Friends, Neighbors, Compatriots,
So, Strasbourg is over and I’ve just spent a lovely day in Hamburg with my dear friend, Tim (more on that later, this post is really about leaving Strasbourg). We are leaving for Venice tomorrow (well, really, a few hours, at this point) and I'm pretty excited about the rest of our adventure. Also, feeling a strange mix of relief and excitement about going home and getting back to regularly scheduled programming/starting my research assistantship with Shepard and a very deep sadness that this adventure is almost over. It is, however, a comfort that I am not too old for a golden summer, like this one has been. I haven’t had this much fun or felt so much like myself and just been really, truly happy, in a very long time. It is nice to know that I’ve still got it. It also really reinforced my conviction that I need to get into international law/public policy. What is interesting about that, though, is that, yeah, I find the work, itself, rewarding, but the real value in this arena are the wonderful people who work in it. The people I met in Strasbourg inspired and challenged me, all while taking me as one of their own and making me feel really loved. It never ceases to amaze me when I just click with people and even though I’ve only known them for a little while, maybe only a few days, even, I feel like they understand me and what I’m about better than some people who have known me for many years. This month was like that, only it was on a larger scale than I think I have ever experienced and the wonder of it was compounded by the fact that we were all from different cultures and places and spoke varying amounts of various languages.
I feel like I really am one of those people who has friends all over the world, finally, and almost all of the sudden (although I had friends all over the world before this adventure began, it just didn’t really click until now), and as I told my Polish friend, today, when were saying goodbye and talking about making plans to visit each other, it really makes the world seem like it is just not that big, anymore. It’s hard to imagine how we will make it happen, but I think my Malagasy friend is right, I think we will all meet again, someday, and soon. Because as much as it is hard to imagine how we will, it’s harder to imagine how we could stay away, now.
NB: Malagasy is apparently not the culturally correct term for the people of Madagascar, but, while I’ve hear it, I haven’t had a chance to ask how to spell the correct term, so it will have to do, for now.
It has occurred to me, today, that I have been planning and doing and thinking about things in a way that I haven’t for a very long time, since this trip started. Grown-up Emily is usually so much more reasonable and pragmatic, but grown-up Emily hasn’t been in charge, much, lately, and I think that is a very, very good thing, because she is kind of dull and unattractive, whereas never-planning-to-grow-up Emily is certainly a little more outrageous and lives on the edge, a little, but she also loves more, laughs more, and just generally speaking, lives more, so I think I’ll stick with her as long as possible, from here on. ;{P
Speaking of reasonable and pragmatic, my new goal is to go to Lebanon, next summer. Talk about the opposite of reasonable and pragmatic, but the real Emily Davis! will make it happen, if she really wants it. All I have to do, now, is come up with a list of things I might like to do there and Aline and Maya have promised to look into how I can pull it off. I think if I had to describe the entire group of people I met in Strasbourg in two words, those words would be generous and sincere. Oh, and brilliant, every last one of them. I feel like the entire trip, the money, the frustrations, the living conditions, all of the negative things that I could complain about, don’t even hold a candle to what I’m going home with, particularly because I feel like I’m going home with myself, the real me, I just hope I can hang on it to that, when I get back to real life, because there is nothing more precious.
My Canadian friend, in particular, has lit a fire under me to go after the big stuff. He has lived all over the world, speaks at least 4 languages, and also just started law school, at 29. He and I have a lot in common and it makes me feel like if he can do it, so can I. He said something to me, the first day that we really talked, as we wandering the streets of some charming Alsacian town, looking for more wine to taste, that I think I knew, but needed to hear from someone else. He said that, while it’s true that there are certainly logistical and financial limitations on anyone’s ability to travel the way he has and does, at the end of the day, it’s probably mostly true that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the biggest obstacle to making it happen is usually your own mind.
Which brings me to Lebanon (well, hopefully it will bring me to Lebanon, if you know what I mean). I met these wonderful ladies from there who have encouraged me to come visit/get an internship, there, and I think it’s a wonderful idea. I have no idea how I’m going to tell my mother about this plan, but talk about a CV builder. We’ll see if my friends and I can make it happen, but I have hopes that the Canadian is right.
I’m relieved that I’ve finally found something that excites me, professionally, though, too. I’m thinking right to development and/or rights of refugees are calling my name, because they both present challenging economic problems and are related to a lot of things that interest me/strike a chord in my bleeding heart. I suppose I’ll have to look into which IGOs will provide assistance with paying back my loans for law school and/or if government work might suit me, for real, this time. I don’t know why I didn’t think of going the “outside of Europe” route, before, though, with respect to internships, because I feel like, outside of the European system, nobody is going to care what school I go to or how my grades are (to a degree), having an American law student/lawyer with the international interest and experience and connections that I have, now, will be more than sufficient to impress and interest an IGO, NGO, or government such that I could get an internship, someplace else. Besides, the Middle East or North Africa (or anywhere in Africa, for that matter) are both the important places for development and refugees where the real work is needed.
I’ve been thinking about Latin America, a lot, lately, too, because of my experience in Panama and the fact that I’m really quite comfortable interacting with people from the various cultures there, but that also seems like something that is overdone by Americans, at least insofar as anything is overdone by Americans in the international sphere. Also, because of the ease and comfort with which I interacted with so many different kinds of people in Strasbourg, it has occurred to me that, when I started this grand adventure called adulthood, way back in 2002, my goal was to push my comfort zone so far that I could be comfortable in most any social/cultural situation. I have been falling behind on that goal, in recent years, and I feel the need to get back on it. Hence, an internship, literally on the other side of the world. That seems like a good way to go, to get back up on that horse, in a big way.
So, what do I want to do now? First of all, I think I should start doing some research on what kinds of development and refugee challenges and opportunities exist in Lebanon. I would imagine they have issues with Palestinians, being so close to Israel, but I don’t know, for sure, and that, in itself, bothers me a little. Next, I think I will start talking to Shep about water rights issues and see if I can tie property rights and the right to development and refugees together. I’m thinking access to safe water and the right of education to girls and women might be a good journal article, but I’ll need some help narrowing my focus, to be sure.
I guess maybe that’s where the plan should stop, for now, because those two things are pretty ambitious, oh, except I should find out who teaches that Human Rights Law class and find out if there’s an international law journal at JMLS that I might be able to write onto. Oh, and try to get on staff at AMUN, for the fall. That seems like a good idea, too.
On a mostly unrelated note, I’ve also begun questioning whether I want to continue taking the ADHD drugs, on this trip. I feel like the grown-up Emily that I have become not so fond of, recently, is as much a result of being able to focus as it is about maturity. I mean, really, does setting a goal to find out how to say “swing set” in as many languages as I can, just because I like swing sets, and collecting that information in roughly 10 different languages seem like something grown-up Emily would do? Who would you rather be/hang out with? The ability to focus and function on a grown-up level might have to be sacrificed in the interests of following my heart, and my deep down smart place. Especially because the drugs don’t really seem to be doing anything for my grades, at the end of the day, and I kind of feel like they are limiting my creativity in ways that seriously hamper my intelligence. I guess there will be time enough for experimenting with that, soon enough.
In any case, it turns out that, no matter how many times I was tired and frustrated and wanted to go home, over the past 9 weeks, it has been the adventure of my lifetime, thus far. I laughed harder, sang more, smiled bigger, and felt more, good and bad, than I have in a long, long time. I even had a good cry in my dorm room, last night (okay, very early this morning), before I went to bed because I was sad about breaking up the band and going back to our respective real lives, and even that felt right, if a little painful. Even though I am sad about saying goodbye, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.
I’m still blown away by how quickly the people I met came to mean the world, to me, which is really kind of funny, because they also happen to BE the world, to me, literally. From the Scots and the Brazilians to the Africans, Arabs, and Eastern Europeans and everyone in between, I choose to believe that the best humanity has to offer would look, think, and behave a lot like this group. Almost everyone at the conference was friendly and seemed genuinely interested in getting to know people from everywhere. Even the French speakers, who didn’t speak a word of English, would at least greet you with a smile and a “Ca va?” or “Bonsoir” on the stairs or at the door. It was a lovely atmosphere, in spite of the Spartan accommodations, and it was really neat to see everyone making the most of it.
I had a really interesting conversation with my favorite Italian (shhh, don’t tell the others) about this, while we were doing laundry, yesterday (laundry, like a lot of other things, particularly corkscrews, will never be the same after spending a month with that guy, c’est pas possible). He was actually the one who pointed out that the Americans, generally speaking, were the ONLY people there who didn’t greet everyone they encountered in the public spaces in the dorm.
It makes me wonder if that is because people from other countries were there for the Human Rights aspect of the conference and were, therefore, naturally friendlier people, whereas the Americans were there because it was an easy way to spend the summer in Europe or if Americans are, as a whole, generally like that. I told him about my friends from Texas and Louisiana who came to Loyola after Hurricane Katrina and the culture shock they experienced and we talked about the possibility that the climate plays a role in that kind of thing, because he is an anthropologist and spent some time in living in Finland and Poland and found the same to be true, there. This, and all the conversations like it that I had, this month, certainly have deepened my suspicions that I am an academic, at heart. Which probably means graduate school, about which I have mixed feelings, but too, but that’ll have to wait, because I think the best approach is one school, at a time, for me.
I have to say that I think the world would be a safer, kinder, more fun place if it could be run the way our study group was for the final exam. Granted, the exam was not nearly as complex as the problems in the real world (much to our collective chagrin) and we didn’t anticipate the questions as well as we would have liked, but most of us passed (no small feat, believe it or not) and one among us even got the only distinguished diploma in Human Rights Law that was given out at this year’s study session, and all of the other finalists/high scores were among our social circle, so I would say we were pretty effective.
I have mixed feelings about going home, at this point, because I’m excited to get started figuring out and working on my next move, in some ways, and I can’t wait to see my friends and sleep in my own bed, and all that stuff, but I also worry that I’m going to feel different, in some pretty fundamental ways, than I did when I left, which was, of course, both a reason to do this, and a reason to be apprehensive about it, in the first place. There are also two things about that that worry me. On one hand, I want to believe that I HAVE changed, in some fundamental ways, for the better, and I hope that it will stick, but am worried that I will somehow lose my grip on myself, again, because it’s happened before and Chicago is a hard place. On the other hand, I’m worried that I HAVE changed and it will be isolating, because I had grown accustomed to turning off some parts of who I am, because that’s what it has taken to be comfortable in the space and time in which I find myself, these days.
In any case, it will unfold as it will and I’ll deal with it as it comes, because there’s nothing else I can do about it, but I’m very glad that I have this week vacation with my German, before I go home. I need some kind of transition, for sure, why not do it in some beautiful cities and on beautiful beaches in the Riviera with my favorite German man? Especially since he has planned the whole thing and all I have to do is get myself to Hamburg (which I almost have) and be pleasantly surprised for a week, straight, haha.
And now that I have poured all of these thoughts onto “paper” and killed about 5 hours on the train (I’ve been alternating between writing and taking pictures of Germany as it zooms past my window), I think I’m journalled out for the day and will just sit, listen to music, and think more deep thoughts for the last hour of my journey to Hamburg.
A bientot!
Emily
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