“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
The last couple of months I lived my life in a great big bubble called St. Paul. I knew this bubble would pop eventually, with the end of my exchange year in June, but obviously, I didn’t think about that yet. Instead, I savored every second of my life in the bubble, so much that I would sometimes forget that this wasn’t my forever or real life. Eventually, it would come to an end, which I was reminded of sooner than I had thought or ever hoped. Apart from the great surprises of 2021 such as my scholarship or that Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, last year had still one surprise left for me. A few months into my exchange I was getting sick, which caused me to get the most unimaginable news I wanted to get. My program thought it would be best for me to return to Germany to recover fully. Thus, my exchange year had to be cut short due to medical reasons.
Meaning that right now I am not writing to you from my room under the roof in St. Paul, I am writing to you sitting in my bed in Germany and you won’t see any pictures in this blog either as most of you will probably see me in school once I am better in the new semester. I had great fun and joy while writing this blog, so you have to believe me when I say that I am deeply sorrowful about the sudden end of it all. Who would have thought that the last line of my last blog, which I wrote as a little joke, would hold so much truth? I guess in life you really never know what you are going to get and this time I got a taste of a flavor, which I neither enjoyed nor expected.
I do want to end my probably final blog entry on a positive note though. I won’t let the bitter taste of the ending of this experience overshadow the beautiful moments I had. Moreover, I will never forget those lovely, funny, and amazing people, with whom I created these moments and memories. No matter what, I will always carry pieces of theirs with me as they carry pieces of me.
Maybe we will meet once and you will get to see them. Who knows? What I know is that this blog entry has come to an end now.
Yours,
Anna