Farewell England

Dear England and America,

This is a feelings-y post. I’m just warning you. I just left school, spent Christmas in London, flew to India, and spent two days exploring a violently unfamiliar world. My brain is reeling with sleep deprivation, culture shock, homesickness, England-homesickness, travel sickness, excitement, general awe, and a whole mess of other things. And I really need to make peace with leaving England.

I have an insane amount to go through. My last week in England was a lot of reflecting and emotional goodbye-ing intermingled with frantic preparations for India and more immediately frantic attempts to finish final papers sans internet. I know that this semester deserves a long heartfelt farewell, and I’ve actually put an embarrassing amount of thought into what I should say, but I realized that there is just no way to sum it up.

I finally managed to accept that I was leaving as I watched to sun rise over the surprisingly lovely (and even more surprisingly actually operating) Heathrow airport. However, I brilliantly decided to stay up all night before my flight to India so I would be able to sleep on the plane and beat jet lag... or the second, unforeseen option, which was to fail to sleep on the plane resulting in a 72 consecutive hours of being pretty not asleep – meaning I actually wrote a crazy incoherent jumble of sleep deprived half thoughts.

So rather than attempting to write something really eloquent and heartfelt, I’m going to admit defeat and say that I can’t sufficiently condense my feelings about last semester into a post. I loved England. Last semester was best semester I’ve ever had, by far (there have been a lot of best-in-the-entire-universes, but this is one of those cosmic, capital letter Best Evers). I saw lots of impossibly old, impossibly historical, impossibly beautiful things. I had life changing experiences basically daily (maybe every other day during the Great Visa War). I got to be a pretend grown up. I accidently appropriated hilarious slang words which are making my speech patterns endlessly amusing to the Americans that I’ve been meeting in India. I met amazing people. I made great friends, some of whom I’ll even get to see again next year at Dickinson. I gained new appreciation for my family and friends at home after being away from them. There’s lots of other stuff.

I’ve made peace with leaving Norwich itself, but it was hardest to say goodbye to the people. My flat was amazing, my entire apartment block actually, and the Frisbee team was unbelievably welcoming and fun. There are so many people that I feel like I was just starting to get to know and really like, and that’s a whole different kind of difficult because I know that realistically, I’ll probably only be able to stay in contact with a few people. I’m happy I travelled, but I wished I had more time to spend with people. I know they’re everywhere, but I really liked these particular ones. It took me a full two years at Dickinson to feel as at home as I felt in UEA after just one semester (and I love Dickinson).

I can’t really say much else without writing a novel. I have this impulse to drop thank yous like the English drop sorries on a crowded street. I couldn’t have been more lucky with the people I met in England. I couldn’t have been more lucky with the people I traveled with. Dickinson has been amazingly helpful. And my mom and dad are just really really awesome. I probably haven’t gushed about this enough because I was too busy freaking out about the visa, but they let me come, they suffered through visa process… twice, they’re helping me pay for a ton of this, and they’re sending my brother to backpack with me in May, which is pretty much the pinnacle of best things ever. I should probably buy them a house or something when I’m rich from my useful American Studies degree… oh wait… (At least I sent them Marmite for Christmas. That’s something, right?)

Anyway, I’m not ready to move on, but I have to. And I’m unbelievably excited about India. (I cannot believe this is my charmed life. I have four different currencies in my wallet right now, not including the Chuck E Cheese tokens. I have officially become that super lucky world traveler jerk that I’ve always been secretly jealous of). But I woke up yesterday morning in a crazy jet lag and psychotic malaria pill side effects induced stupor and was extremely homesick for England.

So, England, even though your queues are silly, and you lack peanut butter and proper sycophantic reverence for the glory of the American flag, my love for you shines more brightly than the sun in your country does not after 4PM. Goodbye, thank you, I miss you already, see you in May.

Love,

Jesse