Graduation Goggles

Everywhere I go I leave a piece of myself behind. I'm not sure why or even how I go about doing this sometimes.  I just know that months after I have left a place, a part of my yearns beyond belief to go back. Kochi. Fixin. Townsville. Bielefeld. Verona. Clemson. Nagoya. Bormes-les-Mimosa.

They say hindsight is 20/20 and I never really knew what that meant until I took a step back and realized what I was doing. I had an amazing year in France, but it was very difficult and there was no doubt about that. Yet as I sit around eagerly packing a bag, I seem to only think of the good things that happend while I was in France. My amazing host family, the R's. The 15 pounds I gained in delicious chocolate, fabulous desserts, endless bread and nutella.... the list goes on and on. It is only when I skim through this blog that I remember the bouts of cold weather, the endless gray days, and constant feeling that the country of France hated me and wanted me to suffer.

This whole thing got me thinking about conventions and stuff we do here in the United States of America. It made me realize that Hindsight 20/20 is a good thing to have. Probably one of the only things that gets us through. Another way to put Hindsight 20/20 is called, "Graduation Goggles." It's that feeling of meaningful yearning after the fact of everything being said and done. When your standing on the edge of graduation from High School, you look back and remember the wonderful memories: befriending the older kids, who seemed so determined to go out of their way to help you get through and navigate High School; the playful teasing you received from the 'popular' kids that made you into a stronger person; the delightful school lunches made from Frannie the kind old school lunch lady; kickball tournaments in Gym Class that seemed epic and exciting; Prom (enough said...); the first day of classes Freshman year when you had that slightly queasy rumbling in your stomach as you began your next great journey. This is what you see when you peer back through graduation goggles, rather than what really happened: the older kids going out of their way to ruin your life and direct you to the cafeteria when you really just want to go to the auditorium, the terrible horrifying teasing from the 'popular' kids that led to you faking sick far more than you were actually sick, Frannie the old lunch lady that used to scream at you for being fat every time you bought more than two cookies, kickball tournaments that ended with the school psychologists coming to talk kids out of suicide threats,  Prom (enough said...) and the first day of classes Freshman year when you were so nervous you hyperventilated and didn't even make it to third period.

I'm doing my best to pull off the Graduation Googles as I embark on a journey back to France. The fact is, France is too unpredictable not to be cautious. With my luck, I'll end up stuck in a Paris train station all night because I was too busy pretending France was the world's most exciting country. Oh yeah- I've done that before.