Last weekend around midnight, after about 24-straight hours of alternately sitting in a car, on a plane and in airports, I went to sleep in my own bed for the first time in three weeks. Not only was I returning home after almost a month, I was finally getting the break and the rest my body has needed since December. My entire body ached, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open on the drive home from the airport (don’t worry, my dad was the one driving). But the exhaustion was worth it, because I was coming home from Italy.
The end of the year is hectic and busy and stressful for everyone. I was particularly frazzled this past semester, because after finals I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax. I had a two-week window to finish all my work for the semester, do a ton of readings required for the trip (it was a Rice art history class taught abroad), and get physically and mentally prepared for my first European adventure. I was excited, for sure, but also pretty nervous.
My family has never traveled much. Both my parents work, so it’s hard to find time for big trips. We took lots of small vacations growing up — road trips, camping, family events. But because we drove almost everywhere, we rarely went very far out of Texas. This trip to Italy was significant for me, then, in several ways. First and foremost, it was for a class. So many people do study abroad programs in college that I figured it couldn’t be that stressful, but I knew it wouldn’t be a vacation. When you’re with your family, being 10 minutes late at the start of the day, or taking a few wrong turns probably isn’t the end of the world. But with the trip being a course, there was a lot less flexibility, at least when it came to class time and events that involved our professors.
On top of this, I had been abroad only once, and never as far as Italy. The summer after 10th grade, my family went to the Bahamas for a week. But, we went as a family, stayed in a resort, and never really had to deal with a language barrier, public transportation or navigating through the city. Now, not only was I going to be the farthest from home I’d ever been, but I was doing it as part of a class, in one of the most intense ways possible.
Add to all of this leftover stress from the end of the school year, moving back home, a broken suitcase and nervous parents. I was excited to go, but I had a lot on my mind in addition to the anxious butterflies in my stomach. Going to Italy is something I’ve wanted to do as long as I can remember. I grew up reading Greek and Roman myths, loved the "Percy Jackson" series, and have always appreciated ancient art. Plus, the "Lizzie McGuire Movie" made Rome look like a ton of fun; what if I got to meet my long-lost Italian pop star twin!
Anyway, the point is, I really wanted to go on this trip, and was thrilled to have been accepted into the course. But I knew I was going in with almost no intense/international travel experience, tired and stressed from the end of spring semester and without a background in classics or art history, which were the two main academic fields the course covered. I had so many reasons to back out, stay home, do almost anything other than 1000-plus pages of readings, prepare a 10-minute presentation, find new (much sturdier) luggage, cram three weeks’ worth of clothes into one suitcase and a backpack, and fly halfway around the world to do more schoolwork. Maybe I’m a masochist. Several times, I actually thought about and came pretty close to backing out. But, now that I’m home, every folded and re-folded piece of clothing, every page read, every international safety website checked, every re-read of the course syllabus, was so worth it.
As our date of departure got closer and closer and I considered not going more and more seriously, the one thought that kept me motivated and excited was the knowledge that when I got back I would be glad I had gone. How often do people get the chance to do the things they’ve always dreamed of? It’s cheesy, but this struck me as a pretty rare opportunity. So I got on that plane, made it to Rome, experienced jetlag for the first time, got the worst callouses of my life, made friends, got sick, learned more than I ever could have imagined possible in a three-week period, got better and had an all-around fantastic time.
So many people do study abroad programs. If your Instagram and Facebook feeds are anything like mine, you’ve probably got at least one random person you went to high school with, or maybe even a close friend you met in college, every semester who seems to post pictures of themselves in these beautiful far-off lands with the sole purpose of making everyone back home jealous. This may be true. But, now having done it myself, I can honestly say that I wasn’t there for the Instagram photos (although they do make nice, and free, souvenirs!). First of all, the WiFi was so spotty, slow or hit-and-miss, that I couldn’t check social media 5,000 times a day like I do back home. Secondly, social media was the last thing on my mind as I ate dinner on a rooftop patio overlooking the entire city, or walked through the Mausoleum of Augustus, or stared at Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa.
It’s definitely hard to not take photos of everything while abroad. Everything just seems so beautiful and so special that I was constantly fighting the urge to snap images of it all. And I did pretty poorly; I think I took between 800 and 1,000 photos in the first week alone. But, after spending more time in the city, I stopped taking so many pictures. Rather than try and photograph everything so I could remember it later, I tried to appreciate the places I was walking through and the things I was seeing, creating a memory instead of photographing one. Granted, I still took some photos on my way out. But deliberately experiencing these places and objects, with the strangers I was traveling with who quickly became good friends, totally changed the trip for the better.
If you’re thinking about going abroad, find a way to do it. Everyone who does it says that it’s life-changing and wonderful, and they sound cheesy as hell, but they’re so right. Even if you could care less about visiting another country, if you have the chance to go somewhere or do something you’ve been imagining for a long time, don’t hesitate to jump at any opportunity to go to the place or do the thing. And while you’re going and doing, you’ll understand the difference between simply doing it for the Instagram and doing it because, for a brief moment, you’re living the dream.
