Lily adjusting to being home, but can wait to make it back to Cape Town

Co-educators: Paige, Amelia, Lily, Isabel, Meg

It has been so strange waking up to a quiet house with nothing on the agenda for the day. We went from a lifestyle full of adventure during our semester and are back to the lives we had prior to Cape Town, trying to see where we fit into that old lifestyle. I miss having my co-educators around all the time and leaving the house to see Table Mountain towering above us. 

It still feels like our normal schedule there will resume; even though we’ve been back in the US for almost two weeks, I still feel like I’ll wake up back at home in Cape Town and start my day at my internship, class or exploring. Somehow it still hasn’t hit me that the semester has ended and there’s a continuing nag in my head that I need to go back. 

The most difficult transition back here was figuring out how to talk to people about my semester in Cape Town and what it meant to me. There have been plenty of people who ask a general question about how it was or if I liked it, expecting a brief response. Much of the time, I do give this brief response because I have taken time to reflect in my journal, so my responses to these questions are more general. Others have asked specific questions, such as what my favorite activity was or what I did at my internship. These questions are easier because you can focus the answer in more detail. A challenge I didn’t think I would face because it never occurred to me is that I was talking about inequality in the country and realized that the people I was talking to knew very little about the politics of the country after the Nelson Mandela years, and so me talking about Zuma and such had very little affect on them. It was such casual conversation between us as co-educators and now it feels like talking about the current events of the country is more like me giving the people I’m talking to a history lesson.

Another challenge has been talking to people about the politics and injustices without coming off like I’m preaching; a few people have seemed frustrated when I tried to explain all about the semester because often there would be contradictions with their expectations. It seems like it may be intimidating that we have learned so much and enjoy talking and debating about it. It’s been difficult to have patience when people don’t want to talk about controversial issues, because all of our co-educators were so open. Also along with this, it’s hard to not compare everything to our time in Cape Town. It seems like all I can talk about is South Africa, which may be annoying to many people who haven’t had that experience so they don’t understand. 

Day to day transitioning actually hasn’t been as difficult as expected; it’s actually nice to cook with a working stove and not having to worry about whether or not 6 other people are trying to cook at the same time. It’s nice having all of my work e-mails send the first time I try, though I definitely have found myself using my computer and phone a lot less than I did prior to the semester abroad. My time there has definitely made me appreciate these things much more, and taught me a lot about living with other people. It may have been an easier transition than expected because of the open-mindedness of my friends and family back home and the fact that my values are pretty similar to what they were before Cape Town, that experience has just solidified them. Even if people I know here can’t understand the experience I had, which can be very frustrating, they do their best to try to understand and listen. Having so many people to catch up with has definitely been helpful in my transition home because a lot of people have questions about different parts of the program, so I get to talk about each part of it without overwhelming one person with a description of every part of it. 

I spent a week back at UCONN following my return from Cape Town and it definitely helped the transition back home because of all of the support systems I have at school. It was great being able to see everyone, even if they were stressed from finals, and tell them about my semester. I think that having things to do and people to see was a lot easier than just being at home and working now because it’s much less spontaneous and it’s not as easy to just go hike a mountain, enjoy the beach or meet new people. I definitely think the transition would be easier had we gone in the Fall semester and come back to winter break and then a regular UCONN semester, but I think that with support from each other, family and friends, we will all find our new places within our old lives. 

I miss everything about Cape Town and cannot wait to go back. The strange thing is coming to terms with the fact that when I do go back, it will be a completely different experience. I could have happily continued doing what we were doing for another 4 months. Going back would be great but so different because it wouldn’t be with my co-educators and I wouldn’t be doing the internship and classes we had, but I still cannot wait until I can make it back there!