.......no?
I will be amazed if anyone still reads this. I would have stopped reading too. I know I promised a lot of follow up entries and stories from my final days, and then just stopped. I abandoned the blog. Truthfully once I got home, Ireland became a mythical "did that really just happen" memory. I felt guilty that I wasn't staying up all night sobbing that I was back in the US, back to the monotony of everyday life. I even tried to guilt trip myself into thinking I was miserable one night, staying up late with some beer and ordering PS I Love You from OnDemand. Nothing.
Why does everyone come back from study abroad changed, with horribly fake accidents, saying things like "oh, excuse me, when I was in *insert country* this was the accepted custom". Meanwhile I come back and forget I was even gone.
Occasionally I find myself saying "Well when I was in Ireland" in conversation, and then feeling extremely guilty about it. There are traces of it in me. I always look for Cadbury Rich Tea Biscuits in the international aisle at supermarkets. Today I caught myself driving my golf cart up the left side of Elm Drive. I blast Galway Girl in my car when driving to work. I miss soccer, I miss the pubs, I miss the DART and Bray.
I look forward to my summers at Princeton all year. I have great friends here, I have stuff to keep me busy, and even in Ireland I had a standing Skype date at 8pm most nights with a work friend so that she could describe what was happening on Ellen for me. So the fun didn't end when I came home from Ireland. As long as I have something to keep me busy, people to keep me laughing, maybe I haven't realized that it's over. Come September, my thesis, the looming prospect of school ending and real life beginning, maybe then I will enter the funk.
I wish I could convince myself that I didn't have to feel so guilty for not missing Ireland. Accept that I had a good time there, but that it's ok to have a good time back in America as well. If I could change anything about the overall experience...it would be that.
