Sad Goodbyes

Stina, Ozlem, Carmen, & Tugba

Stina, Ozlem, Carmen, Tugba, and me

Well I just said goodbye to one of my very best friends in Graz, Tugba. It was so sad, I cried while giving her a hug. It’s a hard thing, studying abroad. You go somewhere you’ve never been and you don’t know anyone and you have no idea what to expect. Then, you meet a million people from all different places, and you try desperately to make friends and exchange phone numbers or facebook information. Then, you meet up with people. You put yourself out there, take a risk, ask them if they want to meet up. Sometimes, it’s a little awkward. Conversation is slow. Maybe their English isn’t very good. But you do whatever you can to make a few friends in the beginning. Once you have a few, you start to meet people and meet friends of friends. You form your little group. You start to travel with these people, take classes together, and form deeper relationships. You start to let them into your life a little bit at a time. Piece by piece, you form true friendships.  Then, it all comes to an end just as quickly as it started. Your friends, your pals, your only go to’s in a land far away from home… you have to leave each other. You go off to different places, all over the world.

To be honest, I really only made a few close friends in Austria. I have a lot of acquaintances, people who I like to hang out with in the park, meet up for a cup of coffee, exchange travel stories, maybe take a class together. But the ones who bring tears to my eyes when I hug them goodbye, there’s only a few. Tugba, Carmen, Stina, and Ozlem have been my girls since I’ve been here. They’re the ones I’ve spent most of my time with, and who have made a lasting imprint on my heart. Saying goodbye to them is so hard. With an ocean between us, I honestly have no idea when I will see them next.  But I am so thankful for these girls, and for the memories that I have with them in Graz.

It’s funny to look back on the way that I became friends with them. Stina is best friends with the little sister of one of my best friends.  Megan is a girl who I played soccer with at Arkansas State, but who is from New Mexico. Her little sister, Lisa, did an exchange program for a semester at our school, to spend time with Megan. During the fall, I was preparing for my semester abroad. I remember the day that I found out that I would be going to Austria. I was telling Lisa about it, and she told me that she has a friend at home who also was going to Austria for the semester. She didn’t know which city, but told me she would call and find out. Turned out, we were going to not only the same city, but also the same university. So crazy. So we got in contact with one another, and got on the same flight to Vienna. Sure enough, we became close friends. 

When I first moved in, I lived in a dorm called Leechgasse. Ozlem also lived in the dorm, on the same floor as me. So I met her, and thought she was so cute. The other people from Turkey, Ben and Tugba, knew that Ozlem was also Turkish and so they met up. Ben and Tugba started coming over to hang out with Ozlem, and so I met them too. The three Turks, who I fell in love with from the beginning. Tugba’s English was pretty bad in the beginning, and it was really hard for me to understand her. But I loved talking to her.  At the time, I had no idea that she would soon be my roommate. Later on, my room got bed bugs. The whole thing was a huge disaster. I was homeless for a while, with my stuff packed in trash bags in all different places. I tried to move into the nicer dorms, but the place I wanted wasn’t available, and the only other rooms were way too expensive. So I moved into Hafnerreiegel, and became roommates with Tugba. The dorm was the joke of the city, but I had a great roommate. I had learned from traveling during our three-week break, that it’s more about who you’re with than where you are. So I decided to live in Haffy with Tugba. From there, we quickly became close friends.

My friendship with Carmen is also a funny story. She was roommates with another American girl, Shelby. She had told me that Carmen didn’t speak English, but that she spoke Spanish, so Shelby and Carmen could talk to each other in Spanish. I never really tried to talk to her, because I thought she couldn’t speak English. Then one day, Stina and I saw Carmen sitting outside her room. We asked her what she was doing, and she told us that Shelby had accidentally locked her out of their room while she was in the kitchen. She didn’t have Shelby’s number, so she was just sitting there and waiting for Shelby to come back some time with the keys and let her in. Stina and I were about to go to Ikea to try to buy a blender, and so we invited Carmen to come. We had fun that day, shopping and talking and meeting one another. All because Carmen had been locked out of her room, we got to meet one another and become very close friends. Crazy how life works.

It’s so funny for me to look back on it all. I remember being on the plane and wondering who I would meet and where I would live. So much was ahead of me. It could have gone a million different ways, but I met who I met and went where I went, and I truly believe that it all happened for a reason. God is sovereign, and knew exactly who I would meet and where I would end up. He works all things together for the good of those who love Him. I am so thankful for the experiences that I had, and the relationships that I still have.

I will be back on American soil in less than two weeks. I am beyond excited!  Back to familiarity, everything being in English, family and American friends. But there are so many mixed emotions right now. Happy to go home, sad to leave my life here. All in all, I think you have to just be thankful for the times that you’ve had, learn from your experiences, and open the next chapter in your book of life. You take each day as it comes. On I go.