As I comfortably lie back on my Grandmother’s couch to write this post, I can’t help but think about how drastically different my daily life will be upon my arrival in Rabat next week. What will I be doing? Will I be in class, participating in orientation activities, wandering around the Medina, or maybe even eating some lamb tagine?
The truth is, I don’t know! I have absolutely no idea where exactly I will be a week from now. I don’t know whose home I’ll be in, whose couch I’ll be lying back on, what food I’ll be eating, what classes I’ll be taking, or even who I will be seeing on a day-to-day basis. Trying to envision myself studying in Rabat is next to impossible – my imagination can only conjure up Googled images of the Medina and a blur of faces and people that I haven’t yet met.
The phrase “I don’t know,” is akin to admitting intellectual defeat. It means coming to terms with the fact that you don’t have the answer to every question, that no matter how much you prepare yourself you may still come up empty handed. Saying “I don’t know” is not something that Georgetown students are typically comfortable with. There is usually some kind of logic or reasoning we can use to grapple with a problem, to answer a question, or to face a challenge.
As I face the three months ahead of me, however, I know that there is nothing that can prepare me for my upcoming adventure. And I am totally OK with that! Scary as it is to have to dive blindly into a foreign country without knowing exactly what’s next, this excitement is what drove me to study abroad in the first place. No amount of IES or OGE study abroad brochures can prepare me for the experience that I’m about to have, and I am beyond thrilled to get started.
Next stop, Morocco!
P.S. Disclaimer: I know how to say “goodbye” in French, but I totally Google translated how to say it in Arabic…so for all I know that Arabic word in the title could mean something entirely different. Hopefully I’ll learn how to say it for real sometime in the next few weeks!
