A few weeks after I had been notified that I was selected as a Fulbright grantee, my aunt sent me a new article about another Fulbrighter who would be joining me in Nepal. Heart racing, I analyzed that article the way a chess player does before taking a move. The Fulbrighter, J, had an impressive list of accomplishments. I don’t remember all of them, but she’d spent six months in Nepal already, she was living in Japan, and she spoke Nepali. I was intimidated.
A few weeks later, I got information about the annual Fulbright summit, and I was told that additional hotel confirmation would be sent. As the date approached, I didn’t get any further correspondence. I emailed them to ask for my hotel confirmation and didn’t get a response. In my mind, that somehow translated to me not really being a Fulbrighter. I went to the summit half expecting to be turned away at the door.
But I wasn’t. And while I was intimidated by the people I was surrounded by every day, my intimidation pushed me to improve. I started very seriously studying the local language and attending cultural events in DC. And a few months later, thousands of miles away, I was still intimidated as I heard their successes (and failures) in their own experiences, and I still used that as a way to grow and learn. But as I sat on a roof, watching the sun set behind the Himalayas, I looked beside me, and couldn’t imagine a different group of people by my side.
All this is to say: here’s to us. Here’s to the days we ended up in remote places far away from our expected destination. To looking up at the sky and dreaming. Here’s to baby goats and rampaging cows. To heated marketplace negotiations. To the nights we cried together over the loss and disappointments we experienced. Here’s to the sunsets, and the sunrises. To the constant sickness, the explosive diarrhea. To the new experiences, and the ones we never want to have again. To voices of reason, and to irrational fears.
Here’s to the people who made it through together.
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