COLUMN: Welcomed with Alienation

difficult to make the transition from life abroad back to the University. Last January, after months of purchasing and preparing, after renewing and confirming, after seminars and sessions, I flew to London for five months of study. Don't be concerned (I've heard you moan; you whine, "another pretentious asshole who wants to teach us of the goods of Europe.") Of course, it was strange and took a lot of work to get settled. ("Blah blah" you mutter. Exactly.) What does this have to do with you? Maybe nothing. But odds are you have a good friend or two who have been abroad or will go, and you might even be planning on going yourself. Then there are a few of you that will take my words to heart because you're back, like me, and you live with what I'm saying. Whether my arguments are mirrors to your silent mind or opinions you've never even bothered to think about, I'm setting off an alarm. Because the Penn abroad office offers incompetent and useless help, all we can do is rely on our friends. Here's a little anecdote to make my point clear. A few nights ago, my roommate and I had three friends over, one of whom had studied in London with me. At the first mention of our trip (which came late in the discussion and was really nothing more than a passing comment), someone mumbled, "England, England, England." And this isn't the first time I've heard that line. Since I returned three weeks ago, I've learned quickly not to mention a city, a story, a play, a pub or anything related. I didn't want to deal with the hostile responses. Thus, I've been wiping the experience from my memory to the point that I question whether it was a dream or reality. I'm not quite sure why this is, but I do know it's frustrating to be constantly biting my tongue. Life continued at Penn while we were gone, just like every other semester. My friends partied at Fling, celebrated their 21st birthdays, gathered and laughed at Hey Day. Maybe because I can relate to these activities I've missed -- because a part of me DID want to be here -- I am curious to hear the stories. And maybe because our lives on the other side of th world were so foreign to many of my friends (as they were to me before I left), my words are received as nothing more than, "Look at what I've done and where I've been, and isn't that great?" Herein lies the grave misunderstanding. We go abroad because it is an opportunity that we want to grasp, because it works with our majors, because we've always dreamt of it, and because Penn offers it. Other people don't go abroad because one of these factors isn't there. That's the only difference. God knows it doesn't mean that I'm any better than someone who didn't go. And I most likely didn't have "more" and "richer" experiences than my friends who were here. Our lives were simply dissimilar. While we are away as Penn students in different countries, we do what everyone does over there: go places, see things, absorb other cultures. It's that simple. Traveling is part of the package, and stories are part of the result. But if I were to begin a sentence saying, "In Prague...," my point is lost in immediate misinterpretation. I'm not saying, "Listen to me, you poor little fools, because I've been to Prague," but am instead relaying an applicable story that happened to take place in that city. If I began with, "In Harrisburg...," would my point then be heard? Just like not everyone who goes abroad wants to talk about it, not everyone I talk to is closed to my experiences. Some friends have been incredibly receptive and have asked to hear a story or see the pictures. Yet I have grown wary of driving them away, and it is difficult to mention anything without a cloak of fear always shielding my words -- fear that friends will quickly be tired of my tales. When someone asks, "How was your trip?," I've been conditioned to give a one-word answer rather than the truth. The truth is, I can't answer in one word. This is obviously not one of the more significant problems with Penn or the world; however, it is very widespread. I had a friend many years ago whose family was transferred to London for three years before returning to Pennsylvania. When they came back, the family sought "re-patriation counseling." It went something like this. Here in the States if you ski, you may go to Vermont, or, if you're lucky, Colorado. In Europe, everyone skis the Alps. But if your American friends are talking about skiing, you are not to mention that you practiced the sport in Switzerland or Austria because it sounds pretentious and obnoxious. Tell your stories with ambiguous places in order to be accepted. For them, the Alps are normal; for us, they may be magical, extraordinarily expensive, and strangely pompous. This seems to me to be not only unjust, but sad. Traveling across the world is not a mythical activity attainable only by some undefined elite, but an experience incorporated into our lives like all other experiences. It's ludicrous to be forced to censor chapters in order to avoid aggression or alienation. So the next time a friend has a story that took place in Paris, Venice or Dublin, give them a chance to tell it without reading it as condescension to the poor unworldly guy. They might actually be telling you the story for the story.