I went to Beijing a year ago, and stayed there for 5 months as I studied and more often didn't study (or, well, an alternative kind of study) . It's a fantastic country and it was my first experience living abroad. Anyways, I recently lost my surprisingly most used souvenir from the country.
That was part of a glass bottle for tea. It was pretty neat because I got it without expecting it, as they gave them to you if you decided to buy their chilled Oolong tea.
I got used to using this thing to carry my tea around everywhere, and I've been using it for almost a year bringing my tea to class or work. I actually developed a connection to this bottle as it was kind of neat looking and it reminded me of China everytime I went for a sip of tea.
But now its time is over and I'll have to find new memories. Maybe there's something to learn here about holding too much sentimentality in an object, but learning to let go doesn't mean my morning wasn't spoiled without my tea.
The object may be broken, but the story and memories remain intact. While the physical connection may be gone, there is no need to feel a sense of loss, nor a demand to replace your memories with newer ones. The experiences you had abroad are an immutable and integrated part of your history and your person. Take heart - for it is only through loss that we can further appreciate what remains. Thanks for sharing your story. May you find another suitable vessel for your morning tea soon. I also wouldn't mind hearing more about your trip, if you wanted to expound on it further - I've never been to Asia and most likely never will, so it would be nice to hear a first-hand experience. :)
Obviously five months is way too much of a time to sum up in a single post, and I imagine I'll likely relate more specific experiences the longer I'm on this site, but I can give a brief summary. I was studying at the China Foreign Affairs University, a place my university luckily had some kind of partnership with, it was in the less dense and less touristic, western half of the city center in Beijing. I remained in that city for my entire trip because I'm an awful tourist, and I didn't even visit the Great Wall. I was there solely to study Chinese, and it was wildly more useful than any classes I've taken back here in America. I met tons of people, many of who couldn't speak any English besides "hello" (though even then they often just used a Chinese approximation) and I got to see the average Beijinger. I also partied a ton, participated in an open mic night at an expat comedy club, despite my regular introverted nature, and got a nice button-up shirt of mine stolen in my first experience at a night club. I drank terrible, probably somehow spoiled beer, an even fouler tasting Chinese hard liquor called baijiu, and yet seemed to avoid ever getting food poisoning like everybody else. It was a grand adventure that's given me a ton of stories that I try to bring up without becoming "that guy who won't shut-up about the one time he studied abroad". Anyways, don't sell yourself short, push yourself to have an adventure, try to visit foreign lands you find interesting. It's potentially costly, but it's entirely worth it, it's one of those experiences that makes you feel like you've done stuff with your life.
I'm sorry to hear that it broke, but at the same time I'm glad that you were able to use it for so long. This post is ideal for this weeks #tagoftheweek which is #showandtell. I community tagged it as such, but you may wish to change one of your tags to tagoftheweek. The most shared post wins for the week and the user that posted it gets to choose the tag for the following week. Its a fun challenge.