My year abroad studying at the beautiful University of Connecticut is over. Finished. Complete. I have flown home, settled back in, and my American adventures feel like another lifetime; it practically was, considering the fact that I haven't blogged in FAR too long. I apologise. I'm hoping that the mumblings will continue. So here goes...
Coming home has felt surprisingly natural to the point that the past four months feel almost as though they never happened, they were just a wonderful figment of my imagination. Even writing this blog, which I drafted weeks ago, feels surreal as blogging was such a massive part of my American adventure. It seems rather unnatural to be blogging from my living room in England!
I may have moaned and complained and been positively British about the entire experience but sitting here and trying to type about how this chapter of my life is officially over is almost heartbreaking. Yes I have now returned to my friends and my family, I've been eating copious amounts of decent fruit and veg and sleeping in my own comfy bed but it's not the same. My adventure has come to an end and with it has come the post travel blues.
My last week was nothing to write home about - but when has that ever stopped me?! It was filled with the stress of finals combined with the panic of packing up my life into two relatively small suitcases and somehow getting the aforementioned suitcases to New York, into a taxi and to the airport. No easy feat when you're as small as me. But I managed it eventually and here I am back in rainy Salisbury.
To those of you on Floor 3 McMahon. Thank you for a brilliant year. You were all lovely and it was so nice to meet you. Thank you for putting up with my stupid questions about touchdowns and jump shots, the health care system, politics and any other random blog-related questions. Most importantly thank you for finding that final New Mexico Quarter (My collection is complete!). I could not have done it without you! If you're ever across the pond let me know!
I have plenty to write about this summer, having just celebrated the Queen's Diamond jubilee, the upcoming Olympics, the fantastically British combination of floods and droughts that is currently occurring, and the other adventures that I have planned so this is not the end of my mumblings.
In terms of my American adventures UConn did not mark the end. This afternoon I turned on the TV to find an episode of "Stephen Fry in America". It was the last episode in which he travelled up the West coast through California, Oregon and Washington, up into Alaska and ended up in the tropical Islands of Hawaii. Despite having now spent roughly four years of my life in America I still have never made it to the West coast. But it will one day happen. I'm determined to make it happen.
