It’s hard to personally gauge how you’ve changed. It’s a difficult thing to pick up on, and takes a great deal of self-awareness and attention to minuscule shifts. I don’t know if I have either of those, and I know that I don’t yet know every way I’ve been changed by this experience.
I have become a master packer. To be honest, I think this is the personal evolution I am most proud of. My freshman year, I took a full L.L. Bean duffle home for Thanksgiving break. It was so heavy I broke blood vessels in my neck carrying it to South Station. This semester I managed to fit everything I needed for a two week trip to five countries into one backpack. I am the Olympic athlete of packing. Seriously, guys-the rolling method is where it’s at.
That’s one small way I know I’ve changed. I’d love to say that I’ve become more mature or responsible or any number of grand, impressive things, but the truth is that I don’t know. I’ve only just resettled into my old routine. I think it’ll take time to pick up on the ways my world view has evolved and on how I’ve improved as a person. The little things, liking packing skills, are already obvious, but I’m excited for the more elusive changes to make themselves obvious over then next few months.
It was really a spectacular four months; I can hardly narrow it down to a favorite moment! I have a million favorite experiences. However, what I reflect on most fondly and what I find myself most proud of is my two week travel break. I didn’t go into this semester expecting to travel a lot. That came as a big surprise to me! So many things that I did for that break (living out of one backpack, moving around non-stop, finding transit all over Europe) were so foreign and new to me that I would never have expected I could pull them off! It’s overwhelming just thinking about it, but I managed to not only have a very successful trip, but to make it the best time of my whole semester. I’m gonna carry that one with me for a while.
This was, in some ways, a strange time to be in Europe. The political situation over there is complex. It was one thing to hear about the Syrian refugee crisis from the US. It was another thing entirely to befriend two brothers who fled Syria and now live in Salzburg, trying to make a home for themselves, knowing that they’ll probably never see their home or parents again. While I was in Austria, I saw signs that said both “Refugees Welcome” and “Islamists Not Welcome.” I learned about how Austria is responding politically, and it helped me have more context about what’s happening in the world and what the views in the US mean on a global level. This experience, more than anything, impacted my world view, and I’m so grateful to have met the two of them. I believe that if more people could meet them and see what lovely human beings they are, we would have a very different political climate in the US and internationally.
That was the kind of experience I didn’t expect to have abroad, but my time in Austria and Europe was full of wonderful surprises. I hope I get to have another international experience in the near future, and I speak to each and every one of you when I say that you need to go out and make it happen for you.
Thank you to everyone who made my time abroad possible, and thank you to the city of Salzburg for being so dang cute! I miss you already.
Auf Wiedersehen.
