hairfish

Riding the Narita Express

An excerpt actual letter I wrote to a friend while we were flying somewhere over Canada

It’s still Saturday. That’s weird because it’s totally Sunday in Japan. I cried, of course. I honestly thought I wouldn’t until I got on the plane but saying goodbye was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Megumi, my host mom, got me a cute belt her friend made for me. She wrote me a nice letter in her best English. She signed it: “We love you. See you again.” My heart just about broke in two complete halves. I realized being here has given me my emotions back, or rather, the rich complexity of my emotions. I’m usually a very hyper sensitive person which is really annoying and a pain in the ass but somewhere along this trip, I learned to be in control of my emotions and not have them control me but I also re-learned how things feels: happiness, elation, fustration, confusion, excitment. A lot of it still doesn’t make sense but after spending much of last Winter completely numb, thie idea of feeling, of being aware of it, is so awesome.

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Now, I’m actually back in the States. And it feels weird. Sleeping is an interesting thing because I do it in weird intervals, at weird times. I’ve been out at around 8pm, eastern time, only to wake up between three-thirty and four, stay up, crash around three in the afternoon and do it all over again. I’m going to try to reset my brain by not going to bed at eight and hopefully I will sleep solidly through the night but this remains to be seen. I really, really miss my host family. And my Japanese routine but I am very happy to be home. I have a feeling I’ll be very natsukashii for Japan within the next few weeks.

I’ve got a handful of more photographs to share and some questions about Study Abroad I’ve been meaning to answer, so please, stay tuned! Until then, have a happy holidays