Approaching Adulthood

At first, I was incredibly excited at the prospect of my family coming to visit me for a long weekend here in my new “home” abroad. I have not seen them—or anyone else from “home home”—in over four months, and pictures and words never do justice to a place. I could show them around, give them a taste of the experience I have had living here! I also decided that Brighton would get a little boring after about a day, considering this was their vacation, and that we should go to London for the weekend. That would be fun, particularly because I haven’t explored the city much, myself.

However, as the time grew nearer, my feelings began to change from eager anticipation to apprehension and anxiety. I had tried to plan everything as well as I could, but what if something went askew? What if someone didn’t like what was on the itinerary? What if someone got sick? What if there was bad weather?

In retrospect, I think I wanted to use this trip as proof to show my family that I am indeed growing up; that I can make successful travel arrangements and have things run smoothly. After all, I have navigated numerous foreign cities with Angela successfully, and I just had to deal with English-speaking London and Brighton with my family!

Unfortunately, things did not go quite as well as I had planned. First, I told my family the wrong time to catch the bus to London. This resulted in my knocking on the door of their bed and breakfast at 7:30 a.m. in the morning in order to wake up my sister (luckily, my parents were already awake) and hurry them along so that we could catch our 8:45 bus rather than the 10 a.m. one which, the night before, I had claimed we would be riding.

My next mistake was to take us the wrong direct on the Tube. This wouldn’t have been nearly so bad except for the fact that we were trying to get to our hotel and were carting our luggage along with us. My mother’s retort to this would be that I successfully navigated the Tube many more times on this trip to get us to our various destinations, and one mistake is only one mistake. Still, I’ve never gone the wrong direction on transportation before, even in a foreign country. It was embarrassing.

Then I had managed to neglect the fact that the Globe Theatre is an open air theater. Fortunately I had gotten us seats, which meant we were under cover, but the entire theater is still outside, so all three-and-a-half hours of Othello were filled with rubbing hands and huddling bodies.

The absolute icing on the cake came when we returned to Brighton. In London, I had purchased a new purse in order to replace the one I had bought for traveling, because that one had nearly completely come apart at the seams. (Or, rather, my dad bought it for me. Yay for parents!) Once my family checked into their new hotel and I began unloading my sister’s belongings from my backpack—I had been carrying some of her things to and from London so that we did not all have to carry luggage—I suddenly realized that I had not seen a certain item in my new purse when I was removing other things. Hurriedly, I looked in the pocket where it should have been, and then inspected all the other pockets. I then proceeded to empty my old purse, and then my entire backpack. Just as I suspected: my second camera battery was missing. I must have left it in the opulent comforter folds at the Chaucery Royal Hotel back in London when I was switching purses.

On all of my other trips, I have never lost anything before. And now, in front of my family, who I wanted to badly to impress, I managed to not only mix up departure plans, get us lost, and make us mis-dress for an outdoor performance, but I even lost a very expensive camera battery. So much for demonstrating my passage into adulthood.

When exactly will I be considered an “adult”? My dad still claims he “still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up.” Haha. But when does the world make the transition in considering a person an “adult” versus a kid? Even adults attend school, so the distinction cannot be “adult vs. student.” I am quite certain it is an age difference or some sense of maturity; I am just not sure how this is determined. Would I be an adult if I dressed in a business suit and held a job behind a desk? But then what about “adults” who work at grocery stores check-out counters or in gymnasiums? Will I be an adult once I begin renting my own living accommodations? But I have friends my own age who already do this, and I know adults who still live with their parents. No, the distinction must be age-related, and I assume responsibility-related, as well. Hence why now that I am a legal adult in all senses (except for freely renting a car—alas, I must wait until 25 for that commodity), I feel I must begin to assume as much responsibility for my life as possible, whether in the administrative (i.e. scheduling), monetary, or social senses.

And then sometimes, I just want to curl up on a couch and watch Disney movies all day so I can pretend I’m eight years old again. Doesn’t everyone feel that way?