My summer abroad was amazing and I'm already anxious to return.

During the summer of my freshman year, I decided to study abroad in London, Paris, Bristol and Cardiff with the British Media Study Abroad Program. It was only a three and a half week trip, but it was one of the best experiences of my life.

 I was so excited on the flight over, that I couldn’t even fall asleep. By the time we landed at Heathrow in London, I had been awake for over 36 hours. We landed at 7 a.m., so we had a full day ahead of us, but I didn’t care. On the tube ride from Heathrow to central London, I started to fall in love with England, and when we actually got into London, I fell in love even more. It was so surreal to be in a completely different country, especially one that has so much history and an even longer history than America’s.          

The first day was spent touring London. I remember the first moment I saw Big Ben. All I could do was stand there and look at it, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually standing there. Our professors took us on a boat ride on the Thames, which definitely was not a good idea for 20 kids who were jet lag and had been up all night. The boat put a few of us to sleep.         

That day got even longer after the boat dropped us off at Greenwich. A few of the girls wanted to go to Milkshake City, which no one actually knew the exact location of, we just had an address and a tube pass that would allow us to get on and off at any stop. We took the tube to a stop outside of London, and then almost got on the wrong bus and had to ask for directions on how to get there. We finally made it and thought that our little adventure was over, but we were completely wrong. We got on what we thought was the right bus, but it wasn’t. At this point, it was about 8 p.m. The bus started taking us deeper into the borough of London. We were lost, and had no idea where to get off or how we were going to get back to our apartment. We finally asked our incredibly nice bus driver, and she let us off at a stop near a tube station that would allow us to make it back to where we needed to be.          

The next days were spent visiting news agencies. Those visits were so interesting and it was really cool to see how English news programs worked. We were able to go on an amazing bus tour of London and see more of the famous sights. One of the cooler spots to see was the Journalism Church, which shows the names of all the journalists who lost their lives while working overseas, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.      

Our first weekend in London, we traveled to Paris. We took the two hour train ride from Kings Cross, which allowed us to see some of northern France, which was incredibly beautiful. I loved seeing the fields of sunflowers and all the little French towns. We arrived in Paris and experienced quite the culture shock when we walked off the train to see a couple making out. They aren’t joking when they say the French are more into PDA than Americans. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and set off on another boat ride and to see the Eiffel Tower. That was an even cooler moment than seeing Big Ben.           

We spent our time in Paris sightseeing and going to a few new agencies. We saw the Mona Lisa, Versailles, Notre Dame and I even tried escargot. It was only a weekend trip, so before I knew it we were heading back to London.          

Over the next few weeks, we visited more news agencies and some public relations and advertising firms. We were able to see Cambridge, Stonehenge, the Roman baths, and took a trip to Wales. We even went to tour BBC and saw the TARDIS.  Our last few days were spent in Bristol, which is a town a few hours outside of London, and it gave us a completely different perspective of England. This part of England is beautiful, and extremely hilly. We took a bus, and it was quite the adventure watching our driver navigate up steep inclines on narrow streets.         

When I told people that I was studying abroad, they said that I would only have the desire to travel even more when I got back and, I must say, they were right. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made during my college career. If you have the chance to study abroad, take it. You won’t be disappointed.