Ciao For Now!

Location:
Brussels Belgium
Latitude/Longitude:
50.850346300000, 4.351721100000
Journal Entry:

As my three months in Brussels come to a close, I can't believe that I'm one-third done with my Fulbright year. In the past couple of weeks, I've had a host of friends visit me from both college and California. It was a bit busy as I was trying to meet deadlines while being a host in Belgium. I had a few long days of sightseeing and touring by day and working by night. Overall, these three months have been an exercise or test of sorts for the next six months in Europe spent between Berlin and London. How much travel is good? What's enough? Is travel exhaustion real? When you're abroad and living a very different life, it's easy to not talk about the hard days or crave for a more routine schedule. After all, why would you? Your life is so good and exciting! But I think that taking care of yourself is equally, if not more, important in order to ensure that it's sustainable. Whenever I've felt like I'm racing to see so much or be the best host possible, I've had to remind myself that I'm only human and have a limited bandwidth before things become more tiring than fun. I've also learned that managing expectations - both my own and of those visiting - is important. I love hosting, but while some are coming for a packed few days of vacation, this is my actual life, and my well-being and research has to come first.

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