Quite right, Kid. I have plenty to rant about. However, I’ll spare you all the dramatics and stick to the facts.

I’ve been quite a good traveler thus far, sending out weekly e-mails and updates to my family, giving them the censored and family-friendly details of my life Down Under, with pictures and everything. When I get the sporadic response from a family member who actually took the time to read the email, they write such gems as these:

“You sound like you’re having a great time!”

or “I’m so glad you’re adjusting so well!”

or “I would have loved an opportunity like this when I was your age!”

All nice sentiments, but none of them true (the exception being the last, I suppose. I won’t shit on other peoples dreams). I’m not having a great time and I’m not adjusting that well. I’m tired of Australia and I’m ready to go home. I was ready to go home the day I got here.

They say homesickness comes in waves, but in any ocean, there’s always a current. The homesickness – it never completely goes away. I think, in the back of my head, I always want to return to the familiar, to the comfortable, to the things and places that are uniquely mine.

As Kid noted in his post, we’re calling for all study abroad-ers to weigh in on the myth(?) of study abroad being “the best experience of my life multiple-exclamation-points.” We’ve been debating this idea for almost two months now, and seem to have come to the conclusion that it’s the kind of sentiment that comes from the oh-so-fortunate individuals who live their out own version of The Real World, whose “great memories” are found at the bottom of a bottle of Smirnoff or in the bed of a stranger. (Note: I’m not saying that the consumption of alcohol and engaging in sexual relations with strangers won’t ever serve to be great memories. They’re just not necessarily the only ones I want to return home with).

I say things like that, and get the same indignant response:

“It is what you make it. If you’re not having a good time, it’s because you’re not making a good time.”

Touche, my friend. But think about this: maybe studying abroad, living lost in the middle of another country with no friends, no place to call home – maybe that’s the kind of experience that makes it all that more clear to us where our home really is, and that’s why the time we spend away is so much harder to get through. For some people, they find their home in flat in Florence or a village in Ghana . For others, the experience helps them remember that as much as they may shit on their country and on their home and  on their crappy apartment with the heat that won’t kick in fast enough, that’s the only place they can really call home and mean it.

For now, I’m just holding out hope, because given the fact that I have a bottle of vodka taking up space in my fridge, courtesy of Kid, maybe this weekend will be a turnaround. Maybe I’ll find something like home here.

Or maybe not. Stay tuned.

- The Sexretary