If you choose to study abroad somewhere other than the United Kingdom or Australia, chances are that you will find yourself immersed in a foreign language. Many study abroad programs do not require students to have previously studied the language or to study the language during their semester abroad.

As our semester in Argentina came to an end, everyone started packing up. Study abroad is a wild ride and by the end some parts of you want to sleep in your own bed or just collapse on the floor in a pile. It doesn’t mean you didn’t have an amazing and transformative time, but its definitely exhausting.

(One of my class assignments, for Maire Doyle’s immersion writing class, gave me the chance to interview anyone of my choice and write about the interview. I think it’s important as an LGBTQIA+ person to learn about that community in a new place, when one goes there, and I wish I had started earlier. So I’m posting this as one starting point for any future students interested in that! The LGBTQIA+ community may feel small in Ireland, but it’s there for those who want to reach out, and there are multiple resources and organizations.)

For my last weekend in Ireland, I took a long bus-and-train trip to Dingle out on the west coast.  As I got closer, the landscape shifted; I started to see mountains, and more sheep, and fog replaced some of the cold but also some of the people.

I underestimated the travel time to Dingle and, worse, the distance from the bus stop in Annascaul to my hostel in Inch.

I've been home for about three weeks now and my abroad experience seems like a distant day dream. I’ve settled back into the daily routine, adjusted to the lengthiness of transportation in America (all those highways that stretch from city to city), and I’ve been lost in my own thoughts more often than naught about the adventure I just completed.

After being asked this question about a hundred times you’d think I’d have gotten better at answering it. However, I keep finding myself stuck trying to find middle ground between describing every detail of my study abroad and barely stating ‘it was good.’ Hopefully, this last blog post will help begin to figure that process out.

Being back home for the last week has been simultaneously relieving and vexing; I am more than happy to be back with my family and friends, especially for the holidays. But at the same time, I feel an absence of something. Some kind of exciting spirit that I felt the whole time that I was in Spain is gone, and I am sure it was more than just the excitement that comes with living and studying in a new place for a semester.

            This is it. My final blog post about my experience in Barcelona. It’s the final chapter in a book I have yet to fully comprehend. It’s my goodbye to the city I have fallen in love with, and the incredible experiences that came along with it. If you must know, I have been dreading writing this last post.

 Studying abroad is an amazing experience, and if you have the chance to study abroad, you should take it ! And honestly, any country or program you go on, will only effect your life positively and allow for growth. That being said, you can’t just pick a random study abroad program. It's important to do research in order to find the best program/country that is related to either your academic or professional goals in order to get the best out of it.