just jaime

It's been over a week since I've arrived in the Netherlands and it's been a couple days since my parents and I parted ways: them back home to Canada and me back to my residence in Maastricht. It's strange to be away from home. Throughout the week I had my parents by my side to help navigate through the towns and through living abroad. Now that they're a 9-hour flight plus a 2.5-hour train ride away, it's suddenly hit me that I now have to navigate this alone. Although there's a huge international student population here in the city (meaning I'm probably not the only kid who's homesick after a week), it feels like everyone I've met is eager and excited to be here. Meanwhile, my brain is trying to convince me that coming here was all one big mistake. I know that in a few days -- or weeks --  I'll start to adjust to life on my own, but right now, it seems like an impossible task. Even though my parents have said that if I wanted to come home...

I don't know if it's odd that I don't really tell people about the fact that I'm leaving for exchange. I only started out telling a few friends what I was doing (or trying to do) because if I had been rejected, I would have had to tell everyone I didn't get in. When I got nominated by SFU, I used the same reasoning. "I got nominated, but I haven't been accepted by my host uni yet!" When I got accepted I said, "Well, what if for some reason my student visa doesn't work out and then I'm not allowed to study there?" -- my student visa has been recently approved, by the way, so that's good news. When I got automatically enrolled in the Formal Exchange Program (FEP) and people asked me about course selection I deflected and asked them what courses they were planning on doing instead of talking about me.  When  I was told my leave of absence of work had been approved,  some coworkers started asking questions and I almost felt...