El Fin

NYC
Normally I take my time when I am writing a blog post. I try to gather my thoughts ahead of time as well. Depending on the assigned topic, some posts have been much easier for me to write than others. This one, right now, is definitely the hardest. I am not exactly sure how I want to conclude my experience and in that, I do not know what I want to feel, think or say.
I am grateful that my experience abroad gave me the opportunity to travel and see places that I had never been before, while I also met new people. I foreshadowed Prague being a more difficult place to adjust to but it has become a more western, consumer culture over recent years, making it easier for U.S. travelers like myself to fit in. I feel like a more independent person as well. I gained new insight into people and I know that my perspective can be considered a global one now.
Towards the end of the program I also began to realize the things and people that I miss from New York. I miss my closest friends, who have known me for a few years now. I miss the convenience of already being part of a culture and not having to think twice before I speak English in a grocery store. I especially miss being able to pick up my cell phone and call anyone to talk. Czech phones have allowed us to communicate by text messages at a relatively cheap cost, but I miss hearing my friends’ voices and how easy it is to communicate verbally. I miss being able to call my mother 10 times a day to tell her anything on my mind.
Yet I am simultaneously thankful that I was able to get to know a Czech family through tutoring Veronika, otherwise I would have felt even more detached to Czech culture than I already do by not speaking the language. I will always remember Lenka and Veronika for teaching me various things about life here and abroad. I hope to see them again one day, perhaps when Veronika is a bit older and traveling to the United States.
I hope that years from now I look back on this experience as a time in my life when I grew the most. Not only that, but when I enjoyed myself to the fullest. In Prague, I did not have an internship and felt much less responsibility than I do in New York. I felt more relaxed and was able to enjoy traveling. From here on out, I know that I will only have more obligations in my life. I want to continue travelling throughout my lifetime, but I will never have these four months back again. If I could freeze a moment of time in Prague, it would be one full of laughter with friends. But I don’t want to freeze time; I’m ready to move forward and move on.