As someone who has just come back from their year abroad, I know how challenging yet rewarding living in a different country can be. A year abroad is a compulsory part of my language degree; to some people this may sound amazing, for me however, it was drastically out of my comfort zone. Yet here I am, having completed my year away, ready to convince you to study abroad.
Although this year was compulsory for me, many degrees offer the option to spend a semester or year abroad. It can be quite a big decision to make, so hopefully this very honest account of the good, the bad and the ugly will help you make an informed decision.
I spent the first half of my year in Lisbon, Portugal. In all honesty, my time in Lisbon wasn’t great. I had trouble finding accommodation at the start and thought I was going to spend my time in Portugal in a hostel, however, after two weeks of searching I finally found somewhere. It seemed nice (if a bit expensive), and I thought living with Portuguese students, would help me improve my Portuguese… oh, how wrong I was! None of them wanted to socialise at all, staying in their rooms the whole time. And to make the living situation even worse, as soon as the weather got colder, my room became covered in mould. Most of my shoes did not survive. I was also very homesick and missed my normal university life with all my friends back in Nottingham, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be the perfect place to go for someone else.
After Lisbon, I went to Lima, Peru. I had made a last-minute decision to go to Peru, originally deciding to find an internship in Spain, but as the deadline was looming and I was yet to find a job, I had to think of an alternative. I started to feel like I wasn’t doing enough with my life, and that I needed to be more spontaneous and adventurous, and mainly, why was I not taking the opportunity of a lifetime and choosing to live in Latin America?
However, after my time in Lisbon, I started to think, “If I could barely manage living in Portugal, how am I going to live in Peru?”. Fortunately, this part of my year abroad changed my outlook entirely. Although I still had some hard moments, I felt like I grew as a person in Peru. I became more confident and believed in myself a bit more. I enjoyed travelling and experiencing a culture that was so different, and I started to say “yes” to adventures that I never would have before. Even things that were scary at the time, like when my bus driver was trying to ram another bus off the road, or when a tree destroyed the boat I was in on the Amazon River (causing it to fill with water!), are funny to look back on now and just added to the wild experience.
Overall, I think both the horrible bits as well as the amazing bits helped me to learn more about myself. I think my year abroad was worth it and I believe it is something everyone should have the opportunity to do. Even just a semester abroad is enough to push you out of your comfort zone and to alter your outlook on many things.