Going abroad to study feels a little like eating a five-course meal at a posh restaurant when you’re simply famished and wish everything would appear all at once. At this point in time I’ve left behind everyone and everything I know in my hometown. Granted, I’ll be back for a short break in a few months, but it’s a big transition all the same. Thus people have been kind enough to make time and effort to wish me off properly and inadvertly making me miss them all the more just as I have to leave them behind and step into a new phase of life in a new country.
To get back to the food metaphor, I’ve been here in XX for about 3 quarters of a year since I left school; I have friends who will be entering university next February as they had taken a one-year pre-university course. I’ll only be halfway through my first year of college. And college takes two years. I am definitely not speeding up the freeway to adulthold, independence, a single apartment and bills. Sometimes during these few months I felt a nagging irritation that I was wasting away my time; that the only appropriate use of my life at this juncture was full-time study or work. It seemed wrong to have so much free time and spend half of each day sleeping. I could hardly wait for this moment when I would finally jetset into the city of bright lights and marvellous shopping to have the best years of my youth. I was drinking from the salty, tangy bowl of current boredom and listlessness flavoured with a dogged determination to spend every single day well; growing in understanding and passion for God and being continually challenged to rise further; seasoned with underlying excitement and wonder at the opportunity that I had been blessed with and hoping that the experience coming very soon would be everything I had wished for and more.
Now that broth has been sipped dry, I reap the rewards (often undeservedly) of the friendships I have gained in XX both old and new. They remind me that one’s worth is cannot be measured in terms of a degree or loads of money but in kindness, service, love, laughter and shared memories together. They have each, in their own way, expressed how much I mean to them and it leaves me simply lost for words to have such blessings as these.
Now, the tugging seaward and eastward calls to me! I’m still waiting to have the next dish, my main course and I can almost taste the fabulous steak to come. (Sorry vegetarians, but I’m a confirmed meat lover) Every bite of this new and eye-opening experience will be a treasure and pleasure to me. So I wait in anticipation, knowing each second brings me closer to it….
But for now, I’m waiting between dishes; not gone completely, and not there completely. From what I know of food, though, there is no use in complaining that the dish you’re waiting for has not arrived yet. It will, in due time. Till then, I’ll just enjoy the intervening moments, the funny and mixed sensations of growing up and leaving your most dear people and places behind – knowing that when you come back again, you will view it with different eyes, not necessarily better or worse, just…different.
Written 24/8/2007, the eve of my departure to Hong Kong for further studies
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