Coming back home after 2 months of being in Europe was much harder than I anticipated. 

During my last week in Rome, I felt ready to come home and return to the normalcy of my life in the U.S. However, once I settled back in, I felt emptier than ever.

I missed what my life had been over the summer. It was like a slap in the face stepping back into reality.

There were no more world-traveling adventures. No more eating at new restaurants every night. No more spontaneous activities and hanging out with amazing new friends.

Plenty of Irish songs take as their theme a longing to return to that land from which, for whatever reason, one has had to depart. Though my departure does not by any means measure up to the sorts of circumstances the songs get written about, I can certainly understand wanting to go back. It’s a funny thing, though; by the end of my time in Dublin, I was in many ways ready to go home—ready to trade concrete for cornfields, busses for my bicycle, the unabating noise of the city for the soft evening chorus of summer bugs that reminds me of my central Pennsylvania childhood.

If you're planning to study abroad in Barcelona, here are some things I recommend that I believe are important and sometimes overlooked. 

Through my program with IES Abroad, I was afforded the opportunity to attend "Discover IES Abroad" events that showcased different aspects of the countries where students were placed, including Spain, Italy, and Austria, to name a few. Along with my class, I attended three Discover IES Abroad events. I attended one event from Spain, one from Italy, and one from Argentina. The Argentinian Discover IES Abroad Event that I attended was a lecture about the Feminist Movement in Argentina and the Latin American Region.

Considering the logistics of a virtual internship abroad, it may be challenging to picture what that may look like. How does the time difference work? Are there language barriers? What about cultural barriers?

I had all those thoughts as I thought about what my internship with the Vall d'Hebron Hospital would be like when the site is in Spain, but I am in Georgia, USA.

For me, the adjustment to a virtual internship abroad was significant. I had to learn quickly that things don't work the same way here as they do in Barcelona. 

As my study abroad program has come to an end, I feel a variety of things. I'm sure you have read about so many people's different experiences about coming home after living abroad for months and the different emotions and challenges they faced. Although here, I am going to write about a not so much talked about topic—the finances of going abroad.

Follow along with my friends and me as we travel to Porto, Portugal! With our flight departing at 7 a.m., we started our morning around 4:30 a.m. prepared for a long day. Once we landed, we bought metro/bus passes at the airport and headed to breakfast because we were so hungry. After dropping off our bags at the hostel, we used the rest of our day to explore the city.

A week ago, after a 10-hour flight, a 6-hour layover, and another 2-hour flight, my plane finally touched down at the Minneapolis airport. To be honest, it seems like it was ages ago. 

During study abroad orientation, they talk about reverse culture shock. They say that returning to your home country could elicit a similar psychological/emotional response to arriving in your host country. I nodded along during this presentation, but I didn’t truly believe the words on the screen.