to do so was through, what the English call, "The tube". It's an underground train system which is incredible in its set up. It was our first time trying to navigate our way in the middle of rush hour. There were hundreds of people. The English are always in a rush. They blew past us and there are rules of etiquette on the tube. It's weird. In a good way.
Anyways, we eventually made it to the cathedral and when we got there, we were split up into teams and my team didn't exactly do the scavenger hunt. Instead we just rode the tour bus twice which was 3 hours of sight-seeing. It was raining and my group was sitting on the top with an open roof. Our motto was "We're Seattlites, this is nothing". It was a blast.
Then we had to regroup with everybody to do "high tea". A waiter came around our conference-sized table and put napkins in each of our laps. There were about 30 of us. The food was great. The tea was amazing. I'm not even a tea person but I had about 4 cups.
Being here without the ability to use my phone has been rough. I'm so used to a culture where we are so absorbed with ourselves and what's going on somewhere else, coming here with no form of communication has been a transition. I hope to come back with the habit of not needing my phone. People here are technologically behind so there are actual conversations and more face-to-face interaction. You won't see many people with phones in their hands or that much texting. I REALLY appreciate that. It's great to see an outside perspective.

Yesterday was a free day. Phoebe and I took a trip to Trafalgar Square which is a tourist attraction. We were supposed to meet our friend, Aly, who is attending Oxford to have lunch but we couldn't find each other. Here at Trafalgar Square is located the National Museum. Almost like downtown Seattle, people bring their instruments and play and there are "gypsies" performing shows.
I've noticed that people here seem more accustomed to someone of my stature and there aren't many people who have stared at me. There is also a fascination with the american accent. I went to a coffee shop and when I was ordering the waiter kept complimenting "my beautiful accent" and continuously asked me questions about my homeland.

After Trafalgar Square, Phoebe, Becky, Amy, and I were scheduled to do a Harry Potter Studio Tour. Funy story: we had train tickets but we got on the wrong train. It was still planned to go to our ending destination but it wasn't the fast train that we paid for. It stopped 30 times before our stop. The ticket said it was supposed to arrive 20 minutes after our boarding time but after a half an hour, we started to get nervous. We made the tour just on time. We were all panicking because we were so excited to do it. To see where they filmed and all the props used.

We got back from the Harry Potter tour and our flat went to dinner at an italian restaurant down the road. Then we met the rest of the group at a pub.

And here today, we're scheduled to go to St. Paul's Cathedral once again to witness a recital. I'm excited!

So, I'll try and keep everyone updated! I hope you enjoy these posts!