{"id":4852,"date":"2016-06-11T03:23:01","date_gmt":"2016-06-11T07:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=4852"},"modified":"2019-07-18T18:13:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T18:13:37","slug":"the-thought-of-leaving-truly-hurts-my-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2016\/06\/11\/the-thought-of-leaving-truly-hurts-my-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thought of Leaving Truly Hurts My Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The past few weeks have been really hard. It\u2019s exam time here and a lot of my Kiwi friends have gone home to study, thus meaning we have had to say our goodbyes already. I never realized I could grow so close to the friends I have made here in such a short period of time. These are truly friendships that will last a lifetime and it breaks my heart to say goodbye.<\/p>\n

Last week, I had my final concert performance for my Maori class and I have never felt more at home in New Zealand than I did that night. Singing (in a different language, nonetheless) and performing a poi dance in front of a couple hundred Kiwis (most of whom were of Maori decent) was nerve racking at first, but after the first twenty minutes; looking out into the audience and seeing smiling faces looking back at me brought me tears. I didn\u2019t know the exact translation for some of the songs, but knowing that I was singing a song about Maori men going off to war, and seeing many Maoris in the audience tearing up during the song, because they had lost a father or grandfather in the war made the reality of the songs hit me. There was so much love in the auditorium that night, and I just remember thinking to myself, I just can\u2019t leave this place.<\/p>\n

A few nights ago, I read a quote that captioned my emotions entirely:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will never be completely at home again because your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of knowing and loving people in more than one place\u201d<\/p>\n

When I first came to New Zealand, everyone I met who was studying abroad here talked about how they were studying abroad to gain more \u201clife experience,\u201d or gave the traditional, gag-inducing, \u201cI\u2019m studying abroad to find myself\u201d response. I have never found myself fitting into either of those categories. My reason for studying abroad was simple; I love traveling, and I thought it would be cool to go to school in another country for a semester. That\u2019s it, plain and simple. Before I left for New Zealand, I considered myself someone who knows who I am, what I want in life, and like the person I am. Studying abroad changed all of that.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m about to leave New Zealand, I\u2019ve come to realize that I will never be the same person I was before this experience. I\u2019ll never be completely at home again either. I consider my home a place where I am surrounded by my family and friends, and now I can\u2019t limit that to just one country anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past few weeks have been really hard. It\u2019s exam time here and a lot of my Kiwi friends have gone home to study, thus meaning we have had to say our goodbyes already. I never realized I could grow so close to the friends I have made here in such a short period of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-otago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16478,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions\/16478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}