Coming Home

9/4/10
Location: North Dakota and Minnesota

“Who says you can't go back?
Been all around the world and as a matter of fact
There's only one place left, I want to go
Who says you can't go home?”

“Who Says You Can’t Go Home”-Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora

Those lyrics from one of my favorite bands say it best. After a trip around the world to exhilaratingly exotic and fascinating places, and a summer in Washington, D.C. with a fantastic internship during one of the most exciting times in American politics, all I really wanted to do was go home. I was so looking forward to stepping onto that plane (although I was a little worried that Delta might make my life difficult again), finishing my last book of the summer (No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy) and meeting my family and Jake in the little Grand Forks airport. Seeing the quilt of green and golden squares of fields crisscrossed with gravel roads and dotted with farms was one of the most gratifying sights. The warming of the heart and fond memories that come racing back from the recesses of your mind—this is what coming home after a long absence feels like.

I was expecting home to be different somehow. I’ve been gone for four months and I think I’ve changed considerably after my experiences, so I assumed that everything I knew would be a little inconsistent with how it was when I left it in May. But it wasn’t. I fell back into things without even a stutter step. Home was the same, or at least the same as it always feels since I’ve been in college. I moved back down to Fargo-Moorhead for my final year at Concordia and while I’m in a new apartment, it feels similar to every other back-to-school transition I’ve had.

I only saw my boyfriend a few times over the four months, but now we’re back to seeing each other every or every other day and it’s just feels normal. I don’t even feel relieved; it’s just like how things are supposed to be. What surprised me the most was seeing my friends who studied abroad last semester. I thought things would definitely feel a little peculiar there. But it’s like we’ve been together the entire time—we talk about the same things, do the same things, tease each other about the same things. It’s…nice, for lack of a better word. I feel like I’m where I am supposed to be. While it’s exhilarating and exciting to explore to new places (how’s that for alliteration), it also means higher levels of stress and apprehension. It’s just nice to relax in the familiar with people I love for the foreseeable future.

So far, classes are going well and I think I’m going to thoroughly enjoy them all, especially my capstone course about 21st century technology and my religion 300 course. I’m also actually visiting classes with staff from my DC internship to promote the opportunity and talk about my experience this summer. I’m already busy with my two jobs, student organizations, and weekend plans, but I like being occupied even if it makes me a little crazy sometimes.

However, all of the class time, work hours, homework, social life, etc. that’s come back into my life means I’ll have little time to update my blog and nothing overly exciting to blog about. Consequently, I’m thinking that this will be my last entry. I’d like this to remain a travel blog. I started at home, and after six countries and living and working in the nation’s capital, I’ve now ended at home. I’ll keep this up for another week or two so everyone interested can read my final entry, but then I’ll delete this. I don’t like things I don’t regularly check floating around cyberspace, and I have my own copies.

Thank you to everyone who has cared enough about me and my travels to check out my blog. Extra thanks to those who commented—it means a lot. I have had nearly 2,000 unique visits (meaning that refreshes, etc. are excluded) on this blog, some from halfway across the world (I can see every visitor’s country, operating system, browser, and how long they were on here—a little creepy huh?), and some who linked to it on their own blogs or websites. That is mindboggling to me. Thanks to my parents for supporting me so much—emotionally and financially. Without them, the entire summer would not have happened. Finally, many thanks to my writing professors at Concordia who always encouraged me and believed in me—they told me that my writing was worthwhile and I can actually go somewhere with it someday. There may be nothing more empowering and motivating than having someone believe in you.

This blog has been a transformative reflection tool for me, and I’ve enjoyed it much more than I thought I would initially. It has not been a chore, but a process with tremendous results. I’m incredibly grateful that I recorded the events of my May seminar especially, since I already treasure the detail that has escaped my memory. I’ll always have my life in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Egypt, England, and Washington, D.C. right at my fingertips.

It’s been an unforgettable summer.


UPDATE:


Here's a photo of me and the new puppy, Ace.

ND&MN vs. DMV

8/20/10

Location: Alexandria, VA

Things I am excited to come back to at home and in FM:

·      My wonderful family

·      Jake

·      Aj & Ashley, two of my best friends and my roommates who I haven’t seen in over six months since they studied abroad in Australia February through June

·      All my other friends in Langdon and in FM that I haven’t seen since May!

·      My grandparents and other relatives

·      New puppy Ace

·      My bedroom at home

·      My new queen bed!

·      My new beauuutiful apartment in Moorhead

·      Hitting up the bars now that I’m 21 and making my first purchase at a liquor store

·      Talking, laughing, goofing around with my roomies

·      Normal gorgeous summer weather, free from 85% humidity and the strong North Dakota winds

·      The open spaces and smells of fresh cut grass and summer rain

·      Driving! And getting places in under an hour.

·      Concordia’s campus

·      Going back to class

·      Working on the Concordian and at the best job ever, the Office of Academic Affairs

·      Bonfires

·      Langdon and Moorhead Dairy Queen

·      Going for walks by the Red River

·      Playing football in my boyfriend’s front yard

·      Frisbee golf, golf, riding my Trek bike, 4wheeling, etc.

·      Shopping with my girls at West Acres

·      Panchero’s Mexican Grill. Sorry Chipotle…you just aren’t as good.

·      Grand Junction. Hello chicken cordon bleu sub!

·      Reasonable prices for drinks, groceries, etc.

Things I will miss about D.C. and Arlington:

·      The buzz and excitement of the Hill

·      The incredible staff at the office

·      Living with Whitney (although she’s living in the same apartment building I am at Concordia :)

·      Seeing the Capitol, Washington Monument, the Potomac, etc. from my apartment’s patio and on the way to work

·      Running into Senators in the hallway, on the Capitol subway, etc.

·      Being so close to the news and connected to politics

·      Services at the National Community Church 

·      Georgetown Cupcake (pre-TLC stardom)

·      Maryland crabcakes

·      My apartment’s pool

·      Jazz in the Garden

·      Six Flags fun

·      The Senate Cafeteria’s eats

·      Interns’ e-mails in Russian and other inside jokes

·      Getting ridiculous frozen yogurt concoctions with the other interns

·      Having people visit me and having so many fun things to do and sights to see

·      The Newseum and the Smithsonians

·      Sporting events like watching the D.C. United and the Congressional Baseball game

·      Arts events like Legally Blonde the musical and the Norman Rockwell exhibit

·      The Pentagon City Mall

·      Spike Mendohlson’s eateries Good Stuff and We the Pizza

·      People watching on the Metro

New York, New York

8/12/10

Location: New York City


I’m back in the DMV after a amazing, whirlwind weekend in the City that never sleeps, the Big Apple, the Empire City: New York City.


I just loved New York City. It was unlike any place I’d ever been. It’s astounding to look up and see only towering skyscrapers glinting in the sunlight as they stretch seemingly into the clouds. I suppose New Yorkers may find the endless stretch of golden and green fields, largely void of trees and buildings, in North Dakota strange, though. New York is all at once glitzy Hollywood glamorous, the poster child for capitalism and pursuing the American Dream, hard and disenchanted, and a melting pot of countless cultures and ethnicities.


I traveled to NYC with my best friend and boyfriend of nearly three years, Jake. He had never been to the City either, so it was another travel adventure for us. We also traveled together to D.C. for Obama’s inauguration in 2009. We used Greyhound/Peter Pan buses to travel to and from D.C. 


Pros: It was cheap, and we got to add Delaware and New Jersey to our list of states we’ve been in. I am also a master planner and had a folder of maps and guides and a lunch bag of Rice Krispie treats, Sun chips, sandwiches, and Gatorade for the trip. Cons: Encountered thee worst customer service in the world and Jake got dripped on by the air conditioning system for over four hours. Anyway, the entirety of our time actually in the City was absolutely perfect and here are the sights we saw, and my impressions of them.


Times Square: An advertising and electricity overload that both alarms and delights your senses. I’ll never forget that as we were exiting West Side Story at the Palace Theater and saw the light pouring in from the glass doors. “It can’t possibly still be light outside,” Jake said. “It’s past 11.” It was indeed light outside, but the sun had set long ago. The lights literally made it feel like it was midday, all flashing with color and calls to buy clothing, alcohol, technology products, and food. Another foreign thing to me was seeing people who look just like me walk by and hear an unfamiliar, exotic language. I can’t begin to count how many different ethnicities and cultures I encountered in Times Square, and it just blew my mind every time I saw someone that looked like me, walked like me, just might be me, but didn’t speak the same language as me. Maybe that’s naïve of me to say, but perhaps that’s just what I was before I strolled into the melting pot that is New York City.

Central Park: To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much when we went to Central Park. I more or less thought, “So they have a park in the middle of all the skyscrapers. Good for them, at least they have some trees left to look at.” Central Park is trees, but it is more than that. It is sprawling 770 acres of fairy tale beauty. Our visit centered around “The Pond,” a body of water home to a lot of ducks, lily pads, and a gorgeous old ivy-covered bridge. It truly is an oasis.

21 Club/West Side Story/rooftop bars/Empire State Building (aka the best birthday I’ve ever had): For my birthday, my boyfriend really outdid himself. He planned it all, so he get’s the credit for the best birthday I’ve ever had and probably ever will have, since it’s all downhill after 21 for birthdays. We got all dressed up in black and silver started out with dinner at the 21 Club. The 21 Club is a former Prohibition-era speakeasy, is known as N.Y.’s favorite club, and is seen in pop culture favorites like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sex and the City, and Wall Street. It is also where every President since FDR has dined besides George W., and where Chelsea Clinton celebrated her 21st birthday. It was very, very cool. Besides not knowing what gazpacho soup was (oops), the food was delicious and I had my first legal drink—a cool pink Cosmo. Afterward, we took in the tragic and heartbreaking, yet dazzling and lively West Side Story on Broadway. It was Jake’s first musical and he loved it. I also think he enjoyed drinking his beer out of a sippy cup. Then, we hit up so swanky rooftop bars in the city, like 230 and Fifth. Finally, we decided to head up the Empire State Building at around 1:30 in the morning. We rode the elevators up the 86th floor observatory and were dazzled by the multi-colored lights heavily sprinkled on the landscape below us. It was the cherry on a top of a fantastic birthday in the Big Apple.

Ground Zero: The next day, August 7, we went to Ground Zero. The site itself was as saddening as I expected because the site was completely surrounded by chain link fence and the outside of the fence was covered with photos of One World Trade Center, also known as Freedom Tower. One World Trade Center is currently under construction and when completed, will be the tallest building in the United States. All we could see over the fence were red cranes and other bright yellow construction equipment. The fence posters said One World Trade Center will be completed in just a few years, but it doesn’t look like there is much done yet. What was sobering was going to the Twin Towers Tribute Center. There are recordings and videos from survivors of the attacks and surviving members of families that were forever changed on 9/11. There was a large fiberglass model of the Statue of Liberty that was placed by Ground Zero just days after the attacks. No one knows who put it there, but it was soon coated in photos of loved ones lost, ID badges and memorabilia from the site, American flags, candy, and more. That was my favorite image from the Tribute Center—seeing the Statue of Liberty with her arm held high, and coated with symbols of hope, love, and strength. The Tribute Center also had a model of what Ground Zero will look like in a few years: One World Trade Center and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum complete, overlooking two square pools of clear water with 30’ waterfalls around the perimeter, surrounded by trees and flowers.

The Financial District: After Ground Zero, we went to check out Wall Street and New York’s Financial District. My dad is a commodities broker and the economy and everything that goes along with it—the traders in suits with briefcases, the bustling trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the flashing ticker of numbers at the bottom of every news channel—has always mystified and intrigued me. Jake and I saw the NYSE, the American Express tower, 1 World Financial Center, and Trump Tower. 

Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island: On Sunday, our last day in the City, we took a Liberty Harbor Cruise that went by the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. It was a gorgeous summer day, literally with the sun shining with all its strength and only light clouds in the sky. I didn’t bring sunscreen with me to New York and ended up getting my first sunburn in years—ouch. Anyway, the cruise was great. We got to see the City from a different perspective—by water—and it looked completely different. You can really imagine that immigrants coming through Ellis Island over 100 years ago would picture New York as a haven of prosperity and a bright future. With the buildings standing tall and gleaming with the sun shining on the water, it kind of looks like an urban paradise. The Statue of Liberty basically looks like it does in pictures: the giant turquoise Lady Liberty holding her torch up to the heavens. Ellis Island was more striking—I’m sure I have seen it in pictures before, too, but I don’t remember those very strongly like I do the Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island shows its age, and the main building looks both foreboding and like a pretty gingerbread house at the same time. It just stuns me to think about all the people who processed through there and all of the different dreams, hopes, worries, and fears.

It’s strange to think that I only have about a week left in the District and then I’ll be on a plane back to North Dakota. I’m ready to go home. I have loved D.C., and felt I’ve made the most of my time here. I’ve explored and experienced so much in the capital and surrounding area, and I also traveled to New York. As I said in the last entry, it’s been transformative—I feel like I’ve gained new perspectives, as I always do in new places, but I feel like I’ve really grown as a person and feel more confident in myself, my desires, and my abilities. After my May seminar, I felt a little dazed, a little unsure of what I saw and how it affected me. Our group talked about how we would be affected by the trip weeks, months, and even years down the road, and this summer gave me time to process things I didn’t have time or energy to before. Also, living in D.C. with only one person I knew from home and working in a place dramatically different from anywhere I’ve worked before (well, the Hill is kind of dramatically different from where most people work) made me more independent and self-reliant. I’m also much more poised and self-assured about what I’m capable of and what I want out of life.  That’s all long-term lens, though. Right now, what I want is simple: home in North Dakota.