I'm back in America and I still don't know how I feel about it.

About 4 weeks ago I got on a plane and flew across the Atlantic Ocean, headed for Los Angeles. I was going back to America. After spending almost 2 months travelling through England, Scotland, and Wales, it felt more like I was leaving my home than going back to it. That whole day I had been trying really hard not to cry. Travelling is stressful enough without having to wipe tears from your eyes as you drag your luggage onto the Underground, pass your black backpack embroidered with the BYU International Studies insignia through security, and tell the customs officer just exactly what you had been doing in the UK for those two glorious months.
"That must have been a wonderful experience," he said, smiling as he looked over my passport one last time.
As I buckled my seat belt and listened to the stewardess give instructions, I couldn't help but feel the difference between this flight across the Atlantic and the first one. I had boarded that first plane across the Atlantic with the idea that when I came back, I would not be the same. Something profound would surely happen to me during these two months. And I was right. It did happen. But it hadn't changed me in the ways that I expected.
You see, I had imagined becoming a new person. Before I left, I heard from previous students of the program that it would be a life-changing experience. "You'll discover so much about yourself," one student told us during our prep class, as she clutched the journal she had carried with her throughout all her travels.
As I sat in that cramped airplane seat staring at the back of the seat in front of me, I began to realize that this trip hadn't completely replaced who I was, rather it had simply stripped away some of the clay to reveal more of the figure of self that I had knew was there all along. Rather than being completely new, I was simply more sure of the things I had almost known before. The last lines of Robert Frost's poem "Into My Own" drifted through my mind as the rev of the airplane engines began to fill the cabin: "They would not find me changed from him they knew—/Only more sure of all I thought was true."

                                                         Into My Own
                                                       by Robert Frost

ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day	5
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track	10
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

The first day that I woke up in America I wanted to cry. I felt overwhelmed with this churning excitement of what I had experienced mixed with a foreboding sadness, a stubborn emotion that kept lurking in the back of my mind, reminding me that all of that was over now. At first this sadness was just a party-pooper, but gradually he began to take over the whole party altogether, and once that happened, it wasn't really a party at all.
Later that day, I went with my friend to get pedicures, and lunch at Kneaders. As we sped along the American freeway, everything seemed so big and brown.
"So we've been talking too much about me," she said, glancing over at me in the passenger seat. "Let's talk about what we really need to talk about: Tell me about your trip."
I smiled and let out a halfhearted laugh but before I could open my mouth to tell her anything, I started crying. I looked out the window, trying to get it to stop before she noticed, but it was too late.
"I'm sorry," I said. "This must be really awkward for you."
She laughed. "It was that good, huh?" she said in response.
It really was. But it was all over now.
Luckily, I didn't burst into tears every time somebody asked me how my trip was. I probably would've been deemed as emotionally unstable and crazy, which I am, but generally it's nice to be seen as sane in the public eye. However, I did have a hard time answering the question that nearly everyone asked me: What was your favorite part? This question paralyzed me. I felt like I was being shoved up against a wall and forced to choose a favorite child, not that I have children, but you get the idea.
How could I single out a single moment from the entire experience and choose that as the poster child for what I did? Just one couldn't do it justice. But I had to answer with something. Usually I would end up saying something like "Stonehenge" or "the hostel on the coast of Tintagel," but I'm here to tell you that neither of those is true. The truth is there is no favorite because the whole experience was my favorite.
So my goal this summer is to use this blog to record experiences from my trip. I'm not going to be able to remember or write everything that happened, but I want to at least capture what I can. Then, maybe, just like the individual strokes of a painting, other people will be able to take them in up close and then step back and understand the whole. Even if it's just a hazy glimpse of what it really was.
Here goes nothing.