I’m in the airport. I think it’s 6 am but I couldn’t tell you for sure. Or maybe it’s 5… whatever. I’m following everyone else as they walk through the airport, somehow seeming to understand where they’re going. We get to customs, which takes the mysterious card I had to fill out on the plane. Then we do more walking and end up at baggage claim.

Waiting for my 49-pound suitcase (which wasn’t the original weight and had only created an ordeal at Newark International Airport), I look around at my fellow classmates who are also waiting for their bags. We all came here together; we all know each other. But for some reason, none of us seem to be acknowledging our association to one another.

My bag finally arrives, and I pull it off the conveyor belt. I pick up the handle, look around at the signs (which are written in Gaelic before they’re written in English), and begin my unexpected journey of almost-forced maturity.

I signed up for a two-week study abroad trip to Dingle, Ireland with certain expectations, quickly proven to be starkly different from the reality handed to me on a not-so-silver platter. I convinced my parents that, despite the fact I’m only a freshman, I was ready for a study abroad trip. I was ready to go to Europe by myself; I was ready to be independent.

Naïvely, I expected to have my hand held as I took a nice, short trip to a different country with my school. So when I was thrown into a different world with little instructions and absolutely no one to watch out for me, I was shocked – culture shocked. I arrived in Ireland with a terrible fear of the unknown and unfortunate regret that I had even signed up in the first place. I told myself that I was young and stupid and not ready for something as big as this.

Little did I know, I was ready.

After arriving in Dingle and given a quick tour of the town, we were left to ourselves. Left to figure out what time it was so we could reset our iPhones; left to figure out how to use our outlet adapters so we could charge all our devices; left to figure out that little trick in our houses that makes the showers cold so the Wi-Fi will work; left to come to the realization that Europe is not America.

I expected my time in Ireland to be very similar to my life in the US, but was immediately surprised by unanticipated cultural differences. The most astounding difference, in my opinion, was the lack of Wi-Fi and heat. Although my school’s study abroad office, during their brief orientation for our trip, warned us that Wi-Fi could be an issue, I didn’t understand the gravity of it until I was actually there. It really hit me during that free time in the house when I just could not hold a Facetime call with my parents as I was telling them about the flight, about the trip so far, and attempting to get their help figuring out my outlet adapter that would not work. The wifi also became an issue when we started class the next day, as it would turn an online assignment that should take 15 minutes into a two-hour ordeal of flipping the shower switch on and off.

As for heating, our university’s campus did not have it. We would all have to sit in the classrooms in coats and scarves, and by the second week we all caught colds. It wasn’t until Brother Sean told us in class that “Dingle first got electricity in 1954” that I realized: Dingle is not Connecticut.

I was completely astounded by these vast differences in basic amenities that we are so used to having in the US, as we grow up here being told that other people in other countries are just like us. As humans, yes they are, but ways of life vary from place to place. You can even see this within our own country – chances are I don’t live the same as someone from Hawaii or Alaska.

Other cultural differences included how to dress for a night out, how to act in a restaurant, and how to cross the street. Fun fact: Dingle, Ireland does not have crosswalks, and pedestrians there do not have the right of way. It took almost getting hit by a car to understand that one.

On top of being hit with unexpected culture shock, I was learning to be a mature adult, living (kind of) on her own in a foreign country. I had to go grocery shopping by myself for the first time in my life, learn my way around an unfamiliar town, and be completely responsible for myself on nights out.

Although the tone of this might appear to be negative, let me assure you: nothing about this experience was negative. I needed these factors to force me to learn how to be independent, to learn about another culture, and to learn about myself. There were so many positives throughout the course of the two weeks, and anything that felt like a negative eventually turned into a positive.

One major positive was learning that Dingle is a very safe town, which made all this independent business just a little easier. Before departing the US, we had been told that Dingle is a safe place, but I was still nervous for my safety. We live in a society that tells us the world outside the US is dangerous, and I grew up believing that I’d be putting my life at risk by leaving my own country. Especially from what we hear in the news today, we start to think that all travel is dangerous. But it’s not, and I didn’t quite realize this until I started seeing and meeting locals in Dingle. They flipped a switch in my brain: they live in what I refer to as a “foreign country,” which is home for them, and they’re safe; they’re okay. No one on this earth is completely safe from any harm at all, and life is about taking risks.

Another positive was all the incredible friends I made while abroad. Mostly Sacred Heart Students, we got to meet in Ireland and now see each other on a regular basis at school. By the end of our two weeks in Dingle, we were acting as though we had known each other for years. Being thrown into a foreign country with little to no instructions can bring a group of people together, I suppose.

Before embarking on this trip, I thought the point of study abroad was to see cool sights and meet cool locals and become cultured, and while that is part of it, that’s not the whole point. It’s about becoming independent and learning who you are, both facilitated by placement in a foreign environment.

Little did I know that the two biggest things I’d get out of Dingle were (some) maturity and a solid new group of friends I can still see every day.

So while studying abroad was not exactly what I expected it to be, it was nonetheless a wonderful and worthwhile surprise. I now have the knowledge of a home other than my own, and I get to share it with my friends and family in America through stories and pictures. But as a now wise owl, I tell my friends at school that these stories and pictures do not do Dingle, Ireland justice. You need to be there to truly experience it, and although my time there was quite limited, I got what I needed.

I was first hell-bent on going to Ireland because that was the sight I wanted to see. But I understand now that it doesn’t matter where you go; you will have a good experience and learn and become the person you are meant to become in any new place. As Marcel Proust once said, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Hope to see you soon, Dingle.