Ups and Downs

I'm going through more of the ups and downs of the AFS program. Right now I'm near the bottom, not because of any kind of homesickness, no, but because I love my friends and family here so much, and I can't help but think that in 8 months I have to go back to the US. I never want to leave my family, friends, boyfriend, my school, this culture, or anything else about norway. I feel like being here for only one year is completely holding me back. Everything has to be put into a strange perspective of, 'yeah we'll have fun now, but I'm just going to leave again.' It's horrible. I wish my family in the US would just pick up and move to eidsvoll so I could live here forever with my friends and both families.

It's so strange what I'm feeling right now though. I have a really hard time describing it. I think its a mixture between anxiousness and fear. I'm anxious to have the best time I can here, making as many friends as possible, but yet I fear that once I leave I'll be forgotten about and everything will go back to normal, as if I was never here at all.

I have two lives now, the one I had in the US, and now the one here with my friends and family. Which one would I have to choose if I had to pick? I have no idea, its the hardest decision anyone would ever have to make, but I feel as if I have to pick between what I had and what I have now. Why do I feel forced? I dont know, but its a horrible feeling. I love my family back in the US because theyre my family, they support me in almost everything I do, but I feel that my friends here know me better for who I am.

For a long time I felt if I had to lie to my family back in the US to make them happy, but I can talk to my family and friends here in norway freely about those matters, and not only do people support me with what I think, but they all agree completely with me. It's a difference in how we were all brought up. My generation has a completely different culture than my parents, for instance. My parents in the US were both brought up as catholics. I was too brought up as a catholic, but yet I am completely different from them. I never had the guts to tell them what I truly think because I was always scared of them and what they'd think of me if I didnt turn out how they wanted me to.

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Tristan and I at school