From September to December last year, I spent a term abroad at University College London in the UK. While studying abroad was the absolute time of my life – I traveled to different countries nearly every weekend, made so many amazing friends, and was fully immersed in a different continent for three months – there was a fair share of slight disasters.
While I love recounting the things that went right during my time away, I find that many people are far more interested in hearing about the things that went very, very wrong (thanks for making me relive the trauma, people!). After a couple friends insisted my experiences deserved an article, here I am recounting the top 5 fails of my time away. Let’s dive in.
- Ending Up in the ER on Day Two
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Starting off strong, I somehow managed to land myself in the British emergency room on DAY TWO (let me repeat, day two of my 100+ days abroad). Warning – this story involves an injury, so proceed with caution.
I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, boarding a classic London double-decker bus for the first time on my way to meet a couple of new friends for dinner. Being the tourist that I am, I immediately climbed to the top level so I could admire the view, take in the streets from above and feel like I was truly doing the whole London thing.
When it was my stop, I began to descend the narrow bus stairs. I was about halfway down when the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. I went flying forward, instinctively reached out to grab a pole to catch myself, and my arm twisted violently in the process. In a split second, my entire shoulder popped completely out of its socket.
Running entirely on adrenaline, I somehow managed to stumble off the bus and into a nearby café with my arm hanging uselessly at my side. I sat down, tried to process what had just happened and promptly fainted.
Once I came to, I called an Uber to take me to the emergency room. I had to ask two guys smoking in an alley to open the Uber door for me since I couldn’t move my arm – they were surprisingly very kind – and then I sobbed the entire ride as the pain fully set in.
When I arrived, they made me attempt to fill out a form with my non-dominant hand before they tried to shove my arm back into place. It wouldn’t go back in, so they gave me medication that absolutely knocked me out.
Finally, my arm was forced back (I’m cringing just writing this) and secured with a sling. So there I was – high out of my mind from the meds, barely coherent and sitting in a hospital in a country I had been in for less than 48 hours. Truly quite a way to start my semester.
- Experiencing the Squirrel Apocalypse
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This next story unfolds over several weeks. When we all first moved into our dorm in September, we were warned in passing to keep our windows closed because squirrels could get inside. Naturally, my friend and I assumed this was a joke – we lived on the third floor, and the windows barely opened (I’m talking like a couple inches, max).
Spoiler alert: it was not a joke.
One afternoon, I returned from class, opened my bedroom door and found a squirrel sitting inside on my window seat, staring directly at me like he paid rent. I screamed. He immediately scampered back out the window, squeezing his body through the tiny opening and launching himself onto a nearby tree.
Needless to say, I was traumatized. I kept my window shut at all times after that – until one day, I forgot. When I returned to my room after a long day, it looked like it had been ransacked. Things were everywhere, items on my desk had been knocked over and the squirrel had even gotten into my granola (pictured below).
What made it worse was that these were not isolated incidents. I started noticing squirrels everywhere. I would look out my window and see them scaling the side of the building, clinging to the brick walls and window ledges like they were plotting something. Every time I walked into my room, I half-expected to find another one waiting for me. At a certain point, it genuinely started to feel like the beginning of a squirrel apocalypse – one wrong move, one open window, and they’d reclaim the dorm as their own.
- Almost Getting Slapped by a Swiss Mom on a Mountain
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One of my favorite trips abroad was a weekend in Switzerland. It was unreal – green mountains, fresh air and views that looked like they belonged on a postcard. Easily one of the highlights of my entire term. However, it wouldn’t be a memorable time if something didn’t go wrong.
My friends and I decided to go on a toboggan slide at the top of a mountain, where riders can control their own speed. There’s a clearly stated rule that riders must stay about 25 meters apart, which we followed. We were going fast – just not top-speed, Olympic tryout fast.
The family behind us, however, did not appreciate this. They started tailgating us the entire way down, yelling for us to go faster. At one point, their toboggan was so close to ours that I was genuinely convinced they were about to rear-end us and send us flying off the mountain.
When we finally reached the bottom, I thought the chaos was over. I was wrong.
The mom immediately rushed up to us, got right in my face and started yelling and cursing about how we should’ve gone faster. And when I say in my face, I mean I genuinely thought I was about to get slapped by a Swiss woman on the side of a cliff. For context, we are two young women and this was a family of full-grown adults who were taking this toboggan ride way too seriously.
Even funnier (and by funnier I mean more ridiculous), staff members watched the whole thing happen and did absolutely nothing. When I tried to ask for help, we were essentially told to move along while the family got to ride again like nothing had happened.
Standing on a mountain, being yelled at by strangers over a toboggan ride was not on my Switzerland bingo card. But honestly? It wouldn’t be a study abroad trip without at least one moment where you wonder how you ended up in this situation.
- Recovering From My 21st Birthday in Portugal
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While the drinking age in the UK is 18, turning 21 still felt worth celebrating – especially since most of my friends abroad were also American. It was a really fun night, and I woke up the next morning at 5 a.m. to catch an early flight to Faro, Portugal for a weekend trip. I somehow managed to make my way to the train station and barely catch my train to the airport. I was exhausted and beyond miserable.
When we finally arrived at our Airbnb in Portugal, things immediately went downhill. The front door was stuck shut, and after struggling for far too long, we eventually forced our way inside. Almost immediately after, my friend went into the bathroom – and then couldn’t get out.
We tried everything: pulling the handle, jiggling the lock and attempting to pry the door open. Nothing worked. We called the host, who sent over one of the cleaners to help. When she arrived, we quickly realized she only spoke Portuguese.
So there we were, hungover and exhausted, using Google Translate to explain our emergency while my friend helplessly rattled the stuck door handle from inside.
We finally were able to get her out with some brute force and lock precision, although she was stuck in there for way too long. As you can see from me smiling in the picture below, it started off funny before we realized we couldn’t get her out on our own (LOL).
After surviving the sticky doors situation, we ended the night with a Once Upon a Time marathon, since comfort TV fixes everything.
- My Dorm Bathroom Flooding
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To wrap things up, we return to my crazy dorm. When I tell you that the building is old, I mean OLD. It’s one of those ancient English buildings where a strong wind could probably knock it right over (a little morbid, but you get the point).
Our communal bathrooms (which were co-ed and shared by way too many people, by the way) consistently had issues. For one, the showers required you to hold down a button for the water to run, and it shut off every five to ten seconds. The toilets were even worse. On the rare occasion they flushed, they would make weird noises, the water level would act up, and it was better to just get out of there before you thought too hard about it.
One day, I walked into the bathroom to shower and was met with the sight of a toilet actively gushing water onto the floor. I immediately left and found another bathroom. When I returned later, the water level had risen throughout the whole bathroom, seeped into the hallway and begun seeping into people’s rooms. Panicked, I knocked on a neighbor’s door and we called maintenance.
It took hours for anyone to show up, meaning we spent a significant portion of the day wading through toilet water. I wish I was kidding.
Well, there you have it. Those were my top five worst – and, in hindsight, funniest – moments from my three months abroad. I could easily keep going: touching a live electrical socket in Austria, having an allergic reaction to British nail polish and being attacked by seagulls in Brighton, just to name a few.
It truly wouldn’t have been a memorable experience if everything had gone perfectly. Somehow, even with all the chaos, I wouldn’t change a single thing.