Life in Switzerland: Moving to Lausanne

I finally received my student visa on Friday, December 18, barely two weeks before I needed to leave for Switzerland, and I bought a one-way flight the same day. Purchasing a one-way flight feels completely different than a roundtrip and can be downright scary, as it has a level of finality to it that you don't normally experience.

When Sunday, January 3 came around, the day I was scheduled to fly to Switzerland, I desperately wasn't ready to leave Norman. After two months home I had created a routine, and began to feel comfortable in Oklahoma. The feeling also worried me, because I have seen too many of my childhood friends get lost in unambitious lives by staying in our hometown. Although I had dismissed it for so long, I started to really enjoy the "easy life" in the U.S. in a big house with lots of belongings.

In the days leading up to my departure I felt almost no emotion, either excitment or anxiety, other than disbelief that I was really leaving. Moving back and forth between Europe has become routine, and I no longer get the thrill of anxiety of moving outside my comfort zone. I guess it's true of any addiction that the more you get used to it the more you need in order to feel a rush. Overall, I felt sort of numb, like my life was happening around me hazily, even though I'm the one who set all of this in motion many months ago. I still question whether I made the right decision. Whether this education and experience will be worth the thousands of dollars of debt I have taken on.

I barely finished packing in time and left for the airport a half hour later than planned. My flight pattern took me from Oklahoma City to Chicago to Warsaw to Geneva, about 20 hours of flying time, and with getting to and from the airports in OKC and Geneva I was looking at a solid 24 hours of travel. The long overnight flight passed in a daze, hours melting into hours. I slept reasonably well from Chicago to Warsaw, especially because the man next to me was Polish and didn't speak any English, and I only knew how to say "cheers" in Polish, so we passed the time in silence. Poland looked depressing from the moment we descended below the clouds, with barren dreary land covered in snow. It just radiated cold and miserable. It was dark when we descended into Geneva so I wasn't able to see the beautiful mountains.

I took a 30 minute train from the airport in Geneva to Lausanne, then took a taxi from the train station to go to my school, got my keys, and found my apartment. I was pleased with it overall, although it's very, very small. After I called my parents and took a quick shower I walked one block to the unofficial IMD bar to meet up with two other students. We had a couple of drinks and chatted, but the bar closed at 12:30 so we were all home at a reasonable hour. Being by myself at my apartment in a new town made me feel sad, and I halfheartedly flipped through the TV channels until I found CNN in English, which I watched until I fell asleep.

I knew had to get used to living alone again, to being on my own again, but I missed talking to my family and seeing my friends almost every day. I knew this was an adventure that was about to begin, but on the first night it was really lonely.