My dad was talking to me when we were driving to the airport for my return flight about how he's been up and down the road a lot with school and then going to visit her, and I thought for a moment before I realized that I had been in four different countries in three weeks. My Eurotrip was the last week of August, the first week of classes in Morocco was during the first week of September, and my flight back to the US was the week after. How crazy/amazing/lucky is that?
Of course I'm thinking about home a lot now. I read a blog post recently concerning going about a normal day in a host country, thinking about home and remembering the fact that you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel in the first place. I think it's just easy to forget how lucky you are when the exotic and different becomes ... well, normal. I live in an apartment now, I go to school and I do homework. I interact in Arabic on a daily basis, so it has become routine. My life here isn't a tourism-related fantasy, it can be mundane sometimes because that's how life is with constant work and classes. I wish I could be there for my family even though I don't regret coming here - to me, there's nothing wrong with thinking of home and family and friends as long as it doesn't consume you. They don't become less important because you're not physically there with them. But always in the back of my head is the fact that I had this opportunity and took it, and how hard I worked to get here, and I will never forget how fortunate I am to be here, even if it's not always in the forefront of my mind.
So now everything is back to normal - I am in Morocco until my winter break in December. We just finished our third week of classes - and boy, do they know how to keep us busy! We still have two classes every day, and even though most of them are shorter now, we still have quite a lot of homework. The readings have become longer and the essays are more numerous. I definitely had a lot on my plate this week since I was still doing some make-up work/meetings and also trying to keep up with the current schedule + the addition of the internship (more to come on that soon), but somehow I managed to get everything done and get some sleep in. I just wish there was more time to socialize and use Arabic outside of class instead of feeling like I need to rush back home to do homework all the time.
Next week though, we have two days of class before a 12-day break for Eid Al-Adha (Holiday of Sacrifice, which I will also explain more soon), before our schedule gets switched up due to the start of university classes. My return to Morocco was like a return to normalcy, except I don't even have a "normal" schedule yet - all I can say is here's hoping I continue to get sleep this fall!