Hot dogs
After so many weeks, its me again! I guess I am not too great at this blogging thing. I’ll have to work on it…
I really wish I could narrow the focus of this post to my recent adventures because I’ve had so many. I recently spent an incredible 6 day escapade in Kraków, Poland with 5 friends. Then this past weekend I spent 4 days in Tromsø, Norway (in the Arctic circle!) with 11 other people. I really do have so much to say about those experiences, but there is something resting on my mind that I can’t push out. So instead of discussing my monumental tour at Auschwitz, or how I saw the Northern lights with my very own eyes, I am going to hash out something very different….
I feel lost.
Clearly, I don’t mean physically… I also don’t mean that I am lost within the meaning and purpose of my life, bla bla bla. Strangely enough, I almost am ok with not knowing what I want to do with my life anymore, even though that has tormented me since I was quite young.
No, I feel lost because I don’t know who I am anymore.
Here I was, within the first two weeks of arriving in Norway, hiking with 5 guys through the forests of Frognerseteren. It is on the hill of Oslo, at the end of line 1 on the metro. It was a clear day down in Oslo, but after the 45 minute uphill train ride, we starting to see snow building up on the ground outside the windows. When we finally arrived, snow was actually falling. I was overjoyed at the sight, because this is why I came to Norway! To hike and ski and explore the snowy, cold landscape!
The hike was beautifully frigid. As we were just about to get back to the metro, I heard some music. This wasn’t ordinary music though, it was practically bumping as though the forest was having a rager. Keep in mind we were in the middle of nowhere so I was highly confused and thought I was imagining it. I told the other guys to listen and when it was confirmed that I wasn’t crazy, I urged them to go with me to see where it was coming from, even though that meant staying in the cold longer. I’ll never forget my friend Will when he said, “Always follow the music, it’ll never steer you wrong.”
Low and behold, we literally came across a party in the middle of nowhere. It was the law students going wild the week before their classes began. They had a red bull truck blasting music, hot dogs on barbies filling the air with yummy scents, and for fun, they were throwing bricks to see how far they could get them. Right before a person would through the brick, everyone would be chanting and yelling in Norwegian. The person at bat would chuck the brick as far as they could, some reaching farther than others. The whole scene was absolutely ridiculous and awesome all at the same time.
My friend Sam was the first to go grab a hot dog without really asking them. When the other guys saw that the students were ok with us crashing the party, they proceeded to go grab one as well. Out of nowhere, and especially without thinking, I joined in. By the time that we left the party in the forest, I had eaten 2 of the most delicious hot dogs.
There is nothing inherently wrong about eating a hot dog, except for the fact that I have been a vegetarian for 8 years. EIGHT YEARS. Then all of a sudden, with no remorse or contemplation, I just ate 2 for no reason whatsoever. Heck, I wasn’t even that hungry.
I probably sound crazy, but that’s just one small example illustrating how I don’t even know who I am anymore. How could I be a certain way for 8 freaking years, and then just forgo it without a single care in the world? It is not that I am mad at myself, because I certainly am far from it. However, I am just confused with myself. How can I do something with not even understanding why I did it?
A big problem is that I think unconsciously I thought my experience in Norway would be similar to the two month experience I had when I lived in Iceland this past summer. I learned so much there beyond academics. The best way I would describe it to people is that I learned so much about myself, about other people, and especially about how I interact with the world.
To elaborate, I learned I could be a truly great listener and that I am amazingly talented at getting strangers to open their lives up to me. I relearned how much I love reading, and I read so much especially when I returned from Iceland. And finally, I learned just how independent I am. I loved being by myself, venturing off whenever and wherever I wanted to. It was so freeing, I couldn’t get enough!
Here in Oslo, it’s a totally different story. I feel like I talk about myself way too much, I never feel like reading, and I feel so dependent! I can’t travel anywhere or do anything without the little crew I’ve grown accustomed to being around, and this bothers me! It’s like I just changed out of nowhere and I don’t understand why or how.
Right before sitting down to write this, I just had a really good conversation with two of my roommates, Cami and Frances. Cami is from Argentina and Frances from Canada. I had just gotten back from the gym and on the walk home all of this had really started to wear down on me. Without showering I just went into the kitchen because I saw they were there. I asked if it was ok if I talked about something bothering me, and they genuinely said of course, and then we spent a few hours just talking.
It honestly made me feel better. I was partially getting frustrated that I am spending so much time here with people that don’t really even know me and vice versa. We never really have deep conversations about life, love, hardship, anything for that matter. It is all just fun and games. Frances, on that note, had a good comeback; why don’t I change that? Why don’t I start and encourage conversation beyond the surface? Damn, good point.
Cami, in response to my fears of changing, said that everyone changes. I used to believe though that the core of every person stays the same, despite changing a lot on the outside. Nonetheless, she had a good retort to that. How do you differentiate between the surface and the core of a person? I shouldn’t be worrying about whether I am losing the very heart of who I am because it’s just not even possible to tell if I am or not.
I guess at the end of the day, and with a good 4 hours of valuable studying time gone, I still feel lost. However, I think like Frances said, I need to stop worrying and stop overthinking. Me changing might be a slow process that I never saw coming but it’ll be ok. Besides this is exactly what people always said will happen when you study abroad. (How cliche).
For now, you can catch me sticking around Oslo for the next few weeks, probably eating some chicken and hotdogs while I’m at it. I’ll try to post soon some details about all the spectacular places I have traveled to already and all the wonderful people I have met.
Until next time, Lola blog…