About saying Goodbye and Saying Hello

To keep the (now slowly establishing itself as) tradition alive, I could reference a number of songs. But since I’m so bad at deciding, I have a few fairly fitting options for you:

Time to Say Goodbye by Sarah Brightman – a little too obvious if you ask me. Bye Bye by the German rapper Cro. Or, a little more optimistic (and therefore my favourite option), Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles.

As you have maybe already figured out, due to my not-so-subtle introduction, I’m writing you ”hello” to say goodbye. I am currently sitting at the same spot I was at when I started writing my first blog post, only it’s 11 months later, and the excitement of being new in a foreign country has changed into a mixture of excitement about the next chapter and melancholy about closing this one.

Today, it’s exactly three more days until my flight leaves for Germany again, and honestly, I haven’t completely realised that this experience really is beginning to come to an end now.

As I said before, even though I do feel excited about what is to come and about finally being able to give my family and friends back home a big hug again, the thought of leaving the place I’ve been living in for the past year, including the new friends I’ve made, does make me not want to leave so soon after all.

I remember that when I started this project, one of my biggest worries was finding new friends in a country where I didn’t know anybody. Now, I can gladly say that I am unbelievably thankful for the people I met here, who made me forget about my initial worries in the blink of an eye.

Whether it was the shared trips to Kalmar and Göteborg, cooking and baking together, or simply the countless movie and game nights, all of those moments shaped this experience into a truly great one.

I’m not saying that it’s always been easy, though. To be completely honest with you, the winter had it´s hard moments. Cold and dark days, combined with a slight feeling of homesickness, are, as you can probably imagine, not always a great mix. But even when the days started to become lighter and less freezing again, staying in a city as small and quiet as Växjö was still a challenge for me. Even so, I’m proud of making the best out of all the challenges I’ve faced (while Swedish fika really did help a lot in getting through some of them), taking advantage of the city’s quietness by going on countless walks around the lakes and thinking about what I want to do with my future (as a question that probably always has to come up during a gap year).

Sadly, even after all those walk-and-thinking-about-my-future sessions, I still haven’t quite figured out what the rest of my life, or even just the next five years of it, are going to look like. But really, that is okay (and everybody who knows me also knows that saying ”It’s okay not to have it all figured out yet” is a bit out of character for me). The one thing I can be sure of now, though, is that this year, with all its ups and downs, has allowed me to grow in ways that I’m sure have prepared me to face future struggles with more ease and confidence, and I’m honestly a bit proud of that.

So thank you, Sweden, for becoming a piece of me and letting me become a piece of you.

With those words, and to close the circle by coming back to The Beatles (just with a slight change in the lyrics): I don’t quite want to say goodbye, but I’m excited to say hello again.

Sincerely, Maria from Germany, former Volunteer of Globala Kronoberg.