Das Ende des Anfangs, Der Anfang...alles

The end of the beginning and the beginning of everything.

I landed at Phoenix Sky Harbor Int'l Airport 2 days ago and remember the utter confusion & frustration I felt at hearing what seemed like overly-American American English. This was the beginning of what I'm sure will be quite a bit of reverse culture shock. One of the frightening things with reverse culture shock is to see how much one can change in only a year simply being in the midst of a different "national character." Makes me think about how much of me is really fundamentally Elisa and how much of it is American - maybe my basic personality would have always been the same regardless of locale, but how it is manifested or expressed is shaped almost entirely by the local culture. Scary to think that maybe we're not all as individual as we'd like to believe... which leads me to think about how we evaluate cultures/ethnicities and their differences from one another (stay tuned for the next post).

Yesterday the moving company came and picked up all my stuff for my upcoming year at Berkeley. It was at that moment that I realized how much I'm looking forward to starting a new life again. My Fulbright year has thoroughly changed my life in ways that I cannot even begin to describe. I'm excited for this beginning not just for what it is, but for how I will approach it as almost a different person than I was last year.

In the coming weeks, I hope that I will actually be able to put into words the ways in which I have changed. Only by a process of compare & contrast with my new former environment(s) can that reach a semi-accurate conclusion. In the meantime, I will keep the name of this blog as I think of a new one. But although my literal travels may be over, I've realized that the real journeys take place with and in the heart, that no matter how many castles or sights one sees, it's the human landmarks that leave an impression.