Will I miss it?

I'm closing on my fifth week here, and I realized spent the greater portion of my stay so far thinking about how nice life is in the United States. In fact, I have never even really entertained the idea that I might miss Togo.

I mean when I left Buenos Aires last summer, I was so sad. I had the time of my life there. And the same with Paris a month ago. I fell in love with it, despite my inauspicious first 15 minutes. But I really haven't, or I hadn't, felt the same link with Lomé.

But maybe...maybe I will miss it. Since I'm getting back from Togo only a couple of days before upperclassmen registration, I will legitimately have zero down time before I have to get back in the swing of things.  The relentless swing of things.  When I get back to the States, I'll be greeted with a shower of not only hot water (thank God) but also of deadlines, responsibilities, and jet lag. 

As I've mentioned before, life here is

(PAUSE: This is hilarious. I just went out to buy beignets from these women close to the office who sell them every day.  They were kind of giggling and talking in Ewe, the non-official local language here.  As I handed over some coins to pay, the woman points to two girls behind her who are also giggling to themselves and says in French, "These girls are for you." After I got my change back -- lest it were some ploy to distract me from getting my money--I smiled and waved to them and they started giggling even more.)

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, life here is very VERY laid back. Even when it probably shouldn't be, but regardless it's very slow and, dare I say, relaxing. And, as I've mentioned before, the food is not great but when it's good, it's good. Also, this internship has made me realize that I'm really, really passionate about climate change legislation and emissions mitigation and that I really want to be an environmental lawyer.  I want to be one of the lawyers that help understaffed and underfunded delegations at the UN conferences be briefed on the pertinent issues being negotiated.  Maybe I'll talk more about this later (since it doesn't have to do with the topic of potentially missing Togo) but my research here at the organization has helped me form really well-informed opinions on the current international climate change negotiations and things like that. So yeah, I will definitely miss being able to spend the majority of my time reading about things I'm really, really interested in and dreaming about my future career aspirations.

Also there are a lot of international interns here and at other organizations close by that are leaving and they keep mentioning things that they will miss about Togo and it's contagious, I guess.



So yeah, I don't know...maybe I will miss Togo. It's certainly an experience.