Goodbye “Euro Girl Summer”

I can honestly say I just had the best summer of my life. I never thought at 21 years old that I would have the opportunity to spend five weeks in Italy. I would have laughed in someone’s face if they told me that. 

For the month of July, I lived in Sorrento, Italy and spent the month studying, exploring and expanding my knowledge about different cultures. I feel like studying abroad allowed me to uncover my true self and my abilities. I learned to solve major issues on my own and live away from home. My biggest learning experience was figuring out how to budget my money.   

I met so many amazing people during my travels, whether it was the other students I traveled with, the two amazing ladies who owned the sandwich shop under my apartment or the lovely couple who owned the cafe down the street.

I also got to see so so so many unbelievable parts of the world. I went to Pompeii, Rome, on a boat tour around Capri and to Paris and had the craziest weekend of my life. Seriously, nothing will ever alter my brain chemistry more than my weekend in Paris. 

I have been back home for a little over a month now and while it is good to be home and back to school I do miss quite a few things from my time abroad. Like being able to go swimming in the Mediterranean Sea every day and the amazing foods and drinks. 

I encourage everyone to take the opportunity to study abroad if they are given the chance. You’ll never regret it and you never know when you will have the chance again. I took this opportunity and now I can always say “when I was 21 I spent my summer in Italy.” 

To anyone who maybe be considering traveling to Italy or any other European countries I will leave you with these few tips:

Start hot girl walking

I took this as a joke before going and let me tell you I was humbled very quickly my first day there when I was huffing and puffing on my way to dinner. So build up some stamina and get used to walking on an incline, especially if traveling to Italy.

Budget your money

I am not going to say how much I had saved up but I will say set a money goal and then try and go a little beyond that. For me, food happened to be what I spent the most money on whether that was groceries, going out for drinks or group dinners. 

Don’t let a few bad things ruin your whole trip

The biggest thing is you can not control what other people do and what happens. During this trip I had to experience canceled flights, my first long-distance relationship and weird living arrangements. I didn’t let any of those situations ruin my trip. Looking back, those are small issues now. Canceled flights? You can book a new one. Long distance relationship? Talk through anything making you uncomfortable. Weird living situation? Embrace what is good about the situation instead of the negatives. 

I will never forget my first “Euro girl summer” and I hope the older I get, more opportunities to travel abroad will appear. 

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