There are two weeks left in the semester and all you can think is- can break please get here faster? Everyone is pulling all-nighters studying for finals next week. This weekend you will probably start packing to go home for a month. Last weekend was most likely the last time to go out and see your Notre Dame friends until next semester. But if you’re anything like my friends and I, you will be packing up your whole room to move out for the year, while last weekend you said your goodbyes to your friends until next year. Yes, that’s right until next year. The time has come for us, ladies, to study abroad.
Throughout the semester, studying abroad was all we could talk about. But now it’s here and it is finally hitting me that I’m leaving. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t contain my excitement, but now that it is the end of the semester, every little thing I do could potentially be my last. It could be my last pizza at the dining hall on Friday, my last time complaining about the unavailable treadmills at the gym (that I probably wouldn’t run on anyways), and my last time convincing myself those chicken fingers from cyber were much needed. There may or may not have been tears shed this past weekend when my friend and I were belting Taylor Swift lyrics in our guy friend’s room, like we do every weekend (yes, it is our guy friends that blast the Taylor Swift). We both looked at each other, realizing in that moment that there were not going to be any more jam sessions this year. We had to ask them to pick a different one of their favorite T-Swift songs because “Long Live” was just too emotional.
Everyone I’ve talked to who has studied abroad says it is the best experience they have ever had. You get to travel around Europe with your friends and do all of the touristy things- going to museums, seeing those legendary cliffs of Mohr, and hearing boys talk in those foreign accents all girls dream about. This is the one time in your life where gaining 15 pounds is appropriate because when else are you going to experience all those delicious carb-filled European treats? This is the time in our lives where an opportunity will present itself and it is our choice to either embrace it or we will find ourselves regretting not taking full advantage of it. Sure we may miss our friends and families back home, but the memories we are about to create will last a lifetime. For all you lovebirds out there, now is the time to see if distance really does make the heart grow fonder.
For our Smick Chicks staying back in the Bend, get ready for mass amounts of inboxes and Skype sessions from across the pond. Even though there will be no more daily girl talk, get ready to fill us in on the top ND crushes on twitter and all about that awkward all-school formal. This isn’t goodbye, just ta ta for now!
Photos provided by the author