Right where I need to be

With everything from residence life, getting organized for classes, making sure I manage to do laundry on occasion and of course scheduling all of this around fun, which consumes my every waking thought, I have no idea how it is already the end of August. Where this month went, I have no idea but I will tell you one thing, I know I enjoyed every minute of it.

It has been about 6 weeks since I moved to Macomb and while things have been a whirlwind lately, I figure now is the perfect time for me to add a post (mainly to make sure Grams stays up to date- but actually).  This is mainly due to the events of the past week that have shown me definitively that I am in a completely new mindset as well as a new environment.

This past week has been challenging…to say the least. It has tested my patience and forced me to get creative in pretty much every aspect of my life. This is not due to the fact that I’m homesick. This is not due to the fact that I’m overwhelmed with classes and work. In fact, I’m feeling pretty solid in both those areas. It is however, because being Canadian is hard sometimes. Brace yourself for some slight whining, all with a comedic twist of course. 

This week I learned that sending mail requires secret added fees that one can never quite predict. This may also require you to borrow cheques from your supervisor. I learned that sometimes you simply cannot use Canadian credit cards to pay for things, like student fees. I learned that putting things into your tote bag at Walmart to avoid using plastic bags will get you called out by a security person who is accusing you of shoplifting (I promise that in this instance, I had a receipt and fully paid-for items).  I learned that metal seat belts are very hot in the sun and hitting on will result in spilling beverages all over your newly washed dress (of course these last two are more to do with being Holly and less to do with being Canadian- but then again the arctic tundra and my igloo never prepared me for hot seat belts so there’s that). Needless to say, it’s been quite a week. Some of you might be cringing as you picture me throwing one of my classic “diva dip” tantrums. I am proud to say, however, that I pretty much laughed my way through all of these. I owe a big part of this to the people in my life who have quickly become a support system for me. While they can’t always help, they are there to laugh along with me or listen to me vent before trying their best to come up with solutions. No matter how frustrating things got this week, I went to bed every night feeling happy about being in Macomb. Which brings me to my main point (because I’m over this whining business and I know you’re over hearing about it).

Something else that has been at the forefront of my mind lately is how comfortable I am at WIU. And by comfortable, I mean like hundy-p, I do not want to be anywhere else. Macomb and WIU has won me over, I was inclined to use the phrase “captured my heart” but that suits me as well as a tiara on Honey BooBoo so let’s not. Since I realized this last fact (about loving Macomb, not Honey BooBoo, that one was never a secret) I have been trying to figure out why this is the case. I have been thinking a lot about my experience at STARS College last year, when we were sitting listening to current and past graduate students talk about “finding your fit” at a graduate school. They claimed “you wouldn’t know it until you knew it”, which at the time I, maybe too obviously, rolled my eyes at because I wanted to be told where the best school was. I didn’t want to be responsible for picking a school where I was uncomfortable and homesick for the entire 2 years. When I returned from my interview at WIU, I had a good feeling about this, but I assumed my close attachment to my family and to Vancouver would bring me inevitable homesickness for my first semester in Illinois.

I have been asked a lot lately by different people in Macomb and from back home, how I’m doing about being so far from home. I think about this a lot because I feel like I should be missing it more. I feel like it’s almost wrong that I’m not missing Vancouver, even a little bit (sorry sorry sorry to those who just read this and are now contemplating deleting me forever). Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people I wish I could see everyday, a lot of things about BC that I am excited to one day see again, but I’m absolutely 100% content at WIU.  I am engrossed in the environment, the culture and in getting to know the people.

On some deeper level, I think I was yearning for an experience to have on my own. I owe a lot to UBC and the people I met there, but being so close to home I never really found my independence. That’s something I’m finding here, and I’m loving it. I literally can’t think of any other way to describe where I’m at except in “a really good place”. When people ask, that’s always my response and I have yet to be able to explain it in more depth. Despite my meagre attempt on this blog, there are still so many thoughts rushing through my mind about how unbelievable it is that I am not homesick at all. For me, Macomb is home right now. I’m right where I need to be, doing what I need to do, meeting who I need to meet and that feels amazing.

GGLI,

hollyd