Back Home: Thoughts and Reflections
Post Program: Study Abroad Takeaways & Post Program Reflection
Some of the biggest takeaways I've had from my traveling abroad experience, have been to who I am as a person. Getting to meet so many different and extraordinary people has influenced myself and how I want to grow as a teacher, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a wife, and someday a mother. I got to 'see' more of the world and realized its vast amount of beauty which seems so large but, is quite small. The people I met shared their views on the world with me, whether it be based on religion or the hard facts of science, everyone has a truth to what they see and what they believe. In all actuality I came back with the realization of my true belief - Omnism. The term Omnism relates to the recognition and respect of 'all' religions.
I am Omnist.
There are so many cultures on this planet, why do we have to only pick one? In fact, there are about 7.7 billion people on this planet among all the creatures that live around us, it's hard to believe that's we're the only ones in the entire universe. Don't you think?
In that case, I have come home with a profound belief in trying to understand the world around me. I want to work on myself as a whole to where I let go of hate and most negative feelings. I say most, because ‘saying’ all of this is easier than actually doing it. Anyone who knows me, knows I have serious road rage, I stress out a bit, and I'm sensitive (I care about so much that I overthink things). I would like to be able to work on these things and more. It's just going to take a bit of time and practice. What's happening in the world right now is crazy! I don't believe most of what's going on and it's hard not to just block it out. In fact, that is the worst thing we could do as a society. We need to fight for what we believe int. We need to fight for the rights of others and our planets security. Who knows how long we have left on this earth. Why do we spend our time fighting over such trivial things and wasting our breath on matters that are getting us nowhere?
Now this next statement I am going to make always gets me judged and criticized. I have not registered to vote yet. But, I am going to, so don't yell at me. Ha-ha. I was waiting till I finished school and understood more about politics and what's going on in the world. Two years ago, I was naive and chose to be blind to what was happening around me. I didn't want to believe all the terrible things that happen. I still don't want to believe them, but I know that they do, and I'd rather share that knowledge with others to spread awareness. Then one day, hopefully, we will live on a better planet surrounded by better people.
Coming Home!
It's been almost two months since I've been back home, so much has happened in that amount of time. To give you an understanding of time, I got back to the states December 6th. Now, when I got home, it was chaos!
(WARNING! I am blowing off steam writing this next entry.)
My house was destroyed! A friend of mine stayed with us for a few months while I was away. She needed a place to stay short term and I needed the extra money for my time abroad. It was a win-win. Until later I found out it was a win-win-lose? My roommate had a dog and two cats as well as my dog and two cats being in the house. Our cats didn't get along and her dog was possessive over food and toys. Other than that, our dogs got along great. They were always playing well with each other. However, every time her dog would feel the need to be possessive over something, he would attack my dog and it would turn into an all-out war. There were a few incidents where Ragnar (my dog) got hurt pretty bad. Thankfully nothing ever came of his wounds, but one time, Ragnar got her dog good and he needed to have surgery. To say the least, this arrangement wasn't as fruitful as we had hoped. It was stressful, and I'm still upset about all the damage that had happened in my home during my absence. One of the animals, I'm almost 100% sure it wasn't one of mine, pissed and pooped all over my brand-new couch and the floor surrounding it. It turned out the couch was in this state for over a month! Because it didn't get dealt with till I got home.
During the first few days of my time back home was spent deep cleaning the couch and shampooing the carpets. I shampooed those carpets at least six time and the smell still lingers. I'm still upset to this day about it. Mostly because I can't believe someone would let this happen in the home of a friends. To add on to that, she knew we were trying to sell our home when I got back from Italy. The state of the place was so upsetting, my heart is still racing when bringing up the subject.
Now I understand there were some cases that were upsetting in her viewpoint as well. Her dog had to have surgery because of mine and Ragnar also attacked one of her kitties. Thankfully, I never heard anything about her cat being injured badly, so that's a plus. But, also in Ragnar's defense with the other dog; he was always starting fights and Ragnar was probably just pissed off at that point. It is his house and this dog is coming in and being a bratt. So, I see the dilemma from both sides. This friend was stressed out from going through the same edTPA process as me and dealing with a new living situation in someone else’s home. However, when living in someone else’s home, I think there's a certain courtesy one should uphold. Such as cleaning up after yourself and your animals. My husband shouldn't have to come home from work every day to clean up someone else’s dishes and all the messes left behind from their animals. He already has our animals to deal with, adding other obstacles to the mix makes matters so much more complicated. I also hate to say that this ruined our friendship and I wasn't even here to have it ruined from the roommate factor of not being able to deal with each other’s personalities. This whole instance was never dealt with:
- I cleaned up EVERYTHING,
> The disgusting stains on the couch and floor,
> Vacuumed the room she stayed in,
> Cleaned up after her cat's litter box in the other room,
> All the stains on the carpet’s downstairs and upstairs,
> Scrubbed the walls in her room where there was blood from her cat.
- She never offered to come help (she may have told my husband she would, but she never did)
- She never contacted me about things going on while I was away,
- The longer I was home, the more things I found missing or broken:
> The dog got into my giant bag of flour. That made a mess everywhere.
> So many things got chewed up: $250 gaming headphones, shoes, table bench, spatula (really? lol), my dogs’ leash, among other things.
The whole thing is just really upsetting and to come home from a wonderful experience to this chaos was not fun. I also had to have all this cleaned up within a week, because my parents were coming into town for my graduation. Which happened the very next weekend, December 15th.
(Rant over! Apologies had to get it off my chest.)
Graduation day was exciting and nerve racking at the same time. I had been stressing for weeks
about my failure of the edTPA. So, graduation felt empty at the time. I knew I wasn't getting my diploma until I passed the assessment which made the day feel unworthy. What helped me get through it, was my friends who were also graduating that day with me. I didn't even think to ask everyone who was graduation or not Fall quarter, but that morning when I saw them, my spirits lifted.
It was exciting to know that I had finally reached my destination in college. Although I knew I wasn't getting my diploma right away and that nagging feeling in the back of my head about the edTPA still being there. I wasn't going to let that spoil my fun with friends. Even though I was graduation with a Fine Arts degree in Education, I decided to walk with the Woodring School of Education instead of the Fine Arts school, as did most of my friends. All in all, graduation day was a great day. I'm going to miss my classmates and my professors in the Woodring program. Nevertheless, I am excited to finally be done with school. Six years is plenty enough time to be in college.
When graduation was over, my parents came over and we spent hours cleaning my house because the smell of ammonia was still unbearable. We rented a bigger carpet cleaner hoping that would work better than the one I have at home. We used that thing and it was pulling up so much the water turned black! It was so gross and crazy to think I had used my carpet shampooer 5 times before we used this big one. So yeah, we spent the rest of the weekend cleaning my house and prepping for putting it up for sale. Then the week after that was Christmas!
I feel as though I haven't had a break since I've been home. It's been one thing after another since my crazy adventures.
I left Bologna, Italy December 2nd and flew to London. I spent four absolutely wonderful days in London. There are pictures here in my blog to show the places I got to see. I'm just explaining further how much nonstop excursions I have had over the past few months, not counting the three months in Italy where I was also constantly on the go. Traveling to as many places as I could on the weekends to get my fill of Italy while I was there. Ever since coming home on the 6th, I've been trying to get everything together so that I may move forward with my career and starting a bigger family soon.
After the chaos with the house and graduation we celebrated the holidays and tried to relax a bit between decluttering. We then got the house on the market in the new year, Woo-hoo! Right after that, January 6th, I flew to Idaho where my dad lives. I got my background check done and applied in the Middleton school district for substitute teaching. Not knowing that I would literally be able to start subbing the very next day. I freaked out a bit, because I was only visiting for the week. I was like, "Ahh! I don't live here yet!" However, knowing I was able to start right away, I talked to the hubby and we decided I would move in with my parents as soon as I could. I really needed to start working again. While I was in Idaho trying to look at the housing market and get everything situated to move over, I got my results for the edTPA. I PASSED! YAY! All the hard work had finally paid off. So much stress had been lifted off my shoulders with that one email of good news. Then, that same day we had received an offer on our house and accepted! Things were moving forward and starting to look up.
Going through everything that has happened in the past two months since I've been home, I haven't really processed my trip abroad. It's almost as though it was a life time ago. The past five months in total have been full of fortunes and misfortunes as well as plenty of adventure to last a while. Although, going through my trip abroad experience, I know I would really love to go on more adventures in the future. I would love to go back to London. With someone else this time, it was kind of lonely going by myself. Scotland is at the top of my list of places to see as well as Greece, Germany, and more of Southern Italy. Of course, I wouldn't mind seeing places like Paris, Spain, and going over to India. Who knows, if I win the lottery one day, maybe I can see more of those places. First and foremost, I want a family. The overseas adventures can wait for now.
Back to my travel experience:
My advice to anyone else who would like to consider studying abroad is, make sure you have everything figured out and ready to go before you leave. It's good to have a general plan of what you want to do while your abroad. Of course, your main focus should be your studies, but you will be in another country, try to make the most of it. Have a list of places you want to see. It worked best for me to see the closer cities on the weekends and during holiday breaks I was able to travel to further cities and stay for longer periods of time. If you need to, bring your laptop.
In Europe, the best way to travel is by train and some places take at least an hour to get to. Further cities were two or more hours, perfect time to do work on the train. Although, they say the WIFI is free, you pay like one dollar, which isn't bad. However, the WIFI really isn't the best and I could barely do anything with it anyway. So, if you take your laptop you can work on papers that don't require internet or read a book.
Another tip for using trains, at least in Europe, download the apps (Trenitalia and Italo). It works best to buy train tickets on the apps because you don't have to authorize your ticket by stamping it with a time stamp. You just pull out your app and the train attendant will scan your ticket. Also, I didn't have the best service on the trains, so be sure to screen-shot your tickets just in case, those work as well. The apps also help when you are traveling to further cities that require you to get off one train and jump to another. You can purchase both tickets for each train and just jump from one train to the other. If you were to get printed tickets you would have to buy them at the train station you are leaving from then time stamp it. This can be a hassle if you have 10 minutes to get from one train to the other, must go buy your second ticket when you get off the first train, time stamp it then go find which platform your train is on. That gets crazy! I know, I did this method the first week I arrived with family that was with me, it was not fun. Also, if you do miss that second train there's always another one within 30 minutes to an hour and you can catch that next train as long as it's within 4 hours of when you purchased the ticket.
If anyone has other questions or wants advice on a specific subject for traveling abroad feel free to ask!
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I am working on my goals to be an educator in the Middleton School District of Idaho. As of right now I am substitute teaching, which is one step closer to achieving my goals of working in an esteemed school in this wonderful community. Eventually I will get the opportunity to be the art teacher here at either the middle or high school (cross-fingers). I hope to inspire the "Pay it forward" method in my students and everyone around me from here on. I would like to create a pen-pal system between my future students and those of my mentoring teacher back in Italy. We think it would be a fun opportunity for our students and ourselves to keep in touch through the arts across the world. Providing multicultural activities, insights, and friendships.
