For the third time that day, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. For the third time that day, I was being handed bad news of the worst kind from home. There was shock, and anger, and not a few tears forcibly held back. And I wasn’t there.

Boy, what a semester this has been, and I don’t mean here in New Zealand. I’m talking about the world that was, my world. Back home. It feels as though the real world had descended upon all that I know, and wrought havoc in my absence. And I wasn’t there.

Everyone says that while you’re abroad, things will change. You’ll change, your home will change, and the reconciliation between the two is what re-entry is all about. I read the pamphlets, I went to the orientations, I heard these words and dismissed them, because hey, in the context of being in another country, catching the accent, and fulfilling a dream, re-entry was the last thing I could possibly concern myself with. I expected “change” to be “we redecorated the quadrangle at your dorm.” But as the semester has marched on, reports from home have trickled back to me. News of changes, and not all of it minor. Crises. Health problems. Bad things happening to people I know. Once-familiar faces that I will never see again on this earth. And I wasn’t there.

You can start to appreciate my present dilemma. Without doubt, studying abroad for a semester has been superlative on a vast number of levels. Never before have I had so much fun. Never before have I been so awed. Never before have I learned so much in so short a time. This has been a wholly unique experience which I knew from the very start would be one of those events. You know, the kind that last a lifetime, and I would someday embellish and regale for my children and their children. But now I’ve become settled, I’ve gotten over that terrible and foreign feeling of missing my friends from back home, and replacing it is another awkward mixture—a feeling of helplessness to stop the madness, but a strange detachment to the facts. In my mind’s eye, I cannot help but think that everything will be the same when I go back. Even the quad.

But they won’t be. And I wasn’t there to see it.

I feel a bit irresponsible, like I’ve skipped out on reality for a semester, just when everything gets a bit tough. And then I feel silly, because there is no way that I could have foreseen life taking such a tragic turn. But still, the feeling persists in my waking thoughts, haunts my dreams. While my friends and family battle adversity, I’m languishing on a rock in the mountains, oohing and ahhing over the sunrise. When my friends are quiet with mourning, I’m turning up the volume on my computer, blasting the soundtrack to my life.

But aren’t I being just a touch melodramatic? Yes, perhaps, but that’s life, isn’t it—melodramatic? I write both the facts and my thoughts without exaggeration; if that constitutes melodrama, then so be it. I’ve got that sickening feeling that’s something akin to walking up a flight of stairs and thinking there’s one more step than is actually there. You lose your balance, and there’s a thrill of horror and surprise, an electric jolt spreading from your stomach as your foot falls through empty space.

However, one always regains their balance in the end. As with the peculiar feeling before, this is not an emotion that dominates my countenance, but when it arises, it’s so pervasive and all-encompassing that I am unable to settle to anything. I am not unduly worried about my long-term emotions, because if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that forever is a very long time, and feelings are very rarely up to the task. Back home, people are experiencing that great and wonderful and sometimes sad thing called life, and I needn’t fret; I’ll have my turn all too soon.

And so the cycle continues, with me overcome when sorrow finds its way into my heart, and then the logical side of me taking over after a short while, and realizing that in the end, everything will come out in the wash.

It has been my exhilarating experience that studying abroad has somehow amplified my me-ness. When I’m excited, I am truly euphoric; when sadness grips me, it lingers on longer than is entirely necessary. Conversations delve deeper, introspection uncovers new truths. Even procrastinating on homework assignments has been an increasingly risky race against time. I feel that life itself has grown larger than life, and the trials and tribulations contained therein have become titanic, gargantuan, epic. There’s more to this world than expected, and you won’t be able to prepare for it by reading a Lonely Planet guide. When you say goodbye, you’ve got to be prepared for the fact that it may be a final goodbye.

I wasn’t ready for that. But now, as I look ahead, I realize that my trip to New Zealand, indirectly, may have taught me the most valuable lesson I’ve learned, a lesson of life’s inherent impermanence. Perhaps the next time life hands me lemons, I’ll not only be able to make lemonade, but sell it, establish a large market dominance, and retire very wealthy.