Hi all! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and to my grumbling family members especially, I sincerely apologize. Chile is much too fun to be cooped up on my computer all day – oh wait, that’s all I’ve done this week since we’re doing MIDTERMS in April. Yep. While most of my friends are finishing school, I’ve got two months to go! The price of studying abroad in the southern hemisphere, I suppose?
I wanted to shamelessly plug my op-ed I wrote this week for my home university’s student newspaper, The Williams Record. I was an editor for the Record for two years before going abroad, and l’m stoked that I get to write an op-ed this year due to my status as a non-editor (board members aren’t allowed to write op-eds).
This week I wrote a short account of my experience dealing with national tragedy while abroad – it’s a topic I’ve been forced to familiarize myself with this year as I experienced the Newtown shooting from Spain, and now the Boston bombing in Chile. It always gets me how comfortable and at home I can be in one place (I frequently joke with my friends that “I never want to leave Chile!”), and then something like the bombing can shatter my state of ease in an instant. Suddenly, I want to be with all my friends and family, and in my country, absorbing the shock of the event with other wide-eyes Americans.
It’s a very curious feeling – a combination of panic, nostalgia, and anger. Mostly, though, I’ve felt pretty helpless, and slightly alone – wanting to talk about the event with Chilean friends, but watching with rising embarassment as the conversation inevitably turns into a harsh critic of the country that I call my home. It’s complicated, man.
My op-ed ends a little Williams-specific, but the conclusion I wanted to make is that when something terrible happens in the US, it just makes me miss it a little bit more. Ironic, yeah, but then again, understandable. When tragedy strikes, I want a little time to be with the people who I love and know more than anyone else.
My brother, sister and me with our beautiful city of Seattle.
And now, I’m off to have more fun. Later!
Eye Spy 