Ups and downs

So I’ve been here two months now, I really wish that I didn’t count the weeks like that, but it just seems to happen that way in my mind. Naturally, there have been some ups and downs since I came here, something that I was prepared for before coming here, and I think that this week I’ve had a couple of ‘downs.’ What is amazing though, is that the downs haven’t been that bad, and that is so much as a result of the people I have around me.

This week, Krystle left to go back to the UK and because she is my housemate and good friend and we spend a lot of time together, I knew I would miss her. But it’s been great that the people around me realised this and have tried to help me out. Kate and I had a ‘friend date’ which was great and we also had some people over for a Hanukah dinner which again helped me to know more people. I commented to one of my work mates that the morning was a bit lonely as I had no one to eat breakfast with. Everyday since then, I have arrived at work and gone for a breakfast of rice and plassas with a group of my colleagues. I really do work in “di CCYA fambule den” (the CCYA family). Those small things make a huge difference out here and I’m really grateful for them. This weekend, I have a whole host of people who have offered to come and collect me to go to Paddy’s as they know I can’t travel there late on my own. And Rob and Sam will be pleased to hear that I have replaced their bellies completely in my life, as I even have a couple of friends who I regularly feed (that reminds me, is anyone feeding them in my absence or are they surviving entirely on a diet of pasta, pesto and cheese?)

I’m so well looked after, and by people who have known me such a short time. It makes me sad and to be honest it makes me embarrassed, because I know, from my experience working with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK that we just don’t give people that kind of welcome back home. We don’t greet strangers in the street, we don’t go out of our way to help a new person settle in. In fact we often make people feel unwelcome.

Christmas is coming, and it should be a time when I really notice the absence of my friends, and of course, I do, and will, miss my friends a lot. It’s been more than two months since I spoke to anyone, and that makes me feel quite far away from all of your lives (so email me, call me, text me!!!). But, despite being so young in this country, being a stranger, a foreigner, a white girl, I will not be lonely. If only that were true for everyone.