Day 19: June 1st, To Reminisce Is A Beautiful Thing

I know I said that today was the beginning of the end, well today was the part right before the climax. Today we deregistered from the country so we could leave on Sunday, and while the process was quite painless I was quite sad doing it. It was one of the first solid steps to leaving Vienna and after the last few weeks I am really sad to have to leave. Even though I did quite a bit of adventuring in my time here I felt like there were still so many adventures to be had. I may have just been a visitor to the city I was really starting to feel comfortable with how things work. Deregistering felt like I was losing part of my identity in Vienna, I was just a regular tourist now. In way though I am not regular in the slightest after this trip. I have learned so much about Vienna's history, culture, and inner workings that if I ever returned I could handle myself well and see things that I have already seen. This experience has been a joyous one, and I may be sad to lave but I know I will always have my memories of my time here. Strange enough the most uncomfortable I felt really during our trip (besides the obvious language barrier) was when visiting the U.S. Embassy. While I loved visiting ad thought the presentation was very interesting and inspiring, considering how I am looking for careers I could travel with, I just felt like I had come back to the U.S. too suddenly in a way. A bit like being thrown into cold water very suddenly, you know you will adjust to it but the shock is still here. I guess it was early on set reverse culture shock.

In all seriousness though experiencing Austrian culture was very interesting because I didn't feel quite like an other most of the time. After all most of the people here look like me in a way, they speak english, and are still polite in there own way. I know the purpose of this trip was to fee like the "other" in a culture that wasn't yours, but after ll my interactions with my interaction friends a lot of the things that would make me feel like an other I was used to. After all my international friends often didn't always speak english around me, we had different ideas about how things worked, and we had culture differences that we worked through. When I came to Austria I tried to handle myself the same way I would around my friends, and so I didn't feel too much like an other. I did sometimes for example when someone would say joke in german to me, or a culture difference would come up and didn't know how to handle it, or even getting used to simple things like relying heavily on coins. For me though these challenges we face in a different country are part of the adventure of traveling. It is to get our of your comfort zone and learn something new, and I wouldn't trade anything for the the awkward moments I experienced to feel comfortable at home all summer. To explain study abroad in hashtag I would probably use #gobeyondyourbounds. I often feel like we hold ourself back in different ways not just in study abroad, but I feel like in order to experience it fully you must go beyond what you think you can do and just go for it. On the other hand though I would say study abroad is like a sentence from a poem my Mom read to me quite often "Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence." For me this means that when you study abroad don't try and stick to your ways too much, become and chameleon and bend into the culture in order to learn something new about the world and yourself. You ay just find a peace in yourself in all the chaos that you never knew you had. I am so glad I was able to go on this trip, and I wouldn't change any experience in the world. They are all unique to me, and I hold them near and dear to my heart. Tomorrow is my last official day in Vienna and I plan to make the most of it. Until tomorrow then!