Sunday, August 16, 2009

Return with the Boon

This will likely be my last post. I'm sad and excited to return to the states next week on August 25. Sad because leaving Germany means this great adventure for me is over. I will look back on this season and remember the best stories and the ways this experience has forever shaped me. And I do believe leaving the comfortable and taking risks are the times that change us most. There are also a number of relationships that I hate to leave behind including, most prominently, my host family. The Gade family members have become close friends and I fully expect and hope my relationship with them will continue. But their friendship as well as other friendships here in Germany will always be different. So there is some real sorrow as I leave this place.

On the other hand, I CAN'T WAIT to get home! There's an anticipation like nothing I've ever felt about putting all my belongings on a plane and flying back to my country. It's hard to explain. It must be a combination between American food, the English language, my closest friends, and my mom's cooking. In any case, I'm definitely celebrating the return as I mourn the departure.

Plus the return home is a necessary component of the hero's journey. As some of you know, I became very intrigued about the heroic quest--one of the oldest and most common themes in literature--shortly before I came to Germany. And I quickly tried to use the hero journey language to describe my experience. Far fetched I know, but it was fun for me to view this season as a kind of quest. Without boring you with many details about the journey (which I could easily do), I'll just say the last part of a hero's journey is the return to his homeland with the boon. The boon represents some heightened conscience or special knowledge that the hero then delivers to his society in order to enlighten or improve their culture in some way. All that to say, I have to come home if I want to be a hero!

The door is still open about coming back next year. The Diamonds have been gracious and dependable my whole time here and I would feel very comfortable coming back to work with their organization. Berlitz has also offered me a teaching position if I choose to return. But this decision will wait for a few months. I need to go home a get some removed perspective.

The football season is almost over and I think we'll finish the season above .500. We're 7-6 with one game left against a team we've already beat. It should put us in position to finish 3rd in the division--not a bad way to finish considering our difficult start.

Many thanks to those who have followed my journey through this blog. My apologies (again) for the inexcusable delay between posts. There's really no excuse--I was in the states for a week on family vacation and had my brother here for another week but mostly it's just been a lapse in discipline.

I hope you are well. God bless!
Ryan

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