Today, it is exactly 6 months since I graduated from Boston
College. It has been 6 months since I left BC and Boston. 6 months since I last
saw (most of) my best friends for the last time. 6 months since MA’s, Lower
dirt, Higgins, the Chocolate Bar, JTree’s sourpatch fish bowls, Hillside frips
and espresso shots, Eag’s Tuscan veggie subs. 6 months since I got out of bed at
2pm. 6 months since I went to class (as a student). 6 months since I lived 5
minutes away from 95% of the people who made up my entire life. 6 months since
that surreal night when we all said goodbye, when Rob played Wonderwall while
we all sat around with fake candles (where did those even come from?), when we
did cartwheels in the rain (I still have those videos), when I ate a meatball
sub in the Rubi kitchen, when we all spent the morning angry as hell because we
hadn’t showered, hadn’t slept, hadn’t had coffee, and graduation started in an
hour. 6 months since that surreal afternoon when none of us knew what to do
with our hoods, when I slept through most of the Commencement speech except the
part about swings (why swings?), when it was so, so hot, and there were so, so
many people in the College of Arts and Sciences. 6 months since we all burst
into tears at the same time in the Gate common room, since we said a very real goodbye
to the Not-a-Real-Table, since I said goodbye to my best friend on the corner
of a street near Coolidge Corner. 6 months since I left the place that had been
home for the past 4 years. 6 months since I left the people who had been my
family.
And where am I now? My life is so, so unbelievably
different. Monday was a horribly, horribly long day. The kids misbehaved, I was
distracted, and that night all the palagi teachers were shocked that the next
day was only Tuesday (apparently it had been a long day for everyone). Oh, and
I had sugar cookies (and ONLY sugar cookies- Jackie knows) for dinner at 9pm.
It was what it was. But Tuesday, walking around the village after school, I
remembered to look around, to really see where I was. Samoa has a lot of
problems, some that I am only starting to see now. It’s also one of the most
beautiful places I have ever been. That night, after a dinner of fresh Manu’a
roll sushi (thanks to our brilliant co-workers and friends- I guess you can’t
actually live off Ramen for 3 years…), I walked home and stopped on the beach
to look at the stars. There are so many more of them here than anywhere else
I’ve ever been, and there’s something about looking out at a night sky filled
with stars over a vast ocean while standing on a tiny rock in the middle of
nowhere. Suddenly, in this little and sometimes claustrophobic place, the world
seemed huge.
It’s weird looking at your life and realizing it’s so
different from anything you could ever have imagined. It’s even weirder, I
think, to look at your life and realize it has somehow become exactly what you
imagined. This is what I wanted when I decided to travel to the South Pacific
for a year, this exactly: billions of stars over an endless ocean, puppies,
island children who come to play, students who, every once in a while, show how
much your presence means to them, a job that I really believe matters, weekend
adventures, new friends; a whole new world.
I came here to prove to myself that I could do this, and
if I could do this then I could probably do anything. I wanted to show myself
that I could leave everything (and everyone) I knew and loved and set out on an
unknown adventure on my own, and that I could make it work, that I could be
happy. It’s pretty cool to be proven right. It’s also pretty cool to know,
though, that even though I came here on my own, I’m not alone at all. I’m
surrounded by wonderful people on this island, and I’m surrounded by wonderful
people outside of the island, too. 4 months into my time in Samoa (and 6 months
out from graduation), I know that the people who mattered to me before are
still a part of my life and always will be, and that if I need them they’re
always there. So thank you for that.
I could say a thousand more things, and I did mean to
blog about the adventures of last Saturday, which, between our fearless leader
Saunoa and the mythical Saua were pretty much legendary. But I figure this is
getting long enough, other people have done it better than me already (google
it, yo), and, anyway, all anyone really cares about is pictures.
So. Here’s what I did on a casual Saturday in November.
Yes, you should definitely be jealous.
(OH. And I finally saw a whale this weekend!!! Thank God! I still want to see one in a zoo and/or beached (probably because of my childhood whale-induced trauma) but this is a step in the right direction!)
