The IES Abroad program in Freiburg offers the particularly unique experience of applying for, interviewing, and completing an internship in German. In German—yes. And for anyone who already has “professional working proficiency” listed on your LinkedIn profile, these five weeks will, without a doubt, make the estimation of your fluency true.

As I prepare for the coming semester in Chile with IES Abroad Santiago I have had a lot to get done. I spent the beginning of the summer at my home school, Wofford College taking both summer classes and doing archival research on Spanish Civil War to help brush up on my Spanish. This meant, however, that I had approximately only two weeks to get everything in order before I depart. The way I saw it there were two categories of things I needed to get done before I headed down to South America.

Entering college, I knew I wanted to study abroad in Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. I had been there for one week the previous summer and yearned to go back to learn more about nature and culture. When I finally found the GAIAS (Galapagos Islands Direct Enrollment) program through IES Abroad, I knew that’s where I wanted to go. When I presented this to my study abroad advisor, he said they didn’t have that program on their radar but he loved it so much that he was going to recommend it to the Geography and the Environment Department. 

It’s funny to think how profusely I’ve written about not traveling, and, yet, many of these essays I have, in fact, written while traveling. I’m doing that now: traveling, and writing, and I haven’t properly slept for over 24 hours. I’m in the Frankfurt airport, and I have been here for exactly six and a half hours. I generally do not give this much time for a flight, even an international one, but I was at the mercy of the Deutsche Bahn, which left Freiburg at five minutes past midnight in the witching hour between Tuesday and Wednesday, and Wednesday morning at seven something.

Before moving to Siena for the summer, neither I nor the other students here really knew what the Palio was. I knew briefly from my father that it was a horse race in Siena that dates back centuries, but I had no idea what it entailed or what it meant to the people of Siena.

The day I boarded the plane to Chile, I left behind more than just my hometown. I stepped away from the familiar comforts of home and embraced the uncertainty of a new culture. The thrill of navigating an unfamiliar city, trying to decode a new language, and getting lost in the winding streets was initially overwhelming. But each misstep and detour became a lesson in resilience. I learned to find comfort in discomfort and to embrace uncertainty with an open heart and mind.