What? How? Who?

I started University on Monday. The system is very complicated and no one seems to know what to do or where to go. Classes may or may not happen. You never know until you show up for it. There's a lot of waiting around involved. Being at a european university is not at all as romantic and exciting as I thought it could be. They try to make having to figure everything out on your own sound positive by telling you that you have so much more freedom. Really, it's all just confusing and disorganized bogus.


Something I've noticed since being home is that I don't actually know where home is. All over again. I thought I had figured it out. My "real life home" was Switzerland. My "vacation home" was my grandparents' house. And my "school home" was Massachusetts. Recent experiences have toppled my theory quite a bit. Even though I'm HOME home now, I don't feel as though I've arrived. Although I am here, I know that it's only temporary. In less than four months, I'll be back at "school home". If I get used to being here, get involved, and make connections, I'll only be disappointed again when I leave the same way it broke my heart to leave school at the end of August.

When I originally set my "home theory" I didn't think it would be possible for it to change. Two years ago, I was convinced that I was pretty much swiss through and through. I grew up here, I think this way, it's all I know how to be. Being thrown into American culture and ways of living, I felt uncomfortable because it was different and I was convinced that there was no way I would adapt enough to feel fully comfortable.

Coming home, I am feeling some of the same feelings all over again only they are about the place I thought would always be my "real" home. It's scary to feel uncomfortable in what you expected to be your safe place. It's like I'm caught in the middle without a real place to call home. I don't know where I belong or what my true identity is. I love being in MA, surrounded by the support system I've built up over the past two years, but at the same time I feel like I'm betraying my "true" home by wanting to be there and not here. I'm frustrated because I don't know how to feel and because I am fighting against what I do feel.

Ironically, most of my classes I'm taking here have to do with culture and identity. Maybe I'll figure it out... Again.