Category: Pre-Departure

March 21, 2017

When in Wien

When I talk about my abroad experience, I could tell you about so many things. I could talk about the way I was ready for the physical travel, but not ready for the lifelong friendships I would make. I could tell you about how I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock or the way I would fall irrefutably, indisputably in...

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November 7, 2016

Libérté, Egalité, Fraternité

Everyone is spooked that something bad is going to happen if the thirteenth day of the month falls on a Friday. I am not one for superstition, but November 13th, 2015 was a night filled with horror. The week leading up to that night, I had taken my parents on a short tour through France during my academic break. We...

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November 4, 2016

Semester in the “Fairytale City” (Prague)

I had always known that I wanted to study abroad. I was fortunate enough to grow up as an only child to parents who suffered from “wanderlust,” so I traveled a lot as a kid. I went to China, France, and Australia along with a whole laundry list of places with my parents as a child, and my sophomore year...

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October 26, 2016

Looking Back on a Semester in Spain

From a young age I’ve been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit with my family. It’s something we’ve always enjoyed doing and something I really wanted to do more of. When I first arrived at college and learned about the Study Abroad program, I knew I wanted to study abroad, but I wasn’t sure of where. I started taking...

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October 21, 2016

A Year in Incheon — A Year of “New”

Korea has always played a big part in my life, long before I ever set foot off that airplane at ICN in August of 2015. My grandmother, born in North Korea, fled to the South at a young age with a few of her siblings and lived in the port city of Busan before meeting my grandfather, a US soldier,...

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March 31, 2016

Challenge Your Limits

Studying abroad – for me I saw it as an opportunity to live my life in a completely new way, a test, and a chance to develop a new perspective on the world. It had the potential to be an unparalleled experience, but there were so many questions to tackle first. Where would I go? When? How long? Having little...

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March 31, 2016

Learning, Loving, Living: My Month in Madrid

Before May 15th, my view of the world was extremely limited. Sure, I had seen the bathroom where Elvis died in Memphis, TN, walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge where Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others began their march to Montgomery in Selma, AL, and even touched the chair William Faulkner sat in when he wrote his masterpiece The...

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March 22, 2016

A New World Awaits

From early childhood, I had seen pictures and videos of other countries and the beauty they held. The thought of visiting another county multiple hours over the ocean was a farfetched thought for me but I was determined that one day I would get to visit Europe. I dreamt about the adventures and experiences that an opportunity like that would...

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March 21, 2016

A Year in the Southern Hemisphere

I’m here to tell you about one of the best years my life spent in Chile. You are probably thinking right now where is Chile? That’s a random country, why there? Chile is the longest country in the world. It lays on the west coast of South America with the sky scraping,  snowcapped Andes Mountains to the right and roaring Pacific Ocean...

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November 4, 2015

Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone

Over the intercom, the train conductor announced that we would soon be arriving in Grenoble, France. It was the middle of June and through the windows of the compartment, I could see snow-capped mountains peering through thin clouds. My heart quickened and I suddenly became extremely anxious. What if my host family didn’t like me? What would they do upon...

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November 4, 2015

Home Away from Home

They say that home is where the heart is, and I found that to be true when I was in Vienna this past summer. I was initially really nervous about studying abroad. I’d never been out of the country before (aside from my 5 month stint in Vietnam before I was adopted when I was a baby) and I’d never...

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November 4, 2015

Vienna Waits for You …

For me, my time in Vienna will be remembered as a time of personal growth and self-understanding. During my program, my German skills improved tremendously but more importantly I felt more connected with others. The language barrier proved troublesome at first, but as time progressed communication became easier. My favorite nights were those when my host mother and I would...

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