{"id":13753,"date":"2018-12-09T12:19:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T17:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/?p=13753"},"modified":"2018-12-09T12:19:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T17:19:54","slug":"a-brew-of-emotions-the-final-stretch-last-week-in-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/?p=13753","title":{"rendered":"A Brew of Emotions: The Final Stretch (Last Week in Beijing)"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is one week left of my study abroad adventure in Beijing, and I am feeling a brew of emotions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first, excitement. For the past two weeks, I\u2019ve felt really homesick, more homesick than I have ever felt before during this semester. It\u2019s probably because the power of the holidays is on full blast back in the States. Missing the Thanksgiving celebration with all my friends and family was already hard enough, and seeing all the Christmas-related stuff on people\u2019s social media hasn\u2019t made it any less easier. So the thought of coming back to the U.S. and being bombarded with that holiday cheer is very exciting to me. I\u2019m excited to just exist in my house again. I\u2019m excited to see all of my friends again and catch up. I\u2019m excited to eat Vietnamese food again. I\u2019m excited to continue developing the relationships and the projects that I left behind all those months ago. I\u2019m just excited<\/i>, and I can hardly wait to jump on that plane back!<\/span><\/p>\n

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A picture of my family’s Christmas tree that my mom sent to me recently. I think this is the first year that I have not helped put up this tree.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second, procrastination. As you probably already know, this last week is finals week, and instead of studying for my Chinese language finals or working on final presentations\/essays, I am writing this blog post. <\/span><\/p>\n

So that basically sums up that emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The third, sadness. For the past four months, I\u2019ve created countless numbers of memories, and I\u2019ve taken an equal amount, if not more, pictures while I\u2019ve been here. Scrolling through the pictures I\u2019ve taken so far, I cannot help but feel sad to leave China. Here is where I\u2019ve grown spiritually. Here is where I\u2019ve conquered fears time and time again. Here is where I\u2019ve seen a rich and beautiful culture and discovered that this country has dimensions that I\u2019ve never thought even existed. To leave something so profound in my life makes me feel\u2026 empty? I don\u2019t think that\u2019s quite<\/i> the right word, but it\u2019s the best I\u2019ve got. It makes me quite sad to leave behind this life that has challenged me in ways that I didn\u2019t think would challenge me. It makes me even sadder to think about the friends that I\u2019m parting ways with. The friendships that I\u2019ve established here are some of the most enjoyable friendships I\u2019ve ever had in my collegiate career. The people here are so vibrant, and being surrounded by them has allowed for me to grow into a better version of me. I\u2019ll be leaving all of that behind, soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Fall 2018 TBC Family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At our monthly (the last one for the semester) community meeting last week, TBC Student Development Director Ryan briefly talked about the possibility of going through reverse culture shock once we returned home. At the time of the meeting, I didn\u2019t think much of it (mostly because I was distracted with the idea that they were serving us pizza after the meeting), but now that I\u2019ve sat down to write this blog and to reflect upon what this past semester has meant to me, all of the things he talked about on the topic of reverse culture shock seems to be entirely plausible for me. Maybe the pace of life back at home will be so alien to me that it\u2019ll seem\u2026 I don\u2019t know, boring in comparison to the life here? Maybe I\u2019ll be so overwhelmed with the go-go-go<\/strong> pace of back home that I\u2019ll shut down? Who honestly knows how reverse culture shock will affect me, if it\u2019ll affect me at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

That leads to the fourth emotion that I\u2019m marinating in, and it is perhaps the most profound one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anxiousness. <\/span><\/p>\n

I call this emotion the most profound because I never thought that I would feel a little anxious to go home. I mean, I\u2019m homesick<\/i>. I\u2019ve been longing to snuggle my dog, to goof around with my brother, to chatter with my family at the dinner table, to play hours upon hours of video games on my Nintendo Switch, to laugh with my friends, and yet I feel this tiny nagging sense of dread to return home even before I\u2019ve come home.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth is, around the middle of the semester, I had a little bit of a crisis. One of the Chinese roommates for TBC whom I\u2019m pretty good friends with was in the middle of applying for graduate school and studying for the GRE. Talking to him and watching him go through this process made me realize something: I only have three semesters left as a undergraduate student. Suddenly, the entire world seemed to have laid its entire weight on my shoulders. Horrible thoughts and feelings of falling behind on my studies because I\u2019ve studied abroad creeped in, and a sense of paranoia flooded my senses. What if my studying abroad set me so far back that I wouldn\u2019t be able to prepare for applying to graduate school on time? I still hadn\u2019t looked at what graduate programs I wanted to even apply for. I didn\u2019t even know what kind<\/i> of programs I wanted to apply for. I had a plan for after graduation, but that was only a vague thought, not even a game plan. And here I was, in China.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I didn\u2019t regret going abroad, and I won\u2019t ever regret my time here. I just suffered a little from this realization that life seemed to have kept going without me back at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, this is where all of my friends and family would remind me: slow down, Justine. Remembering that advice allowed for me to jump off of that Paranoia Rocket off to Planet Anxiety and continue to enjoy my time here in Beijing while I still could. I knew that my fears were blown a little out of proportion, and I technically still had plenty of time, I just needed to use it well once I returned. But, to be completely honest with you, I might be strapped in to ride that rocket again now that my study abroad semester is coming to an end. It is the final stretch.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know now that what I felt in the middle of this semester was like culture shock part two, and it was completely normal for me to have gone through that. As I get ready for finals this week and continue to swim around in this brew of jumbled emotions, I realize that I just need to take a deep breath. I need to remember that while it feels like life zoomed ahead of me back at home, I\u2019ve also zoomed ahead in many other aspects. I\u2019ve gained a new skill in speaking some Chinese. I\u2019ve gained a spiritual understanding of myself.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gained knowledge on China and Chinese culture, something that I\u2019ll admit I misunderstood before I came. I\u2019ve gained stories that I can share with everyone back at home. There are so many positive things that have come out of this amazing opportunity, and I have<\/em> to keep them in mind as I come to terms with the experience ending.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anxiousness doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. I can be anxious about a whole lot of different things in my life, and I figure that worrying about what the future has in store for me doesn’t do much good. It’s better to just sit back and enjoy the rocket ride rather than screaming the entire time.<\/p>\n

I guess, what I’m try to say is that I’ll just have to see what’s in store for me when I return. I may not know what reverse culture shock will do to me, but I do know that I’ll treasure the least few days I have with TBC in Beijing and that I’ll return to the States ready to face the scary future more ready than ever.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading my blog this semester.<\/p>\n

-Justine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is one week left of my study abroad adventure in Beijing, and I am feeling a brew of emotions. The first, excitement. For the past two weeks, I\u2019ve felt really homesick, more homesick than I have ever felt before during this semester. It\u2019s probably because the power of the holidays is on full blast … <\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,67],"tags":[159,535],"class_list":["post-13753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-the-beijing-center","tag-beijing","tag-thebeijingcenter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/goglobal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}