The first weekend with my host family, my host parents took me to their beach house at Quiberon. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, but I was definitely nervous about speaking French the whole weekend and having to hang out with my host siblings in a social context. The past couple of weekends I’d been hanging out with the other IES Abroad students, so this weekend was going to be my first complete immersion in a French family.
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“You’ll probably miss a train or get lost in Paris,” they said. And, I’m telling you (from first-hand experience) they weren’t wrong.
Bonjour! This time I’m saying hello in French because I wanna talk about traveling outside of your study abroad country. I can only really speak to the students studying in Europe since that’s where I’ve been, but hopefully this is a lot of you because Europe is beautifullll. A lot of my friends that are also here studying abroad have been able to travel a lot more than I have but even for students that don’t have what seems like unlimited funds it’s super easy to travel internationally within the EU.
Being abroad during the fall semester is one of the best ways to really immerse yourself in a new culture. The fall semester is home to so many traditional holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, that it is interesting to be in a new country to see how they may or may not celebrate.
It’s not every day that you get to go fishing in the Amazon rainforest for piranhas which is unfortunate because I think I could spend hours upon hours doing it. Our last module, Freshwater Ecology, got to take place in the Amazon. 95% humidity, no service, and the most biodiverse place in the world, it was an unforgettable experience for sure.
When pondering study abroad, many students daydream most about the opportunities for travel. Often these visions are of long weekend trips to distant countries and far away cities. But discovering entirely new places doesn’t always have to mean going somewhere a plane or train ride away. Especially given the complications of traveling due to Covid, most of my traveling this semester has involved exploring other cities within my own host country of Spain. In fact, the majority of my trips have been to cities within a two hour bus ride of Madrid.
Part of what makes home feel like home is decorating your space. Maybe you’re used to barren walls spare a single poster, or you’re like me and you decorate with a photo collection of your friends. Either way, or in any alternative, making a space your own is vital to creating a comfortable, welcoming, and safe harbor. This is especially true for when you’re thrown into a hotel in a foreign country.
One of my goals in traveling to Dublin was to make some sort of progress on my creative work. Write something, paint something, learn something—it didn’t really matter what but I knew I wanted to create. My short story professor, Stephen, started my class off this semester with the informal assignment to start writing everyday before we arrived in Dublin and continue that habit throughout our time abroad. After months of writing, albeit not every day, the notebook I’ve christened as my “Ireland Journal” is now one of my most valuable possessions.
I distinctly remember that one of my biggest reasons for not applying to any colleges outside of the U.S. was the fact that nowhere else in the world celebrated Thanksgiving, and if there was no holiday, then I wouldn’t get time off to go home and visit. Fast forward to spring of 2019 when I’ve committed to going to school across the country, and while we of course celebrate Thanksgiving in California, I still wasn’t going to be able to go home.