Recently, I have started up some of my old hobbies. Ballet, guitar, singing, etc. I don't know why it took me this long to get back in to doing things I love doing so much. I guess I didn't realise how much I missed them until I started doing them again!
In saying so, that doesn't mean it's easy to just start again straight off the bat. You can't just not dance ballet for eight months, start again and expect everything to go hunky dory. That's just ridiculous. The day after my first class, my calf muscles ached and I walked up and down stairs at snail pace. Not to mention that during the actual class I struggled to keep up - it's a new syllabus, a different style of ballet, another teacher than the one I have had since I was five, aaaand the list goes on. It wasn't easy, and it still isn't to be honest. It takes some time to get used to things: both physically and mentally.
Yes, now you see where I am going with this.
It's a metaphor for what it was like arriving here because that, too, was sort of like starting something old again. I have lived in foreign countries before, I've been away from home before, I've learned languages and met new people but that doesn't mean I was in the least prepared for anything I have experienced here.
I expected a lot of myself at the beginning, and when I couldn't meet my own expectations I got really frustrated. I wanted to learn Danish so badly, and it seemed so immensely inconvenient to me that my brain wouldn't just be a sponge and soak everything up instantly. I wanted to fit in and make friends so much, but the language barrier makes this a rather difficult task. I really expected myself to be a chameleon, to just adapt and blend in to my surroundings instantly. The fact that I stuck out like a sore thumb a lot of the time bugged me, and I felt like I was letting myself down.
A lot of the exchange students who have just arrived here with the summer intake remind me so much of myself in that sense that they are so desperate to adapt, but it seems impossible to all of them. The thing I have learned is that adapting takes time, a lot of time. When you first arrive here, you want to adapt straight away, but what you don't realize is that that would take all the fun out of it. That IS the essence of the experience of an exchange, the process of getting accustomed to something totally new. Let's say I decide one day I want to be a professional trapeze artist or something. If I could get up on a trapeze and be perfect at it straight away, that takes away the specialness of accomplishing the small goals that you make for yourself along the way. Why would you want to take that out of the equation?
Also, returning home will be like a magnification of starting ballet again. It's not going to be easy. Having to adjust to my old lifestyle is going to be a total shock, and it will take some time, especially after having experienced something so different. What will make it easier for me now is that I know it takes time, I know that I wont instantly revert back to my old self within an instant. I may never return to being my old self. The thought of that once freaked me out, then I was okay with it, and now I think it is a good thing. A really good thing. What is the point of living if you are going to be exactly the same person your whole life?
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to express to you all here, but I guess the essence of it is that just because something is old doesn't mean it can't be made new again.
:)
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