Going abroad for my education was always in the cards for me. And now that it's official, I have to face my fears, or more specifically, the primary fear that has plagued me since I started learning languages: How am I going to navigate life on my own in my target language?

For the last few weeks, in my ongoing endeavor to learn Spanish, something I committed to in my Freshman year, I’ve been holding weekly zoom meetings with my mother’s colleague—Magdalena. Magdalena is a kindly woman, originally from Spain but now living here in England (where my family lives), who works with my mother at one of the nearby town libraries. I guess my upcoming study abroad semester in Barcelona, as well as my goal of learning Spanish, came up in conversation one day and my mother told me one evening that Magdalena had extended an offer to help me out with my speaking skills.

It's almost surreal. This thing that I have been working on for months through rounds of applications, it's finally materializing. It didn't feel real when I wrote my essays, or when I got the acceptance package, or when I was browsing the course catalogue for classes I'll be taking abroad, or when I was saying goodbye to my friends at the end of the school year saying, "See you next year!" Like, what do you mean I'm going to school on the other side of the world for four months? What for? Sure...