The end of the beginning . . .
I am reading my blog from this time last year. I wrote about leaving friends, family, and a workplace which felt a bit like family. I wrote about how much I would miss everyone.
An hour before take-off, I wrote:
“I’m really excited but also quite scared by the whole prospect. I’ll have photos and stories to tell in a few days and so I’ll leave the interesting stuff until then but meanwhile I shall miss you all greatly!
It’s my turn to fly . . .”
I left a lot behind. In many ways it feels like I left everything behind and that can be really hard to deal with some days. I wrote in my first post from London, rather stoically, that there were many ups and downs. I wish I could tell you that it’s been an easy year but it simply has not.
Moving away from family, friends, home, the life that I knew and loved, was more difficult than I ever expected and there were many days when I struggled to motivate myself to get out of bed during my first term. As the warm days of September turned into the bleak late October and November it was very easy to find it all too difficult. I struggled with school, I struggled with being so far away, I struggled to keep up with people, I struggled to keep my head above water. As I look back on it, it feels like I spent my first three months here trying desperately to breathe. Of course it was difficult to tell people that at the time, no one likes to admit that they think they’re a failure.
I spent Christmas house-sitting in a village on the edge of Bedfordshire. I spent Christmas Day with a family I had never met before who welcomed me into their home as if I was their prodigal daughter. To have my first Christmas away from home and family, also away from anyone I knew was silly, and yet it’s a fond memory now. New Years was spent with people I call cousins, but who are some rather more distant relations, and it was full of fun and amazing desserts. I made my first very successful pavlova using a Delia Smith cookbook.
I came back to London, a city that I’d actually missed while travelling for a few weeks, to more loneliness and homesickness. I “cured” the latter by cutting up lots of magazine photos of New Zealand and sticking them all over my wall and they are now my way of making whatever room I live in seem my own. I still get quite homesick for New Zealand some times but I think I got over the worst of it at that point. The former was cured by throwing myself into my study and spending any non-study time with new friends. I survived Lent Term, coping was easier and moments of excitement, laughter and smiling happened more often. I worked hard, harder, I thought, than I ever had before but then I hadn’t tried Summer term yet.
While Easter was a nightmare, for study and lack-of-people reasons, Summer Term was just intense. Handing in an insane number of assignments was followed by dissertation workshops, exam study and then exams. I studied hard and finally everything I’d learned, everything that didn’t make sense during Michelmas and Lent Terms and made me wonder whether I was really cut out for this, made sense. I actually enjoyed writing some of my exam essays and it made me realise how much I had learned over the year.
Exams finished and then we all rushed to organise the Passfield Summer Party, a huge success and a really fun day/night. As I blew up inflatable palm trees and sorted out overly-large paper pineapples, I slowly packed my room into boxes and bags and on 30 June 2007, I moved out of Passfield and south of the Thames to Sidney Webb. My two months here has gone by so fast, helped I guess by trips to Lisbon and up to Waresley (on the edge of Bedfordshire). I have spent the last month immersed in New Zealand’s aid for governance initiatives in Fiji and the problems of being a small donor. My dissertation, while taking forever to kick-off, came out as I had hoped it would and I am pleased to have handed it in hours before the deadline, having finished it a day in advance. It was one of the nicest feelings in the world to know that it was done and I was happy with it.
That was Thursday and it’s now Saturday night. I have spent two days recovering from the stress of the last month and reflecting on where this year has brought me.
I arrived 11 and a 1/2 months ago. It’s weird, I would say this has been one of the hardest years of my life and I’ve been challenged in every possible way, and yet this has been the most exciting year of my life for the very same reason. As I look back on it all (including the countless all-nighters), I wouldn’t want it to be any other way, I wouldn’t want to change a thing because it has all helped me to better understand myself and the world I live in. As Dave jets off to Nova Scotia, in 5mins according to my clock, I hope that his big adventure is everything he hopes it will be and more.
Next weekend, Adam and his two friends arrive for a couple of days before heading to Europe on a Contiki bus. I am *SO* looking forward to seeing old friends, and even more looking forward to seeing my sister in December and my mum next Summer. I guess, in many ways, I’m discovering what’s really important in this world (other than poverty and development) and it really does have nothing to do with wealth and material things and everything to do with the people you know and love. I am who I am because you are my friends and family.
It’s now the end of the beginning . . . the first chapter of my life here is over and I’m now hunting for jobs and waiting patiently for November to come and results to be published. I never expected it to be so hard but I also never expected to really really enjoy myself here as much as I do now.
And that, dear friends, is the end of my summary of the past year . . . more to remind myself of where this year has led me than to retell it all, but hopefully I shall soon have news of where the next year (or so) will take me. Til then, I am off to celebrate the end of my Masters and to enjoy all that London has to offer.
To Dave - Good luck with the PhD, hope you wow them with your Kiwi accent and amazing knowledge of weird subjects. God is with you.
To everyone else in NZ - Those emails that I’ve been promising for 11 months should be showing up in your inbox really soon. Thanks for being the people that you are!
