I am lucky enough to be writing my first article for Odyssey from Liverpool, England. I am spending a semester here studying abroad. Thanks to the conveniences of modern travel, this is something more and more college students get to experience. No matter how easy it is for us to hop on flights and travel thousands of miles, or to video chat with friends and family by clicking a few keys, it is normal to still feel apprehensive. The preparation period is filled with questions, research, and nervous butterflies.

Whether you are already set to study abroad, or just considering the idea, I hope to lessen the learning curve by providing you with the top three things I have learned so far during my time abroad.

1. The unusual travel destinations are the most fun.

I get to spend three months here in England, but there is no guarantee I will ever come back here after I return to my home university. Appreciate where you are, dive headlong into the culture, and don’t always resist the urge to be a tourist.

While planning a weekend trip to Scotland, one of my friends suggested we spend a day in a town I had never even heard of, tracking down the house her grandma grew up in. Family history isn’t a particular passion of mine, but I figured this was a chance to see a place off the beaten path instead of a destination like Loch Ness, Glasgow, or Edinburgh that visitors usually flock to.

Not only were we successful in finding the house, but we knocked on the door and were greeted by a very kind Scottish man who was in the middle of making tea while he watched the soccer game. You can’t get any more U.K. than that. He listened to our stories and let us tour some of the inside of his house. We even made friends with his adorable dog. It was a totally unique and utterly heartwarming experience.

Being open to new opportunities is vital when studying abroad, but there is a flip side to this point that is equally important. You have to know your own limits. If you exhaust yourself, fail a class, or obliterate your budget in the first month, that will restrict the opportunities you can take in the rest of your time.

2. Your brain will be on overload. Don’t trust your memory to capture everything.

Your mind will be saturated with the fantastic sights, smells, and quirks of this new place you get to call home. Not to mention practical thoughts like remembering where your new classes are held. Your brain cannot be expected to hold on to every memory a month from now, so give it some help.

Many study abroad students I know keep a travel journal. Personally, writing about my own experiences with pen and paper is too slow-paced for me to do every single day. If you feel the same way, don’t let that stop you from preserving all of the fantastic memories. Take photos and caption them, pick out the very best of every day and jot it down in short bullet points, or start a vlog channel on YouTube. Experiment and find the medium that works best for you!

3. You will mess up often. Accept this now.

You can spend hours on Google maps and travel websites, but many things you just have to learn by doing. The only way you can avoid mistakes is by sitting alone in a room by yourself all the time, which, as we previously discussed, you are not allowed to do.

The dormitories here at my English university are a couple of miles away from where classes are held. Fortunately, the university has a bus for students to ferry us back and forth. With this in mind, I went through my whole first day without stressing about how I was going to get home. It was only that afternoon that it dawned on me I knew where the bus dropped students off, but not where it picked them up. I had no idea how to get home. My group of friends and I tried three different bus stops and spent an hour standing in the rain. Our bus was nowhere, and every other city bus had been by us at least twice.

We went back and forth about what to do. Could the bus really be running 20 minutes late? What if this wasn’t the right stop at all? Our mission was further complicated by the fact that half of our group was American exchange students, and the other half French. We kept pausing and translating so that everyone was on the same page.

Finally, we backtracked to school, and asked someone who had lived in the country for longer than the three days we had. As it turned out, we were nowhere close to the correct spot on any attempt. Two hours after we planned to get a bus home we were finally riding it back. That experience was frustrating, a little bit funny, and very wet, but now we know how to get home from school.

Studying in another country is supposed to change you, challenge you, and teach you about the world from someone else's point of view. Hopefully this insight into my adventures makes you feel a little more prepared to seek out your own. I promise I haven't ruined any surprises though, there will be so much left for you to discover. Safe travels to wherever your adventures might take you.