EXPLORING THE FAMILIAR BY LILI SARAJIAN I was committed. I had saved up the money and worked up the courage. I had, somewhat reluctantly, sacrificed a summer making money, doing an internship and spending time with loved ones. I was ready to study abroad, and I was all in... ...until I was dragged back out. It was supposed to be stifling heat and sticky skin, open air markets and delicious scents, my first taste of Peking duck and crowded train rides into Beijing, awkward mistakes while I fumbled to speak Chinese and newfound confidence by the time I left. I was so looking forward to meeting the girl that I would become after spending three months learning Chinese in Tianjin. I hoped she would be fearless,
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having conquered some of her greatest anxieties like traveling alone and speaking Chinese with locals. I hoped her eyes would have been opened a bit wider and her heart softened a bit more to the world. Instead, the girl that is writing this spent her summer in her childhood home and working at her parents’ business in a small city in Wisconsin. In fact, she was roped back into a world so familiar that, after a few weeks, it was like she had never left at all. But, something incredible happened while I was stuck, immersed in the familiar. I changed. I learned new things about myself and who I want to be. I might have even learned more than the girl that spent three months in Tianjin. Spending way too much time with my family allowed me to see the ways my loved ones have changed
