When I decided to study abroad, a lot of people gave me a lot of different pieces of advice. Some were relevant, like the best places to find a cheap flight to Oktoberfest, and some were well meaning like how many pairs of socks to bring. A few friends told me I would change, that I would come back a "sexy cultured european badass". Not one of them told me what it would be like to be so far removed from events so close to home. As a way of explanation, today was the Las Vegas shooting. As I'm writing this, news stations are compiling new data, hospitals are adding to the list of the dead, and my University is sending out emails inviting me to pray for the victims. I walked down the strip a month and a half ago to see a Cher concert. Seeing the photos of the aftermath of the shooting reminded me of walking down the same street in the summer heat.                                                   Earlier this semester DACA was repealed, I called friends at school who are Dreamers. They were scared and I couldn't be there to be their support. Hurricanes hit friend's family homes, earthquakes rocked cities I had never been to but held friends, I couldn't keep up. I lost count of the disasters and the Trump tweets and the hate changing a place I feel I can no longer recognize. This morning I woke up to the numerous reports flooding in and I could only feel numb. I don't know if being so far away makes me grieve more or less. Being so far away gives me a guilty sense of security. I'm not there, I think to myself. I'm not in danger. It allows me to put it to the back of my brain while I type my assignments for the week only to jump to my feet in an hour when I remember my ex boyfriend's entire family is from Vegas. Are they alright? Is he alright? Is that something you can even ask an ex?! 50 Facebook stalking searches later and few well placed texts to mutual friends and I'm fine, but what about next time? What about next week?                                                                                               I've always prided myself on being the one my friends could rely on in a pinch. I can drive as far as you want for as long as you want just to let you rant. But here I'm the pixeled face on your tiny screen that cuts out every 5 minutes because of my crappy wifi. I thought watching the news was hard enough for me, but the worst was the snapchat I got 10 hours after the Vegas shooting. My best friend had just found out her grandmother has breast cancer. Her mother is also currently going through chemo therapy. She wouldn't tell me at first, just said she was sure she'd get cancer later in life. I told her she wasn't allowed to, we were gonna live forever. Finally she explained. My heart broke seeing her sad face on my phone screen and the simple one line text. I couldn't be there for her. I can't be there for her. What I wouldn't give to be able to buy a tub of ice cream and drive to her house at 2am to eat and watch "Criminal Minds". But I have no devil to deal with and no Scotty to beam me up. It's just me across the world staring at a screen that says Can not connect. And here I'll stay, watching my Facebook feed and seeing my friend's lives continue. They can get on without me. Which is in itself troubling and sad, but also hopeful. That others are watching out for them is all I need to continue my time here.                                                                                                                               I find myself changing as I watch these events unfold in front of me. It's like looking through a looooooong telescope at a star and knowing that what I see isn't the present. I'm watching how the star was over a thousand years ago and I'm seeing the news reports different days and hours than everyone else I know. I'm changing in that I find myself more like an observer than a participant. It feels like a bubble has descended around me that only lets in small pieces of information from back home. Only large headlines that can break through instead of the constant strands of news I heard every day about other's lives. The silence hear can be deafening but it can also be soothing. I've come to realize this silence is part of why we study abroad, to escape to a place where we're forced to think deeply about something else and find out what it's like to not constantly be surrounded by information, friends, and family. Who are you when no one is looking? When you don't feel as many  expectations on you, do you still react the same? As I sat in class checking for updated reports, a Hungarian classmate asked me, "Are you used to it now? Seeing shootings all the time?" After another minute of awkward conversation I realized that to him this telescopic view of events was normal. The country I'm studying in has their own scandals and issues that had never affected me even while I was in the country. How much am I missing even here? My bubble is larger than I thought.