I kept telling myself that when I came back from abroad I would write and to be fair – life got busy. Now at the last week of the quarter, here it is. And now I can claim that I won’t shut up about studying abroad, because honestly I can’t.
My location pick may have been influenced by my love for a British band that’s been on hiatus for five years, ahm One Direction, but that’s besides the point. As I told my advisor I wanted a city with no language barrier, so England it was.
I was never the girl to tell everyone that I “needed” to study abroad. I came to UW already from Connecticut, going the opposite way to Europe felt even more outside of my comfort zone and not a necessity. But when the time came down to it due to my classes, I realized I couldn’t pass up the opportunity (an opportunity I was very grateful to have).
I decided (at practically the last minute) that I didn’t want to do a program run by UW. I actually had to storm the UW Study Abroad Office (I apologize to that poor advisor) and had them change my program last minute. I ended up going to England with a program called CIEE, a study abroad program that allows any student from a US college to go to any of their locations in over 30 countries. I said yes to new.
The first day I arrived in England I regretted everything. I missed my four roommates who I’ve lived with for a year and a half now. I couldn’t believe I was pushing myself again, when 2 and a half years ago I showed up to Haggett Hall not knowing a soul. Here I was in a whole new country, with no one I knew from UW, and a fear of starting over.
Until I made a friend, and then another friend, and then another. Soon enough I found myself exploring a new city with new people and it wasn’t all that scary. The five close friends I made have forever impacted my life. Together we went to clubs that closed at 6 a.m. (sorry Mom), hiked up the cliff sides of the coast of England, took the tube the wrong way too many times, woke up at 2 a.m. every Friday to leave for the airport, and spent more time in Pret a Manger then our classes. Together we went to the Netherlands, Scotland, Malta, Italy, and Switzerland.
When I was leaving my London apartment I couldn’t believe things were going to change. All of the people I had met were going back to their own schools, (seldom four live in Seattle thankfully), and life was going to move on.
We were going to forget each other. I just knew it. Forget how it felt to run down the streets of Edinburgh. Forget the feeling of sitting on a dock in Venice or jumping into a snowbank in Zurich. Forget what it felt like to be surrounded by adventure at every corner.
As life turns out, we haven’t fully forgotten it, or each other. Seeing them brings me back to all the moments I’ve held inside. It’s easy to get caught up in my on-campus job, internship applications, and finals approaching. But getting the notification from the CIEE group chat brings me back out of my little bubble in Seattle.
It makes me remember that I did it, and I will never forget it. So if you haven’t been convinced (and have the opportunity) study abroad! You won’t regret it.