Mistakes are Memories, Too- A Few Stories from my Study Abroad Experience
Are you thinking about studying abroad in the near future? Are you getting ready to study abroad this summer? If so, this blog is for you! Check out what one of our senior Honors Scholars, Madison Petri, learned during her abroad experience!
As I began to write this my Snapchat popped up with my memories from 2018, most of which were memories from my study abroad experience in Sevilla, Spain. I have pictures of the friends I made, some of my favorite foods, pictures from Spain, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Ireland and Morocco! These memories show all of my favorite moments and some of the most fun memories I have ever had. But let’s be honest, these “Snapchat worthy” moments were only about 50% of what it was like living in Spain for five months. What was the other 50%? Stumbling over cobblestone, getting lost in my own neighborhood, making a fool out of myself when ordering food, spending too much money, being late to school events, being homesick, and actually studying a little bit. Living in a foreign country with a different family, making all new friends and trying to figure out life in a different language is anything but comfortable. Because of all of these chances I had to be uncomfortable, I had so many chances to learn new lessons and grow. In order to give an accurate overview of my study abroad experience I can not only talk about all of the positive experiences that made me love the country, the people and the school, but also all of the negative experiences that made me question what I was doing, why I was there and if I wanted to stay.
I will start with the 50% of my memories that were not exactly snapchat worthy. Including the $500 mistake brought to you by yours truly. Bryce, my boyfriend, and I had a plan to fly from Malaga, a southern city, to Barcelona to meet my parents for the rest of the week. I have no idea how to explain what happened next and I can’t really say anything to clarify my foolishness… Bryce and I had spent two days in Malaga and we got there by a car service that drove us from Sevilla to Malaga, maybe I was thinking “you don’t need an ID to be driven from Sevilla to Malaga”. As we arrive at the airport in Malaga I realize, yep you guessed it, I had zero form of a government issued ID. No passport, no US drivers license, just a school ID, which doesn’t count. So here we are in the airport being told I am not able to catch the flight to Barcelona to meet my parents, my only form of ID is a two-hour drive away and we lost our flights to Barcelona which were bought weeks in advance. I was in hysterics. I was absolutely balling, extremely mad at myself, embarrassed, all of the feelings, all at once. But Bryce stayed calm. Together, once it stopped raining from my eyes, we made a plan B. We figured out a way to drive back to Sevilla, on the way there I bought us tickets from Sevilla to Barcelona, I grabbed my passport from my house, we went directly to the airport and caught a flight to Barcelona that same night, so we barely missed any time with my parents. This is absolutely NOT a Snapchat-worthy memory and just thinking about it makes me so mad and confused again. But this happened, there’s no denying it and it is a part of my abroad experience. Mistakes are going to happen, plans are going to change and sometimes it takes $500 to get yourself out of a pickle that you got yourself into, unfortunately.
There were plenty of lows like this throughout my time in Spain, but without these I wouldn’t experience all of the “snapchat-worthy” moments. My main goal in going to Spain was to practice my Spanish and increase my fluency. This language barrier led to many difficult and embarrassing moments, but it also gave me many chances to challenge myself and prove to myself how capable I was with speaking Spanish. One of my favorite moments of using the Spanish language didn’t actually happen in Spain, it happened while on a trip to Prague. I was in a crowd of people watching the sunset when a man, seemingly alone, slipped and lay on the concrete unable to move. No one moved to help him up so I quickly assisted him to see what had happened. Being in a different country you can’t assume everyone speaks English so I asked if he spoke English, and of course he did not which I thought was going to make this process of helping him much more difficult. However, he understood my question enough to respond and then stated that he spoke Portuguese. Portuguese and Spanish are very close and many Portuguese speakers also speak Spanish, so I asked if he could communicate Spanish and he said yes! I then continued helping him using Spanish. I focused on determining the root cause of his pain, if he hit his head, and how his breathing was. A member of the crowd around us spoke Czech and contacted the emergency services. We continued to converse with me speaking Spanish to him, the man responding in Spanish and broken English, me relaying this information to the woman who spoke English and Czech, and then she spoke to the dispatchers in Czech. This pathway of communication continued until the emergency medical team arrived to properly care for him. Utilizing both medicine and Spanish gave me confidence, reassurance and excited my passion to become a bilingual medical professional one day and this is a moment that will stick with me forever.
When you make the decision to travel across the world and live in a different country for multiple months you have to be prepared for whatever the adventure throws at you. There will be life changing moments, in both positive and negative ways. There will be life-long relationships made, and you will meet some people that you never want to see again. You will experience some of the highest of highs and some of the lowest of lows. All in all, I did would not have taken any of my mistakes away from this wonderful roller coaster of an experience. I grew up more in the five months I was abroad than I could have ever imagined, and it was all thanks to the combination of both ridiculously foolish moments and amazingly triumphant moments. To anyone who is planning to study abroad in your future, do it. And be prepared to make mistakes, learn, make those same mistakes again, learn again, and grow as a person.
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