If you are at a loss for how to spend your next summer, I have two words for you: study abroad. This past summer I had the wonderful opportunity to study abroad with TCU in Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. Study abroad is great for three things: you get to experience the country you visit through a lens you can only find by totally immersing yourself in your surroundings, you learn a lot about your own values and where you come from, and you make amazing, lifelong friends.
When you study abroad, you do not simply go on guided tours and read pamphlets and hang out in gift shops like a normal tourist. You are actually living in a foreign country for an extended amount of time, and this allows you to really delve into your host culture. Of course, we checked off all the must-do tourist attractions while abroad—we went to Budapest’s House of Terror Museum, the breathtaking St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, and impressive art galleries in Vienna. But the experiences we had during our free time were what impacted me the most. The 2016 Euro Cup was happening at the same time as our travels, and huge screens were put up throughout Budapest so the public could collectively watch the soccer (or ‘futbol’) matches. We went to the Rathaus Platz open-air plaza night after night to eat amazing food and partake in the excitement for Hungary’s national soccer team with our neighbors. It was probably painfully obvious that we were foreigners, but on those nights it felt like we were all on the same team.
One of the most important impacts study abroad will have on you is that visiting a foreign country teaches you a lot about your own country and your own values. Upon visiting the thermal baths in Budapest, I understood the very different concepts of time between America and Hungary. The bath house was an elaborate complex with dozens of pools and saunas differing in temperature and humidity, and locals would go and just sit in them for hours. They might converse with the person next to them or just close their eyes and lay back in the steam. In America we so often feel the need to rush and to always keep ourselves busy and working hard, but Europeans much more value relaxation and simply enjoying their time with one another. Study abroad opened my eyes to this calmer way of life, and now I wish I could sit in a hot sauna all day instead of going to classes.
And lastly, perhaps my favorite gift I have from studying abroad is the friendships I have made. I went into the trip knowing only one other person, and I returned with amazing friends that I would have never even gotten the chance to meet otherwise. The bonds you make while stuffing yourselves full of traditional foods, getting lost while traversing an unfamiliar city, and watching the sun set over a thousand-year-old city are ones that will surely carry on when you come back home.
(Photo Sources: Emily Fletcher)