Student Forms + Log-In Issues

We are aware there is an issue with forms loading in MyIESabroad accounts. We recommend troubleshooting this issue by logging out and back in, using an incognito or private browser, clearing cache and cookies, and/or reloading the page. If the issue persists, please reach out to your IES Abroad Program Advisor.

Find Your Advisor

Home for the Holidays

Thanksgiving is a very American holiday, and it is celebrated in a very predictable manner. Delicious smells in the house; family; football games (preferably with the volume turned down); and a familiar frenzy of energy. It served to cast my homecoming into an interesting light: normalcy.

“How does it feel to be home?” they’d ask.
“Normal,” I said, laughing, “freakishly normal.”

This sense was exaggerated by having my friends home for Thanksgiving, too. I had many a happy rendezvous, but the thing was that I always meet them at this time of year. An occasional story of New Zealand excursions was all that I had to remind me I’d been away.

While I experienced no jet lag, and I otherwise made a smooth transition to life as before…it feels so much like life as before that I struggle believing I was ever gone. And so all my talk, hoping I’d feel deeply changed by the gardens and waters of New Zealand, sits in my memories like the remnants of a dream. It’s disconcerting, trying to see past the normalcy to integrate my travels with my life here.

One night I dreamed of New Zealand: of my host family, and climbing mountains, and clear blue waters. Though I will be slow to interpret dreams with much weight, I do believe dreams help us process issues in our lives…sort of a sleepy rumination.

I’ll have been home for two weeks as of tomorrow night. It doesn’t feel like that long, yet it feels much longer. I don’t know how but I will somehow continue dealing with having been gone and come back. Integrating my travels into my daily life will have to happen somehow. I will wear New Zealand like a tattoo I feel constantly but don’t always show. And a tattoo never fades, just like I will never forget Aotearoa.