In addition to dealing with the "culture shock", I am also very stressed by the idea of time, mainly in deciding whether or not I will/can stay here for 10 months or not. I think about this every day and it makes me feel like a tree amongst a colony of termites.
There are a million reasons why I want to come home after just one semester and they always seem to weigh heavier that the reasons of why I want to stay, but I still have until May to decide and who knows, I might really fall in love with it by then. But at the same time IT DOESN´T MATTER AT ALL. And this is the other realization I had with Ana. I told her about how stressed out I was about the whole staying/not staying thing. I mentioned that I had applied for some amazing opportunities back at my home university that, should I get them, I would be very, very inclined to return to participate in them (including a research internship, being a head delegate for the Model UN conference, freshman mentor...). Great, she said. I´ll find out about these opportunities by the end of March, and by then it will be clear if I want to accept them. Or if I receive none of the opportunities, then, well, I just have another month to decide if I will stay. But it doesn´t matter right now. Ana told me that the decision is mine exclusively and that nobody can make me feel bad whether or not I stay, especially if money can be a factor. 6 months in Argentina is still 6 months and because I´m working hard to travel, get immersed and have great experiences, it´s not as though 6 months were for naught. She told me I had to stop thinking about it so much and just live each day for that day, not contingent upon how long I´m staying. She sensed that I would feel disappointed in myself for not staying the full 10 months, but why does that matter? Life is about taking advantage of opportunities and sometimes we change our decisions about them and that´s ok.
The other good thing is that whether or not I return early, I will have a fairly simple senior year filled with classes I´m looking forward to and no more than 16 credits per semester at most. I will graduate on time no matter what. So at least nothing is contingent whether or not I stay. Thus, I REALLY just need to stop thinking about it because either way, I´m OK. This is the major point. Either way, I will still have an incredible life and accomplish great things, meet wonderful people and grow into an even better person and that´s been my goal all along. My dream is to travel, so worst case scenario, I´ll just have to come back to Argentina. And if that´s my worst case scenario, then I´m done thinking about all these other scenarios.
Amen Sista!
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