The Lull and the Thrill

While living in any foreign country, the highs and lows droop and shoot upwards, igniting exciting adventures and also enabling couch-clinging woes. On rainy days, nothing seems better than a cup of hot cocoa, a big fluffy blanket and an online episode of the latest Gossip Girl. American comfort in the privacy of your own home. You need those days to recharge. But the days where rays of sunshine burst through your windows, showering rays of happiness into your life- the beauty surrounding is unavoidable. It calls you out- it reminds you of your purpose, the reason you ventured outside your small hometown and ventured thousands of miles away to experience this thing called the world.  There comes a time in every ex-pats life where a life reflection begins. Questions that seem to constantly pervade your mind and dig themselves into your consciousness. Questions include, but are not limited to:

• What the heck am I doing here?
• Does what I'm doing have a purpose?
• Have I truly integrated into society?
• Are people actually understanding me attempting to speak the language?
• Why don't my jeans fit anymore!?

While of these existential questions may inspire deep thoughtful discourse, they are rather difficult to preservere through whilst attempting to live the questions themselves. To reflect on such heavy questions day in and day out is quite exhausting. So my solution is to not think about it. 

My advice: Stop sweating it. If you are truly living the culture, you are. Stop analyzing how you are doing it and just be in it. Talk, eat, drink, be merry. Live it. Because when it comes down to it, life is not the highs and the lows. Life is made up of the million days in-between the highs and the lows. It is there that you must find beauty in the ordinary. Cherish the budding flowers, the frosted glass, the smile of the old man selling bread on the street corner, and in the quiet calm stillness of a beautiful morning.