Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving Sunderland, quite probably forever. I may never see some very close friends again, unless they send wedding invitations, which is probably unlikely in most cases. My life as far as I know it is packed up into four bags, and I'm oddly unemotional about it.
For the plan-happy amongst you, I'll be in Leicester for two nights and a day and in London for five nights, and also in Bath for one day and zero nights. I'm sure I can find some internets in London, if not in my hostel, then nearby, so I'll post pictures as I feel like hogging the bandwidth and might give short daily updates if I don't feel like using a lot of internet. They'll probably run something to the effect of "Oh, my days, I just walked through Westminster Abbey. Westminster Abbey!" with a picture or two as teaser. You can substitute any historical thingy that I've always been interested in.
Like the Sherlock Holmes museum, which is within easy walking distance of my hostel. (!!! my expectations are so high that they'll probably be dashed. This will in no way diminish my picture taking habit or plans to purchase something to stick on the flap of my bag or something to commemorate the time I visited Sherlock Holmes's house.
In the meantime, I've been planning for my return home. Specifically, for The Questions.
Every traveller, whether to the next town for a few days or to the other side of the world, knows The Questions. I always struggle with these, quibbling with myself out loud about how hard it is to answer them before launching into an hours-long rambling story with enough rabbit trails to be the hundred acre wood. So, this time, I decided to plan ahead. And, disclaimer, Questions 2 and 3 are not generally asked to day-trippers, but other-side-of-the-world-travellers seem to get them a lot, and I always want to ask them, so I'm answering them.
1. What was your favourite part/thing?
I would have to say that this is one of my least favourite questions ever. It's really hard for my decision-making-impaired brain to narrow down a whole range of generally enjoyable experiences to just one, unless I had a terrible time, in which case the pessimist within insists that "leaving" was my favourite part. Usually, nothing stands out that much until years later, when I only remember the best part and have forgotten everything else but the worst.
In this case, I'm going to say "cheese and onion pasties, cheap nutella, being called "love", "darling", and "pet" without a southern american accent, and the friends I made."
2. What are you going to miss the most?
Similar to the first, but not the same. I'm really not going to miss being called love all that much, but I will miss being able to microwave a cheese and onion roll for a quick, filling, and delicious breakfast quite a bit.
And I will really miss my friends. I've never made such close friendships with people that I know for a very nearly fact that I won't see again. I've made friendships this close in high school, and I still count the Inklings as some of my closest friends ever; I've made friendships this close at Whitworth as we bonded over difficult classes and the odd batty professor and core, and I plan on being friends with these people for a very long time, and will probably be going to their weddings, even if they scare off all the timid whitworth boys. But none of this has prepared me for making friends, to a sibling-like point, with people with whom the only thing I have in common is that we lived in the same flat for four months. I almost can't remember not knowing Josie, Conor, Flo, and Adam. And I never want to forget them.
3. What will you not miss?
I will not miss the friggin exchange rate. I will not miss being unemployed. I will not miss being unable to understand the cashier's accent. I will not miss the sidewalk being paved with cigarette butts. I will not miss having a roommate (especially one that gets snippy when she's tired). I will not miss the University of Sunderland. I've been here long enough that I can think of these very, very easily.
4. What was your least favourite part/thing?
Easy. The impossible little frenchman. Not only could I not understand half of what he said, he didn't like me. The only time he showed any lack of somewhat haughty condescension, like I was a particularly stupid breed of moron who was soiling his oxygen, was when I dominated the GC software.
I don't like being thought of as stupid. It didn't help that I was completely unfamiliar with lab habits, lab report expectations, and the labs that were prerequisites. I have the knowledge. In fact, I solidly passed organic chemistry and its lab. But I didn't take PBM103 or any of the other first year biomedical science modules at Sunderland, which put me at a severe disadvantage when it came to figuring out what was expected of me.
The other thing that I didn't like was having a difficult roommate. I'm a little mad that she even signed up for a double room. When I asked her why, she replied that she had never roomed with anyone before and felt that if she was doing all these new, unfamiliar things, she might as well share a room, too. This was not fair to me. I was expecting someone who, like myself, had no need for the stupid little "how to not to make your roommate hate you" pamphlet.
I know, I know, life's not fair, but I'd like to have a word with whoever assigned us to the same room. Flatmates are one thing. People who are predisposed not to get along can still be in the same building; kitchen use just needs to be regulated. People who are predisposed not to get along cannot share a room without misery on both sides, if not open hostility and the urge to scream into your pillow, except you can't because she's sitting right there. The most annoying part was the vague superiority complex, except where english was involved. Look, all right, you've been to a million more places than I have, you know more about the world than I do, and you speak a lot more languages than I do, but at least I'm not rude, loudly, in public. The worst part is that I think we would have got along fine if we hadn't been roommates. It's certainly not that she's german. I've met several other germans, and I like all of them. It's just that we are not the sort of people who can room together without starting to hate each other a little bit.
That was a downer of a Question to put last, but it always seems to come up last. So...
5. Would you do it again?
Absolutely. I'd do a few things differently (get a visa or an internship with a stipend or something), but I'd do this again in a heartbeat. It wouldn't be the same — nothing ever could be — but I seriously doubt that I'll ever regret this. I might, in a fit of reverse culture shock, regret having turned my life upside down, but the friends I've made, the experiences I've had (including the ones I'll never wish on anyone)... I'll always pine for England, at least a little bit. I think it's fair to say that this has changed my life, if only in that I've done something that's made it so that only people who've at least done something similar can really relate to me for a few months. This isn't to say that I won't be friends with my friends that I left a whitworth or various and sundry other universities across the pacific northwest, but there's going to be a bit of a divide between the "us" who have lived abroad and the "them" who haven't.
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