When you wish you were home

I'm not predisposed to homesickness, but it's been a rough week.

In the aftermath of the US presidential election on Tuesday (in case you didn't know that was happening), it seems like Ireland is just as fascinated with the outcome as the US media is. So by default, American expats have become the authority--and people have a lot of questions to ask us. This isn't a political blog, so it isn't the place for my own feelings about the outcome--but the entire world has a lot of feelings about it, and they want to ask anyone with an American accent to explain it to them. Which is exhausting. (I'm going somewhere with all of this moping, I promise.)

So I've been pretty worn down all week. And Thursday night was the final straw: I was walking across a cobblestone bridge near the university, stumbled over a crack, and my ankle twisted in a pretty impressive fashion. Growing up dancing and then running, I've had my fair share of spraining every joint in my lower body, but this one was bad. End result--me, who's usually a pro at keeping it together while I'm traveling, sobbing on a bench holding my ankle and really, really wanting to be in a city where I had the easiest transit routes to get home memorized, I could call an Uber, I could walk into UHCS and get my ankle looked at, and I knew where to buy an Ace bandage. I wanted to call a friend in Boston--where people have known me for years and are far past judging me for breaking down--but the time difference meant that everyone was still at work or in class, and realistically, the only person who could do anything about it was right there sobbing on a park bench. It was probably the most frustrated I've ever felt while traveling. And making it worse was the knowledge that next week's field day--climbing over slippery rocks that I'm not great on even with two working feet--was the last plausible field day of the season, and may just have become out of the question.

These moments happen. They happened when I started high school in the maze that is the center of one of the largest cities on the West Coast, before Google Maps; they happened when I moved 3000 miles away for college; over the next year, I'm headed to the San Juan Islands and to Bocas del Torro, Panama, and those moments will happen. Nowhere on my predeparture checklist was "stop being a klutz for the next five months, because the consequences will be harder to deal with when you're alone in a foreign country." But as cliched as it is, they're the moments you look back on when you're struggling with something more mundane. Okay, my eardrum just ruptured at work and UHCS is closed, but remember that time I broke my foot before I even knew where the urgent-care place in Brookline is? Okay, our wifi is down and I need to submit an essay in five minutes, but remember the time I landed in a foreign country alone and had no phone service? I think every kid hates the phrase "it builds character"--but it turns out it does.