Flights booked nine hours before departure, jumping off cliffs in the Ionian Sea, late night city wandering, historic ruins, frequented cafes, attempted conversations in a foreign dialect and mouthwatering gyros, so many gyros. Oh, and some attended classes.
I’ve always heard all the lines about how a study abroad experience changes your life, and I’d roll my eyes, mostly because I was jealous not because I didn’t believe it, but I also think it was because I didn’t fully understand what it meant. At the risk of sounding pretentious, there’s something to be said about fully immersing yourself into a country and culture completely different from the one you know, and that takes more than a week’s vacation to do so.
Before setting off for this four-month adventure, I had to set my expectations very low. Not because I thought I wouldn’t have a good experience, but because of various factors, my plans for studying abroad had continuously been pushed back… three years back. COVID and other life obligations kept interrupting my well thought out plans; anyone who knows me can attest that I am nothing if not a little OCD about planning, ok, a lot OCD, but that’s how you get things done!
With that in mind, I headed to the airport to start my totally-not-over-thought journey in a foreign country that I’d only been dreaming about for the last three years of my life, but who’s counting. Better late than never as they say, and boy were they right, whoever “they” happen to be. Smart ones those “theys”.
Since being back I’ve been asked to recount my time there on many occasions, but despite the hundreds of memories I can recall, the countless stories I can tell and the loads of little anecdotes I can share, I come up short. I never know where to start. How do you condense what seems like a lifetime of experiences, lessons, relationships, laughs and growth into an abridged version that is easy for your people back home to follow along with?
It’s like waking up from the most vivid, wild, life-like dream and then trying to tell your sister about it, but in the minute, it took to get out of bed and walk to the kitchen, your ability to describe what your unconscious mind produced with any sort of articulation has simply vanished. And that is the best description I can give about what my study abroad experience was like, but since that is kind of a mouthful, I’ve settled on more simple words like “incredible” or “amazing”.
People understand those words far more than the gibberish that comes out when attempting to explain why there was a purple elephant in a top hat riding on a sled down the sand dunes of the Sahara in your dream the night before. Not to alarm anyone, there are no purple elephants in top hats walking around in Greece, but that would be pretty cool right?
Anyways, with that being said, I cannot come close to expressing all that my time abroad was and all it meant to me, but I will do my best to give you a glimpse.
It was unpredictable.
It was intentional.
It was beautiful.
It was perspective changing.
It was more educational than any classroom could ever be.
It was challenging.
It was freeing.
And it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.
While the majority of the time felt like I was looking through rose-colored glasses, it was still life, and life will always be life, no matter where you are. The ups and downs don’t pause while you are off gallivanting across the globe, but sometimes you get lucky in life and have a stent of time that seems almost perfect. I was one of the fortunate ones where my study abroad experience was one of those times in my life.
I met incredible people and formed unbreakable bonds, visited places that I’ve only ever seen on movie screens and dreamed about in my head, got a lot better at navigating public transportation in dense-walkable-cities (as some friends of mine like to say), gained more confidence traveling by myself, practiced unplanned problem solving, and became a lot more spontaneous, a goal of mine this last semester. Planner freak remember – big accomplishment!
I missed buses, interacted with vibrant locals, walked through world-famous museums, swam in seas, strolled through the bustling streets of lively cities, ate some of the most delicious food I have ever had, and took far too many photos.
I drank wine on rooftops overlooking the Acropolis, floated down the Seine while watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle in the night, parasailed over the breathtaking blue waters of Santorini, re-enacted the iconic Beatles cover on Abbey Road in London, ate gelato on the cobblestones of Venice, and almost got stranded on the island of Skopelos all because we had to see the Mamma Mia church, obviously.
It’s hard to pick a “favorite” memory from the plethora of ones I can choose from during this time period, but one that stands out is the weekend road trip I took with some friends to the northern part of Greece to the mountain oasis of Meteora. In typical Mountain-West fashion, I was determined to find mountains to climb to escape the hustle and bustle of the condensed European cities I came to visit.
Originally planning to make this a solo-trip, four of my friends wanted to join and I was more than happy to have the company. Long before the start of this trip, my abroad roommates and friends had already given me the nickname “Granola Girl”, due to my outdoor hobbies and the simple fact that I’m from Idaho and live in Utah, and the nine-mile hike I took these city-boys on just confirmed that in their minds.
It was a long, exhausting day, but the views and experiences were worth every winded breath. Going to Greece, I wasn’t expecting there to be mountains like there are back home, but boy was I wrong, and I am so happy I was – not something you will likely ever hear me say outside of this scenario.
I can’t do the four months of last semester justice within the confines of a magazine article, but I hope that you at least have a picture of what life was like for me in Europe during that time.
One last thing before I log off; if you ever get the opportunity to travel, do it. It can be as close as taking a camping trip to St. George or as far as a safari in Africa. Whatever opportunities you are offered to get out of your back yard and out of your comfort zone, take full advantage. You won’t regret it.
