Arcadia England

In the final instalment of her London Diaries, our guest blogger Ashley Blaes reflects on her year abroad from the comfort of her home back in the US, from the many highs to the inevitable lows, and how she navigated and made the most of every experience.

It felt like just yesterday that I got the keys to my flat and stepped into that sparse little room that housed me for nearly a year. Could it really have been all that long ago that I met my flatmates for the first time, or stepped into my first lecture at King's College London to experience a completely new and foreign academic institution? The morning my rent agreement and lease ended, I was the last in my flat to move out. After 3 whole days of frantically packing, cleaning, and donating everything I couldn't take home with me (I had accumulated a LOT in the span of a year), I stood there in the stillness of my newly emptied room, stripped of all mementos and possessions that had once marked it as mine. Gazing at those blank walls I had come to know so well, it felt like a ghost of the life I had made for myself there. An echo of the day I moved in, only in reverse. It would become someone else's after me, just like it belonged to someone else before it was mine. This was the moment of realization that I was moving on to a new chapter. And I had no idea what that would look like when I turned the page. Processing such impermanence and transience is never easy, despite my reminders to myself that change is a normal part of life. No matter how many days or weeks or months you give yourself to explore a new place, it never feels like enough time. Especially if you come to deeply cherish and appreciate the culture and people of the country you are in for your study abroad experience. Why did I have to leave the moment I felt comfortable and balanced and had it all figured out?

I know now that I've truly never felt more like myself than when I was in London, despite all the challenges and obstacles I faced

Now, it's been 3 weeks since I returned to the States from my year abroad in the United Kingdom. Even as I feel almost entirely adapted and caught up to my old life here, there are times when I am hit with a longing and melancholy for the foundations I had built for myself abroad. I'm still adjusting to feelings of bitterness and loneliness as I miss the company of friends who live 5-6 time zones away from me. To leave one's international friends behind can leave the heart wanting more, because now I'll forever feel like I'm torn between two places. The growth and friendships I experienced abroad made me see myself and the world around me in a different way. I feel so much different from when I left– how could I possibly be the same person who departed everything she had ever known last year? I figured that reminiscing and reflecting on these experiences can be a good way to help ease the process of departure from my found home and re-arrival to my childhood one.

Over the course of 270+ days abroad, there was laughter and joy, but also anxiety and many tears as I adjusted to the growing pains of living on my own for the first time. Believe me, there were many pains. Moving away from home won't solve all your problems, like I once thought it could do for me. I had to remind myself that I was still the same person, just in a new city. London, as much as it felt like a dream to be there, is realistically a place that waits for no one. It's a place which pushes you out of your comfort zone because you have no other choice but to catch up and hold on. It's thrilling and exhilarating but can also be tiresome and lonely at times. When I first arrived, I had to get used to the shock of going out and being around a lot of new people again. After staying inside for nearly 2 years, I was sick in the first semester no less than 4 times. A bad case of bronchitis which developed after I got Fresher's Flu from the welcome events saw me navigating the NHS on my own. In November, I contracted Covid –my worst nightmare– and isolated for 2 weeks in the uncertainty and loneliness that came from being sick and scared, 4,000 miles away from any family who could help me. Getting myself out there as an introvert was also a challenge, but one I saw as worthwhile and rewarding in the long run. I tried so many new societies and went to as many places as possible, both in my host country and elsewhere. I threw everything at the wall and saw what stuck. I took day trips to other English cities such as Oxford and Cambridge with friends, but challenged myself to take a train for a day out to Bath on my own in March. After saying goodbye in December to all the semester-only students I had befriended, lived, and traveled with, I had to go back to square one and make new friends and flatmates all over again in the spring. But I made sure not to lose touch with those who made me feel so welcomed in the beginning.

Since I didn't go home over the holidays due to exams, homesickness hit me hard in the second semester. Like me, you think you'll be having such nonstop fun in your host country that you won't notice it happen, until one day, that homesick longing feeling hits you unexpectedly.

Fortunately, things picked up in the spring again and I started to see a light at the end of the tunnel. My mum, who loves the UK just as much as I do, came to visit in April once she saw how much I was missing home. Just seven months earlier, she had dropped me off at the airport where we said our goodbyes. Now I was the one who came to collect her at arrivals and took on the role of knowledgeable guardian and guide for the week. Spirits lifted, I felt confident and self-assured as I showed her around my host city. She said afterwards that I had never looked more in my element as I guided her around every borough and gave her local insights to the city's neighborhoods and districts. After exams ended, in May and early June, my mum returned, only this time with my dad in tow. We rented a car and drove nearly all of England for three weeks. From Cornwall to the Cotswolds, and Dartmoor up to the Lake District and Yorkshire, I got to experience all the various landscapes, climates, cuisines, and accents England has to offer outside of London. In June, I navigated the language barrier in a foreign country, Norway, where English was not the predominant language. Yet I challenged myself to converse with locals in their native language and experienced so much lovely Scandinavian culture and food with the friends who hosted us in Oslo. Having the confidence and independence to travel, both with company and alone, within and outside the UK, made me feel so proud of how far I had come since leaving home for the first time.

 Despite all these highs and lows, I never once regretted my decision to go abroad.

Academically, things weren't always smooth sailing, either. Twice, in winter and in spring, I worked day and night for hours on end at Maughan Library or in my room to complete my essays and exams. Adjusting to a new uni system wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I felt imposter syndrome at every turn and questioned if I had the intelligence to do as well in my modules abroad as I usually did in classes back home. Being a straight-A, 4.0 Dean's List student had to take a back seat while I learned the new grading and evaluation system at King's. It all threw me for a loop. But eventually, I found my way to something resembling right-side-up again and excelled as best I could in all my final grades. While there was much studying to be done and cultural differences to figure out in the midst of it all, things took unexpected turns in positive ways when I least expected them to. Day by day, I discovered more of my neighbourhood and started feeling less like a tourist and more like a local resident. I became a pro, seemingly overnight, at navigating the Tube and bus systems. Even the currency became easy for me to convert in my head with enough practice. I had my regular stores I went to for my food shops every week and found some local restaurants which I came to love and visit frequently. I got to know and befriend the lovely people at my hall’s reception and participated as much as I could in my weekly seminars, despite all the doubts I had going into class. I just had to have patience, flexibility of mind, and a curious spirit to expand the borders of my comfort zone. Despite all these highs and lows, I never once regretted my decision to go abroad. Funny how I was so desperate and homesick to go home when I first arrived in September, unsure if I had made the right choice. That day feels like a lifetime ago. You'll never know what could be or what you can accomplish if you never try. Humans, I've found, have a strange but endearing adaptable ability to make any place home if you're there long enough.

When my lease ended, it still didn't feel as though my time in England was coming to an end. I had befriended some British students a few months prior who allowed me to stay at their Soho flat for a few weeks until we took a holiday together to Barcelona. I still had loads of time to gently detach myself from the city I had grown to call home since last autumn. Those final weeks in London (and Spain) spent with friends, new and old, were a whim that solidified our friendships in ways that I never could have hoped would happen otherwise. The morning of my return flight to the States, I awoke around 5:30 a.m. so I could take a walk around zone 1 to say goodbye to all my favourite spots. From Trafalgar Square to Waterloo Bridge, Southbank and Bankside, to St. Paul’s Cathedral and Strand, I walked for 2 hours and took some final Polaroid photos of my favorite landmarks to document my last day. It was the very same walk I had taken when I first arrived, thoroughly jet-lagged but starry-eyed at the sights around me and the possibilities for the next year of my life. It was on that final walk that the nostalgia and sadness hit me, but also great comfort and gratitude for all that I had accomplished. I can confidently say now that I made the most of my year abroad and made all those possibilities a reality; Things and places that I'd had on my London bucket-list moved from 'want to do' to 'done' in an almost imperceptible way that was only clear to me in retrospect. The flight home from Heathrow was surreal because it felt like any other holiday I had taken away from the city, expecting I could return to my flat in just a few short days. Even after my connecting flight, when I arrived home to the welcome sight of my cats and family whom I had so desperately missed, it still didn't feel like I had been gone for so long. London felt almost like a dream I had imagined as I adjusted to the reverse culture shock of being back in the States. The food and tipping culture, people’s accents, the way cars drove on the opposite side of the road, and even the weather felt jarring and foreign as I reacclimated in that first week at home. Much like myself by the end, home was a place that no longer felt the same as it did when I left a year ago.

While the readjustment period of returning home from your host country is never easy and most certainly not a linear path for everyone, just know that you're not alone. Your friends and family will love to hear your stories of your time abroad. The experiences you have in other countries will inform you and prepare you for the rest of your life, which is something to get excited about. You might feel some discontentment and restlessness when you return home, especially if you were studying in a big city or metropolitan area and returned to quiet suburbs like I did. But whenever I feel like my life here doesn't fit or that I wish more for myself, I'm reminded that this journey couldn't have happened without the support of so many people along the way whom I have the deepest gratitude for. I am not alone. I regularly facetime the friends I made abroad so we can discuss what we learned and experienced, and how we might maintain our dreams of living abroad in more permanent situations and careers in the future. Scrapbooking with all the mementos I collected and photos I took reminds me to cherish the memories I've made, but not be afraid to make new ones. I know now that I've truly never felt more like myself than when I was in London, despite all the challenges and obstacles I faced. Both in getting there and staying there. Perhaps it was those bumps in the road that made me appreciate it all the more for what it gave me. Good things take time. Nothing that was ever truly meant for you is out of reach, after all. Now, it's up to me to decide what gets written into the pages of this new chapter of life. So, until the day I can return to my newfound home, it's not truly goodbye, just see you later. Until next time, London.

Signing off,

Xoxo, The London Diaries