Justine goes to Scotland!

I am writing my last post from Edinburgh because I am leaving tomorrow morning. This does not mean that it is my last post ever, because I will be traveling for a few weeks and I will still keep you updated. Over the last week, all 11 of my flatmates have been going home and now I am the last one here. Early this morning 3 of my flatmates went home and one of my flatmates just left a few minutes ago. I don’t think it has really hit me that I am actually leaving. Yesterday, I was talking to my friend Carolyn who is from New York and also studying abroad in Edinburgh for the semester. She has a very different living situation because she only has 2 other flatmates! Yesterday the last one left and a her very good friend from the United States left to go back home. That is when it really hit her that she is leaving.

Before everyone left to study abroad, all of the UMW students who were going abroad went to a meeting held by the study abroad office. They talked about the “M” curve. What happens is that before you go, you are so excited and you cannot wait to go abroad. They call this the “honeymoon phase” where nothing is bad and nothing can go wrong. This may last a few months before you go and the first few months abroad. Then the curve goes down when you start missing home and missing your friends. This is the low point of the curve. Then it begins to rise when you are planning to go home and excited to go home. After a few days or weeks, the curve might go down again when you start to miss the country where you studied abroad.

I think that this curve definitely happens to everone who studies abroad. My “honeymoon phase” lasted a long time compared to others. I just fit in perfectly in Edinburgh. I am sad to leave, however I am also excited to travel and go back home. I have been here for five months and I think that is a good time period to be abroad. If I studied abroad in the fall semester, I would have only been abroad for four months. That would have been way too short and I would have been much sadder to leave if my time here was cut short. Since I have France and Italy to look forward to, I am not totally sad to leave. I am sure once I get back home I will miss Edinburgh a lot.

So my next stop is Ayr, Scotland. I will be visiting Sarah, one of my flatmates, in Ayr which is on the west coast of Scotland. Then I am going to Newcastle, England to visit my other flatmate, Josie. Then off to France and Italy. I will keep you updated on my travels.