As I studied abroad in England this past fall semester, I missed quite a lot going on back at home. I missed a wedding in my family, WAY too many Pub Wednesdays, the Cubs winning the World Series, Thanksgiving, and of course, Donald Trump being elected as the 45th President of the United States.
I had expected the election to come up in conversation a little bit with people that I came across during my travels, but I had underestimated just how often it would happen. Any time that I spoke with my American accent, half of the reactions I would receive were somewhere along the lines of “so Trump, huh?”
My first trip outside of England was to Barcelona, Spain and I stayed in a hostel with some friends. One of our nights there was spent talking to other guests at the bar on the first floor. This was in September and the election was a very hot topic that night among other fairly “American” things (we were asked how we felt about Harambe).
In the months leading up to the election, the topic came up on occasion, but not nearly as frequently as the week of November 8th.
I can still recall the early morning after the results were finalized. I woke up to yelling from someone on my floor. I had stayed in a building of other students studying abroad and the vast majority were Americans. Just about everyone was disappointed and talking about the results for the next few days. It felt weird to be away from home at a time like this.
For the rest of my time abroad, the results continued to come up when talking to locals, often as joke material. The day after the election, one of my professors asked if we were “in mourning for our country.” On a field trip upon learning the majority of students were American, a worker joked by thanking us for taking attention away from England by making a “bigger political mistake than Brexit.”
It was also often brought up by American students as well as anyone that we came across that we wouldn’t want to go home. Granted, I think I could speak for most study abroad students and say that staying in our host country for a few more months didn’t seem like a bad option regardless of what was going on at home…
In the first few weeks post-election, it reached a point where I hardly wanted to speak out loud to strangers and reveal my American accent because I was so sick of it constantly being brought up nearly every time. As if we hadn’t all seen enough opinions flooding every form of social media at the time, hearing the opinions of people from different countries judging our country became exhausting. I nearly felt embarrassed to reveal my nationality to new people in fear of the topic coming up.
All of this slowed down slightly before I returned home in mid-December. American politics were brought up less frequently and I felt that I was able to gain unique knowledge through conversations with people from other countries. Hearing the opinions and getting first-hand insight into how other parts of the world felt they may be affected through our countries choices was incredibly eye-opening. Traveling in itself helped me grow as a person, but traveling at the time of this past election has helped to give me a passion to be more involved and pay more attention to the world around me.