Hello friends. I am about two weeks out from my departure to London and the beginning of my journey abroad. In my program, I’ll be spending three weeks taking a tutorial in London before heading off to Oxford for the rest of the semester. I can confidently say that the phrase “mixed emotions” has never better described how I feel. There are several things that I am both very anxious but very excited for. 

The Tutorial System

The city of Freiburg, Germany awaits! It is hard to believe that after accepting my enrollment in the IES Abroad European Union Program approximately six months ago I would only be one week away from stepping foot in the “Jewel of the Black Forest."

The past couple of weeks have been quite a whirlwind, which is why this last blog post has been delayed for so long. Let’s start where we left off in the last blog post.

My name is Matthew Sill. I am a third-year at Claremont McKenna College and in 5 days I will be making the 14-hour journey to Milan to start my adventures and studies in the economic powerhouse of Italy. I am from a small town on the central coast of California called Arroyo Grande. I love to surf, hike, play sports, and any other outdoor activity you can think of. Although I have not had an immense amount of travel experience in my life, I am eager to see the world and indulge myself in different cultures and foreign environments.

I am off to Nice, France in just a few days and while I am beyond excited, I am also incredibly nervous. I have been dreaming of studying abroad for eons, but once studying abroad became a reality I began to doubt my decision; it had been a dream for so long that I had never considered the actual logistics of going. All of a sudden there seemed like there was so much I had to do; I felt overwhelmed and underprepared.

Now that I have completed my summer internship abroad and am back home meeting with friends and family, everyone is asking to hear everything about my experience. However, it’s difficult to know exactly what aspects of my summer to focus on, especially when I'm trying to fit the whole experience in about a minute of conversation. I imagine many others have had a similar experience after studying abroad or completing an internship in a different country.

Home is far, yet it is here. I wrote in my last post about making home where I am, about settling in, and about not being homesick. I reflect on that now as I listen to a playlist made for me by a loved one, titled, “Music too Miss YOU 2.” I must say, I miss them, “to.” 

I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that in less than twenty-four hours I'll be departing from LAX and taking a twelve-hour flight to Tokyo, where I'll be staying for the next four months studying Japanese language and culture. I’m lucky enough that I can say this isn’t the first time I’ve been to Japan—my mom grew up in Yokohama and we used to visit her parents every so often when I was younger.

When I was young, my abuelita would lay down next to me before I went to sleep and do four things: she’d tell me how much she loved me, she’d tickle me all over, she’d pray to La Virgencita to watch over me, and she’d tell me a story. I remember many of her stories—stories of past loves, of my mother when she was a child, of life in Colombia. They were always very colorful, fun, and meaningful—the perfect way to end the day.