One Year Later: A Life Update

A little over a year ago, I arrived in New Delhi, India. It was 5 in the morning, I hadn't slept in over 24 hours, and my first impression was that it looked like a strange rendition of Florida. I met a couple new people who I hugged awkwardly, only to feel like their family within a few months. There's a lot more to the story than that, but if you haven't caught it already, read my other posts or give me a call.

A year goes by and a lot has changed. I'm back in the states, I'm at school again, meeting some more new people, and it doesn't look as much like Florida anymore.

Some key points of the last year include:

- Spending the summer with my family, trying to work out where I belong if I'm not in India and don't really feel like I'm in the US either

- Returning to Caney Lake for another year at camp

- Moving to St. Louis to begin school at Webster University

- Realizing that photography is a big part of me, but that I wanted to major in International Studies with a minor in French

- Really flourishing in my anthropology class!

- Meeting some wonderful new people

- Discovering that a nursing career might just be a path for me

- Breaking my foot the first week of classes and feeling totally helpless

- Finding out that I'm strong enough to make straight As in my first semester despite having a broken foot and missing my family all the time

- Feeling a little lost in a new community, journaling a lot about it

- Struggling to find a new church that fits

- Rekindling my love of reading and discovering thriftbooks.com!

- Getting a new job at Maypop Garden and Coffee Shop!

- Getting a campus job as a tutor with Student Literacy Corps

- Read a few awesome books (The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Fever by Shawn Wallace, The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoevsky, The Shack by William Paul Young, currently Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

- Spending the holidays with my family

- Feeling really elated and hopeful for the new semester!

India----not India the place, India the people----sits on my heart every day. It's tough to carry around such a grand puzzle piece of you that not a lot of people can see or understand. In my next post, you can read a piece I wrote recently for a class about some of what India left on my heart.

After a year though, I feel I'm in a place I need to be. I come out of my classrooms energized by the issues we discuss and the topics I'm learning. This past year has been wonderful and difficult, but I wouldn't change it. I carry this year with me as I walk to class, as I talk to people, as I understand the person I am.

Thanks for catching up with me.

Jenna