Is it Saturday . . . Already?

Hard to believe, but another week has passed! And thank goodness this week was better than the last one! The highlight of my week was having dinner with Paul and Kaatje at there home in Brugge. It was lovely! And it was sooooooo necessary. I came over about 7:00 and stayed until 10:30. We had wonderful conversation and got some dates scheduled for my Rotary presentations. Most importantly, I discovered there is life outside of the College of Europe; real life - with kitchens, and couches, and families, and other things and people that have nothing to do with school. It was refreshing and revitalizing.

It was also very interesting. At one point during the conversation, Paul asked me what I wanted to do after the College (always my favorite question: not). I gave my usual answer of "I have no earthly idea," but then decided to qualify it a bit. I explained that before I came to the College (hereafter referred to as CoE), I thought I might go for another degree afterwards, find a job and stay in Europe working for the EU, do a one year teaching assistantship in France, etc. I then proceeded to explain that after being at the CoE, my ideas had somewhat changed. First, I am most certainly NOT going for another degree right after this one. I will be done with school for a while after this year. The teaching assistantship in France is still an option, but the longer I am here, the more I think that I will be done with Europe after this (at least for a little while). I love Europe; always have. But the world is so big and I would like to see where else I may fall in love with. That being said, a little voice in the back of my head keeps saying "South Africa" and I must admit that I would LOVE to go back to Africa. Last but not least is something I never thought I would want. But I have been away from home for five years now (impossible to believe), and there is a big part of me that would really like to come back to the US when I am finished here. I will never be done with traveling, and goodness knows I am usually not the type of person to stay in one place for long, but there is always that desire to go back to what you know. And even more than that, living abroad makes you appreciate home and living close to your family. It also tells you where your loyalties lie. I love the US. I love what we stand for, I love how we do things, I love American culture and I love that I am an American (I won't start singing, don't worry). But I am serious. Europe is still appealing and I will always love it, but I will NEVER give up my US citizenship (although I might be persuaded to accept dual citizenship somewhere).

So I still don't know what I want to do come June 21, but I do know myself a little better everyday and I suppose that is something.

As for right now, I am looking forward to my weekend and I will keep working hard to finish this crazy idea called my masters degree.

Peace, Love, and Waffles