Saying goodbye to my new home

I can't believe I'm writing this....I'm leaving Dublin tomorrow!  This past week has been a whirlwind, as the week before I was terribly ill with a brief visit to the hospital for rehydration - not what I was planning for a sunny weekend in Dublin!  However this previous weekend I had a joyous time celebrating Easter at the church I found here - Grosvenor Church.  A Romanian friend of mine invited me to his family's house for brunch - no one should be alone on Easter!  The table was one Romanian family (the parents whom spoke broken English -such precious people!), a family from Australia with their two little ones, a single woman from Australia, unrelated to the other family, a student from Canada, and my American self.  How silly is it that my Easter Brunch in Ireland was a full international table?! Not only that, but the kind mother cooked us a four course meal!!! We started with a Romanian tradition of hard-boiled eggs dyed with leaf imprints.  You would go around the table and hit each others eggs saying "Christ is Risen!" in Romanian, as you tried to break the other persons egg.  It was quite fun, even if I didn't really understand!  It was so nice to spend Easter with my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I was so grateful the Lord provided me with people to celebrate Him with!

After a good weekend, I spend this week finishing up all the last minute details of ending a semester.  I turned in all my final essays today, donated some sweaters and canned food to goodwill, and packed up all of my belongings.  This is it, ladies and gentlemen.  The final night in my new home.  I don't think it has quite set in yet that I'm leaving, because I will still be back in Dublin in a little over a week with my parents. But what I'm leaving is the life I found here for the past three months.  The daily routine, the walk to class, the pub outings, and the new friends I've been sharing memories with.  It's hard to explain  in words the emotions swirling through my brain, because they change every other minute.

In one way, I'm SO excited to return to America and be with family and friends.  California beaches for the month of May, and then spending the summer with an amazing internship at World Relief in Fort Worth.  I'll get to reunite with my church home and several of my TCU friends that will be living there in the summer, as well.  I can genuinely say I'm looking forward to this summer, and I've been homesick for the past few weeks.  But another half of me is still seeking adventure, and this part of me is never silent. It's a constant rambling voice in my head, begging me to explore God's wondrous Earth and meet more of the beautiful people He created in other cultures.  I know I want a career that involves traveling or global missions, because God has put an intense desire in my heart to see the world and share His love with people near and far.  Traveling Europe as been one of the best adventures I could ever ask for, and I am beyond blessed I had the opportunity to go to as many countries as I have.  (Plus - tomorrow I'm off to Barcelona, then Vienna, then Salzburg, then the Bavarian Alps in Germany, then London, and then back for a few days in Ireland.) Not many people get the chance to see as much as I have in a lifetime, and God has allowed me to experience so much.  So it makes me feel like I don't ever want to leave Ireland, and if I had unlimited funds I would travel for the rest of my life! (Sorry Mom, you could visit me in random countries!) But what I keep reminding myself is this - this is not the end, this is the beginning of a different adventure.  I've learned so much about myself while I've been here, and the typical "you'll change so much while you're abroad" statement is definitely true in my case. I'm nervous to return home and readjust to American customs, but I'm hoping I'll have a new appreciation for my home country.  In the eloquent words of T.S. Eliot -

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."