Study abroad is everything they say it will be. Life changing, amazing, fantastic, a whole host of other synonyms that I can’t think of right now. But it can also be incredibly lonely.
I needed to leave. That’s what I was telling myself the semester before I studied abroad. I had done research, ordered everything I thought I needed, and packed weeks in advance. I was itching to get out. Was I slightly nervous about the flight? Sure, but not enough to make me not want to get on it. I had a friend I was living with, a notes list full of ideas, and Italian dreams of bowls of pasta and pitchers of wine.
I arrived and felt so much anticipation and excitement. Sure, one of my bags was lost, but that didn’t matter because I was in Italy. And traveling, I love it so much. Trains and buses and planes, I’ll take them all. Flixbus, my friend’s hated. But I loved it. So many people going to see so many different places and all with their own stories. I would take a melatonin, put on my eye mask, and I’d be out. That’s something I had to make happen while abroad. Sleeping on a bus, plane, whatever. I had never been able to before, but when you’re running on 2 hours of sleep to catch the most heinous flight plan imaginable, you’ll figure out a way to sleep anywhere. I was living the life. Until I got to a point where an issue popped up. Small in the sense of philosophical thoughts about life but large when brought into the practical realities of life.
Money. Yeah, that’s my first big issue. The money started drying up. This led to not being able to go to dinner or shopping or other such bonding activities with friends. The little money I did have needed to go towards groceries and travel expenses. Less fun and more necessity. They tell you study abroad will be expensive, but I still don’t think it truly prepares you for eating soup for the third day in a row because you’re trying to save money. Save more than you think, that’s all I’d say.
And I know I am incredibly lucky to have been there in the first place. I don’t want to discount that at all. It just made my life harder and led to me having regrets now about all the times I had to say no to friends because I simply couldn’t afford it. I wish I could go back and tell myself that, no matter how much money I saved, I should’ve saved two or three times that amount. But I don’t regret a single purchase while abroad. Everything I bought, every experience I had, every bite of food I ate, I treasure to this day. I just wish I could’ve done more.
My next biggest problem was friendships. Now this both seems like an overstatement and an oversimplification. There was never a giant falling out or outright conflict. Just a tension… Small groups forming within a big group, which is normal, but a group of 5 excluding the other 3 seems a bit more like just not wanting those people to be involved. I, you can probably tell, was in the excluded 3. And I couldn’t figure out why. Because everything had seemed so great at first. I had a sort of tumultuous fall semester and had really hoped that drama wouldn’t exist in the spring. And it didn’t in the beginning. But, after a while, it maybe just became the wear and tear of seeing each other 24/7. However, it made me feel so incredibly lonely. Onn one of our last nights together, I even left with some other friends because of both a buildup of frustration with the way they had been treating me and the fact that they left me first before realizing and going back. Eventually though, a couple of my friends had realized that I had been withdrawing a bit and talked to me. Communication really does solve things. It’s kind of crazy how that works. We were able to talk it out and realized miscommunication and wrong assumptions had caused such a rift. I spent the last few days feeling such a weight off my chest and kind of regretting that I hadn’t tried to talk it out earlier when I first started feeling left out. But that’s life. Learning how to live with the choices we make.
But that seed of loneliness I had felt for so many weeks ended up turning into this burning desire to go home, to see my family and my friends and to be in a familiar place. I also was continuously getting sick from March to May. All I wanted was my mom to bring me some Pho from our local Vietnamese place, but instead I had to haul myself out of bed and buy soup at the grocery store. I started exclusively listening to country music to remember my Texas heritage, though I was so far. I was calling my mom once, sometimes twice a day. I just really wanted to go home. I was broke, sick, and lonely. I did enjoy my last few weeks abroad, but they all had a slight twinge of homesickness. And when I got on that plane to go back to Texas, I was happy while my friends were all sobbing. It sounds terrible. I was in Europe for 4 months. What do I really have to complain about? And I really don’t want to be misunderstood.
This was the experience of my life. It was everything I thought it would be and more. I loved traveling so much. I will always remember my time in Italy fondly. But I also love my home, my family, and my friends. I had gone to study abroad with this burning need to escape a town I felt trapped in. I thought I’d be sad to come back, to be stuck in the same place as I was before. But I no longer feel like I want to escape. I am in a good place with my jobs, school, my friends, and family. Sure, I can’t walk down the street and see the Duomo, but I had my adventure. Now, I want to finish college and enjoy the time I have before the real world starts.
That doesn’t mean I never want to travel again, though. Egypt, Thailand, Morocco, Malta, and Romania are just a few countries I have on my travel list. But I had my grand adventure, and I’m ready to take it a bit easy, at least for now. The best part of traveling is gaining all these amazing new experiences and then going home and getting to share them with your loved ones.