Amelia feels blessed to have an experience that opened her eyes

I’ve been home for about 4 weeks now since leaving Cape Town. When I first got here I wasn’t happy at all. Yes I was excited to see my family and friends but I knew nothing had changed here while I had changed so much and I was dreading the basic question of “how was Africa?” When I first arrived I did a few things that was unlike my extraverted self. Within the first couple of days my mom wanted me to go to the city and go to all these dinners and be with a bunch of people and I just refused. I wanted nothing more than to lock myself up in my room for a few days and just reflect on my experience, which doesn’t seem like a big deal but for me it definitely was. I did that until I went to surprise my friends at school, which helped a lot with coping of the reality of my life at home. Honestly I was surprised at how so many people expected me to be able to summarize my entire 4 months there into a few sentences. I made them ask me specific questions and really just talked about my experience when it seemed relevant or they seemed genuinely interested. 

Overall coming to terms with my home life hasn’t been as emotionally difficult as I expected but trying not to fall back into those old traps of what I used to do has been difficult. I’ve been trying to read instead of watching TV, eat healthy again (because I definitely let that go while I was in Africa), and just trying to think as I would in Cape Town. Me thinking as if I was still in CT and at Africa Unite is what led me to write a letter to the MTA because I felt they were doing a disservice to the surrounding areas by not having student discounts on their extremely expensive tickets. My parents and friends laughed at me but I felt good knowing that I was taking some sort of action to express my anger and I know I would have laughed too if I didn’t get the exposure I had gotten in CT. Honestly I just feel blessed to have had an experience that has opened my eyes to the many fascinations of this world and that I’m able to further that connection by keeping in contact with the wonderful people I met there. This won’t be the last of me, Cape Town!