Giving Thanks

I didn't realize how important Thanksgiving was to me until I found myself on a train in rural Sweden (my 8th in two days) this past Thursday. Danes, Swedes and Norwegians all either sat quietly looking out the window, or simply had a nap. Beyond the obvious fact that Thursday was only special to Americans at home and all of us abroad, our seat reservations were in the ‘quiet car.’

So as I sat there in silence for four hours and noticed how little any of the people around me were impacted by the day that had always been something special to me, I realized that the importance of holidays are about being with people you love. We have all the fancy décor and inexplicable traditions on the surface, but at the heart holidays are really about congregation, comfort, and love. It is funny (not Ha-ha, but odd) that it took feeling so small and far away from Thanksgiving to understand its impact on me. It was however, a raw and poignant reminder of the theme I have identified while studying abroad this semester. That being: ‘I am my best when I surround myself with the people I love.’

I have always heard that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ and thus, time apart from those you love can often provide the necessary reflection to ‘truly’ appreciate them. This semester, I have taken this idea a step further and realized that I am not quite myself when I am not around the people who have shaped me. Thanksgiving day was the most definitive example from this semester. As such, it was such a delightful surprise to get back to Hamar that night and find the rest of our American group (and one of the Namibians) waiting for us with dinner prepared. I hadn’t been in the door for more than two minutes and I was asked to ‘cut up the bird.’ It was definitely one of my happiest moments from this semester, and one that I will definitely remember. It was nice that such feelings of comfort and belonging came on a day that had been heavy with loneliness and the discomfort of traveling.

I got calls that night from both Ingrid and my family, messages from the Base Camp crew and lots of fun within our Hamar family. I was riding high and it was all so unexpected. After everything I felt that day, I have promised myself that I will work hard to relax and enjoy the Christmas holiday and take advantage of spending time with my loved ones. That being said, I have a mere 15 days to finish things up here in Norway and come back home.

It is pretty remarkable how quickly this time has gone by. Although my program has not been all that intellectually stimulating, I have learned so much about my current surroundings and myself. I traveled to five countries while living here and visited probably two-dozen Norwegian cities/municipalities. I have learned about the indigenous people of Norway while kayaking in the Arctic.

I am so thankful for all of you back home, and my friends here in Norway. Your support during this semester has at the core of my success. This whole thing has been a humbling experience. I never felt much loneliness when I was traveling in South Africa, or traveling this summer. I suppose it was because it felt like traveling the whole time. Here, I had to move into this dingy apartment and live a normal life. Soon, I realized that it wasn’t so bad, but found myself comparing to home to my current situation and how this was lacking from my usual semester. Being an otherwise optimistic and active person, the onset of this dismal attitude spawned an incredible amount of laziness and repetition. I ate the same foods, and I did the same things (e.g. wasted a lot of time online). But it was hitting that low that allowed me to learn about myself, and how I deal with change. Even though I knew I was coming to Norway, I will still resistant to it, mentally speaking. I found many parallels between this semester and my first semester at PLU. I really wanted to be there, but many of my thoughts would be stuck yearning for the structure of old, and what I had left. As such, that attitude would almost inhibit me and make me reticent to try/do new things…let alone doing those with my usual passion and conviction.

Going through this during my senior year however has been fantastic and will be a good transition through graduation in May. Considering the different academic program this semester, I am anxious to return to PLU’s way of doing things. I think the laziness of the past few months might has been my “senior-itis,” of sorts. Instead of spending my last entire year and PLU and feeling burnt out, I will have had this nice break from the usual academic and social track and now I will be able to thrive and appreciate everything at PLU during my final semester.

Looking back now, I wish I would have blogged more often. It would have been helpful to voice a lot of this crap on my mind. All of your comments and reassuring words along the way have been so helpful. Yet, a reoccurring theme from all of you has been that ‘this is your time for you, Kyle,’ as such, maybe it was best that I kept a lot of this crap to myself and learned how I deal with it. Although, I believe that we (humans) have no purpose without each other, it is extremely valuable to be able to learn about your individual capacity and its corresponding relation to everyone else. My time in Norway will be remembered for this reason. Considering my expectations and plans, I am disappointed that I am not as good at journaling and blogging as I would like to be, but they gives me something to work.

At this point, I can’t quite give a full summary of everything I have gained or lost. I imagine that for the next few years I will continue to fit the pieces together and realize just how much living in a foreign country as a student has affected me.

Two weeks from tonight I will be in Oslo watching Al Gore accept the Nobel Peace prize. After that, I will take my last of probably more than 100 trains to the Gardemoen airport. In the mean time, I have a few tests, a few papers, collect some things, say ‘good-byes’ and from all of that see what I bring back home.