Signing Off and Final Thoughts

Tomorrow will be full of packing, cleaning, and all the final measures I need to take before I can get on the plane Saturday morning. Today will be full of saying goodbye to people. So on that note, I'm going to give my version of a conclusion to this experience and say goodbye to the Norway Travelogue. Before I can do that, though, I have to talk about Oslo yesterday. The Nobel Peace Prize festivities might have been more exciting to me if the recipient was someone that I was more familiar with, but as it was it was still a great time to be in Oslo. There was a class trip to the modern art museum to look at an Andy Warhol exhibition, there was lunch, and there was wandering through the streets, but it was the different events that surrounded the Nobel Peace Prize that were the most interesting. The first of these was the children's parade, which turned out to be quite scary. A large gathering of children learning about peace, listening to music, receiving a speech by the recipient himself. I think that's something that Norway is on the short list of: countries who think that children should be hearing complicated lectures about conflict mediation in groups numbering 1000's. Of course, I couldn't understand any of what was going on, but the event was clearly a big deal. The crown prince and princess made an appearance, Martti Ahtisaari made a speech, and there was food for all. Also, few chaperones were to be seen. I can't help but think that America's children entrusted with more independence and responsibility while learning about complex issues may grow up to be less apathetic and removed. This isn't the first time when I've seen children in situations that Americans would find either unruly or pointless, but the Norwegian kids seem to handle it just fine. Not that I give them that much credit, but maybe. Then there was the CNN interview, which I was tragically undressed for. It was a really cool event, broadcast live, and it turned out to be a great summary of everything that our class had learned about during the year. Ahtisaari has done a lot of conflict mediation since he was president of Finland in places like Kosovo, Namibia, and Iraq, and we've learned a lot about these types of processes, specifically in Kosovo. Being able to notice the subtleties in what he was talking about, even in a television event, was cool. The interviewer was not great, though, and for some reason seemed obsessed with getting Ahtisaari to say that the "international community" (which seemed to not include any countries in Africa) should use military force to remove Robert Mugabe. This would be a valid question if it was at all relevant to what the interview was about, but it wasn't. The interview took place in City Hall, which is beautiful and a great place for an interview I guess. I thought it was a perfect way to wrap up the class. Now to the more unpleasant parts. Tonight and tomorrow I'm going to make sure I can say goodbye to all the international students that are left, and that's going to be kind of depressing. It's one thing to say goodbye to people that you know you'll see again, or will at least have a chance of seeing again. It's another to say goodbye to somebody who lives in Hungary or Tanzania, and who you've just started to get to know and think is really cool. Such is the nature of these types of programs, but it does put a bitter touch to the generally sweet part of going home. I'm sure I've touched on this before, but one of the most valuable parts of this experience for me has been getting to make friends from countries and cultures that really are foreign to me. It's a good learning experience, but more than that these have been great people and I'll miss them. Facebook makes some type of communication a possibility, and that's nice, but being back in a comparatively homogenous classroom will be an adjustment. And something basic like just not hearing different languages being spoken at a party will be strange. It's not something I had thought about before. Now I'll probably think about things like the lack of students from "developing" countries when we're talking about globalization in class. But it goes deeper than that, too. These people aren't just a learning experience, or it wouldn't be hard to say goodbye. But it will be, because it's hard to say goodbye to friends. Trying to emerge from this depressing pit, I'll say that I'm looking forward to going home. I feel like I've become more of an American since I came here, paradoxically, and it will feel like my true home in a way it never did before. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. And more locally I miss my friends and family from Phoenix, and my friends and the outdoors in Washington. Those always felt like home, but I'll feel at home with all the more general American traits that I just kind of put up with or ignored before. Ice water, fast food, and cars: they all exist in Norway too, but I don't think they're as ingrained in the culture as they are in America. And there are of course more essential parts to the American culture that I can't even think of now, but will be entirely welcome when I return. I've talked about the minutaie of my study abroad experience, and I've taken the chance to look at the bigger parts of it too. I've covered the travel and the staying inside, so I guess now it's time to talk big picture. The learning has been both gradual and sudden, and most of it will take a couple months to sink in once I get back home. But the general experience of being in a foreign place, physically and mentally, has dropped my guard more than I expected it would. That effect is not quite as drastic as it was when I left for PLU, funnily enough, but I've gained opportunities to learn about myself and the world in a way that was unexpected. On a personal level, I've learned skills for dealing with situations that I don't understand and I've just had a lot of fun. On a less personal level, this trip has been about being in the world and experiencing that. If that's not broad enough, I don't know what is. What I mean is that the USA is a large and influential corner of the Earth, but it still is a corner of the Earth. So is Norway and every individual country represented by our program and every country I travelled to. But when I combine Norway with Tanzania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Nepal, Namibia, most of Western Europe and Scandinavia I get an experience that may be even more than the sum of its parts. It's a little more subtle than saying I've become more open-minded, because that implies that I'm the most important facet of the equation. I'm just glad to have seen and experienced a greater portion of the world than I was familiar with before. It makes me feel even smaller than I did before, but less insignificant. All of this is abstraction, though. Concretely, Norway is expensive, travel is great entertainment, and I'm not as comfortable with the cold as I orginally thought. To put a capping thought on the last 3 months would be impossible, but I hope my travelogue has given some insight into some aspects of daily life, some aspects of travel, and some aspects of the overarching importance of this trip to me. I look forward to seeing all of you back home soon.