Is it easy, being away from home?

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"Is it easy, being away from home?"

This was the gist of a question one of my students asked me after class recently. In our conversation lessons, we had been speaking about family, so home was a topic that had been discussed. 

"It's never easy, but it's a choice you make - a sacrifice - and I stay in touch with my family, which makes it a little bit easier," came my reply.

Speaking from experience, with the benefit of the perspective I garnered from my time in France, Poland, and now Slovakia, it has never been "easy" leaving home for extended periods. From missing family and the many comforts of a life I had grown accustomed to, to learning to cope with the many changes that come with uprooting your life and dropping yourself someplace in a foreign land with a foreign language that, upon arrival, seems nearly indistinguishable from jibberish, there are a few harsh realities that hit you soon after disembarking from the metal vessel that just carried you across the Atlantic as a 21st-century pilgrim. 

This is the side of things I don't often speak or write about because, quite frankly, I've never seen much value in sharing this side of my experiences. The way I see it, this is essentially the bad that invariably accompanies the good, the con to the pro - yet it's simply another reality of this journey called "life."

Framing this within the context of weighing pros and cons, I must emphasize the notion that I genuinely believe that, despite the various challenges each opportunity has presented, taking advantage of these opportunities to study and work abroad has been and remains the right thing to do. 


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