Adjusting without Internet

We were warned that some of our homestays may not have internet; mine is one of those homestays.  This was hard to get used to for many reasons.  One of my instructors here didn’t have internet at first and he said it felt like he didn’t have a soul.  As a US college kid I spend lots more time on the internet than I need to so cutting back on my internet use wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that without a phone, the internet is the only way I have to contact people.  We can use the school for internet access but that’s pretty much only during the week.

Adjusting to being over 4,000 miles from home was harder than I thought it would be, especially when I wasn’t able to contact many people at first.  I thought I would be ok.  I’m in Europe, I should be enjoying all of it but between jet lag and anxiety I had a rough first few days not helped by the fact that I didn’t have internet for more than a few minutes at a time.  The first morning I was in Bregenz, which was 2 days since I had left the US, I went down to the stage where I was told the day before there was free WiFi.  It was raining and they were practicing on the stage so you couldn’t go on the bleachers but they would be too wet to sit on anyways.  I ended up standing awkwardly balancing my umbrella against my shoulder with my chin as I typed a few emails and a facebook status from my Kindle.  I’m sure I looked absolutely ridiculous but I didn’t care.  It was the only contact I had with anyone from home and it was as the excitement of being in Europe was being replaced by anxiety.    

With only a few minutes of internet throughout the weekend I set up a skype session for some time when I got out of class on Monday.  The problem was that I didn’t know for sure when class would get out but Joe being the amazing person he is got up at 7:45 to wait for me to get online since I needed to skype.  We ended up getting out of class around 1:00 that day since we were just talking about the history of Austria and then ran to the store and the train station to reserve trains for the weekend and after the trip.  I ended up getting back to the school at 8:20 Eastern time to an e-mail from Joe saying that he was going back to bed but he left his computer open and phone next to him so he would hear an email or skype call.  I only had about 15 minutes to skype since there was a group of people hiking to the top of the nearby mountain.  I was glad I was in the classroom alone as I spent most of the call crying for no good reason other than anxiety. 

It turned out that first short skype call was all I needed to get over my anxiety.  Since then I have been fine.  I think a combination of having a more of a routine with classes and doing stuff after class with a group have helped make me less anxious and I also was just more comfortable with everything here.  Joe and I ended up skyping the next day for a few minutes because I stopped at the school on my way back from the beach and he was able to be online.  That skype call went better with no tears on my end.  Yesterday while everyone from my apartment went to the school to “work on homework” between eating dinner and going to the bar I was able to skype again and was all smiles as I told him more details about my weekend that I didn’t feel like taking the time to type out on my Kindle while facebook chatting on the train.  (Trains with WiFi are pretty fantastic.)  I’m hoping that I will be fine with everything for the rest of the trip.  I am having the time of my life and I will try not to let mild anxiety get in the way of that.