As I’m sitting here writing this blog post, I feel both excited and nervous.
I felt exactly the same two years ago, when I was packing to leave for the States. I grew up in South Korea most of my life, and so going to a college in the U.S. was a great adventure for me. I was occupied with so many worries like:
“How am I going to make friends?” / “Will people there understand my English?” / “How am I going to handle classes taught in English?”
As I begin to think about packing and organizing my things for Frieburg, I reflect on my time in Turkey. This summer will be my third and last summer in Ankara. My dad is military and was assinged to the Embassy in December of 2010. It is hard for me to think that three years have gone by so quickly and that I am half way done with college. My first summer here was the start of a new chapter. I had just graduated high school and would begin freshman year in the fall.
As the final countdown begins until I leave for Rabat, the excitement I once had has turned into me being a nervous wreck. I have traveled outside of the country before, yet this feeling is a new feel. Knowing that you are about to be somewhere magnificent nonetheless completely away from home for an extended period of time is shocking. Being the Google and research queen that I am, I have looked up the food, the night life and how to dress. After everything, packing is what I am still stuck on.
These past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I spent the summer in Williamstown in the Berkshires (Massachusetts), writing for a local newspaper there. I went home for a week to say goodbye to my family, and today my mom drove me from San Diego to Los Angeles, where I will be flying to Istanbul.
The first time I went to France was the summer after my junior year of high school. I was part of a two month summer immersion program that concluded its journey through France with a few days in the big city. My main memories consist of a waiter who yelled at us in comically exaggerated Franglish “DO VOUS LIKE ZE SHNAILZ” when we ordered escargot, discovering my intense fear of heights at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and subsisting entirely on pain au chocolat.
I have now been in Australia just over a month and I can honestly say that this has been the most wonderful and eventful month of my life. The people I have met through my program are some of the most unique and charismatic people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and they have enriched this experience beyond my wildest dreams. I was nervous before I came here, I am sure we all were, but I feel like people abroad connect almost instantly through the experiences they are sharing so there really was no reason to be nervous after all.
“Santiago is Chile.” It’s easy to see where the expression comes from – about a third of the population lives in Santiago. However, Santiago is by no means all of Chile, and so I set out with some friends last weekend to explore the territory beyond what I could see from the top of El Cerro San Cristobal.
