July 1st.
I was standing in the Warsaw airport at 6am having gone to bed only two hours earlier. I felt sick from getting food poisoned in Ukraine and everything felt very surreal. Rafael, and Prudence watched quietly, Monika gave me an eiffel tower keychain from her recent trip to Paris, Nella smiled and joked in the discrete way that she does, Britt stood anxiously beside me, and my host mom Danka held an American flag. I was feeling nauseous from the food poisoning, but also the added nerves of leaving the country. Daniela smiled at me warmly and lead me to the bathroom where I threw up. As we walked back to the small crowd, she rubbed my back and mothered me. Minutes passed, Britt and I went through the gate, and a strange calmness came over me as we boarded the plane.

It's been one year since I left Poland and my exchange ended. Today the exchange students after me are coming home. The first time I saw them they were timid but excited to start their own exchange and everything about Poland sounded strange. Then I saw one of them when I visited Warsaw six months ago and she knew better Polish than me.

A year later and I'm sitting on a blue couch with glass sliding doors in front of me watching the Aussie sky turn from day to dusk. I have a beautiful girlfriend, an awesome cat, and I wash dogs for a living. A lot of things can change in a year. A lot of things changed for the year I was in Poland. But right now, things are starting to feel more stable. I have the person I want to spend my life with, we have a place to live, and we're building a savings account. We've got the simple things down; it's just the future that remains unknown. But that's ok.

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