The Halftime Report | Dutch Diaries Week Nine
The only thing standing between me and being halfway through my coursework abroad is a daunting four thousand word research proposal investigating the link between self compassion and implicit bias, proving that while you can take the girl out of the wildly liberal university that comes with a heavy side of granola, you just can’t take the Berkeley out of the girl. That said, it’s made me realize that I’m running out of time in my little storybook city of Maastricht, and the ever-dwindling weeks that remain bring a weird mix of bittersweet expectation with them. Half of me is actively pouting over my lack of remaining weekends to travel, coming up with schemes that would let me stay here forever, but the other half can’t stop counting down the days until I get to hug my dogs again (and my family and friends, but also, the dogs). While I’ve already seen more countries and cities in the past two and a half months than I had in my twenty-one years leading up to this trip, there remain infinite destinations, adventures, and experiences that I’m trying to cram into the finite amount of time I have left. My friends here keep commenting on my inability to stay in one place for too long (which is fair— I’ve spent one whole weekend in Maastricht), but there’s something about being able to check a place off my bucket list that I can’t get enough of... And last weekend, I got to cross off a major one: London.
The Weekend | Het Weekend
If you knew me between the ages of twelve and sixteen, then you might be familiar with my little preoccupation with London. Teenage Lynne was determined to live there someday, mostly because the BBC teen drama that I binge watched instead of doing my homework happened to be set in London— I know, so exotic. While I knew little to nothing about the city, the country, the history, or the culture, I somehow knew I belonged there (okay, honestly, I mostly wanted to acquire a British accent because I was, well, twelve).
Over the weekend, I finally got the chance to live out my middle school and early high school dreams, touching down in London on a drizzly Thursday night before taking the London Underground (the tube of you want to sound like you know what you’re doing) to meet one of my best friends from home near her new London apartment.
From the Pubs named after literary icons, to the free (!!) museums, liquid chocolate “hot cocoa,” flower markets, street food, and vintage clothes, London was both everything and nothing that I expected it to be.
However, one thing I know for sure, middle school Lynne knew what she was talking about when she said I’d want to live there someday because when I ventured into the Shoreditch District, it felt like this could actually be home in the ever approaching someday that is adulthood. By the time I sat down to my floral tea latte, I was sold… and I hadn’t even seen the endless walls of street art (some pictured below) or the Banksy (not pictured below but physically protected by a pane of plexiglass in person) yet.
The Week | De Week
The only downside of getting to spend my four day weekend in my dream city with one of my favorite people was the journey home, a rough trek involving three trains and an all-nighter in the airport before an early morning flight. I can now confidently confirm that people are not supposed to be awake for twenty-five consecutive hours (seriously, don’t do it).
After sleeping all day on Monday and with my sleep schedule a little messed up all week, the days of class and studying all morphed together into one very sleepy and rainy school week. What’s more, being the final week of instruction for my first block of classes (Maastricht has an academic schedule more similar to the quarters system than Berkeley’s semesters), most of my time was consumed by my final few assignments.
However, the stress of finals is sweetened when you are abroad in two huge ways. First, your commute home from class looks like this:
Second, and more importantly, study breaks are a hundred times more interesting than ordering cheesy sticks or boba on Postmates. Almost every day this week, my friends and I crowded around the common room table in between studying, coordinating our schedules and planning out the specifics of weekend adventures to come, with one big one just on the horizon before our second block of classes begin: Italy.
The Next Adventure | Het Volgende Avontuur
As I sit here writing this, with very limited leg room in the middle seat of the second to last row on a RyanAir flight, my bag quite literally stuffed beneath the seat in front of me, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else (okay, obviously I’d rather not be squished between two strangers, but that’s all part of this budget travel thing, isn’t it?). You see, even though I’ve been struggling with stress and homesickness over the past few days (the unrelenting rain hasn’t helped), I’m missing California and my people more than ever but wouldn’t want anything to be different. I won’t be with my family for Thanksgiving for the first time ever, and just knowing I’ll be missing out on my grandma’s famous pumpkin pie is a thought that alone can drive me to tears. That whole cliche about how you don’t know what you have until it’s gone is really ringing true right about now.
However, on this plane, with ten days in six Italian cities ahead of me, I know that this whole study abroad experience has been well worth the price of being away. No matter how hard missing home has been, and— let me just emphasize this one more time— it’s been hard, I keep finding myself in these little moments that remind me how freaking lucky I am to have those people back at home who not only have made these sixty-five days happen, but who continue to be there for me, over FaceTime and otherwise, when I’m crying about missing out on pumpkin pie after a rough day of writing a research paper.
