Why YOU Should Study Abroad!

You get to live anywhere you want with other adventurous people from all over the world. I gained confidence, friendships, and more new experiences than I can hope to count.

Going to Thailand for a semester was the adventure of a lifetime. It was one of the best decisions that I've ever made. I was surrounded by a diverse group of people that loved adventure, and traveling. Few were American and no one shared a major even similar to mine. I travelled every weekend all over Thailand, and to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. I went to the Full Moon Party, White Water Rafting, cruised in Halong Bay, trekked through Sapa, climbed a 7-tiered waterfall, hiked through the jungle, spent a day with elephants, got a Thai massage, ate street food, made new friends, (kind of) learned how to bargain, became a (mostly) pescetarian, started reading non-fiction books religiously, ate a lot of food, stayed out until the sun rose, traveled alone, learned some Thai, questioned my beliefs, stayed in touch with family and friends back home, changed the way I view the world, and kept a blog just to name a few. It seems that the list is endless and each one of these have stories to go along with them.

I came home and everything was almost exactly as it was when I left. A semester is enough time to change your life, open your mind, make incredible friends, and come home and feel like you were hardly gone long at all, though I feel that I matured and my passion for traveling grew. I quickly fell back in my life back home as if little had changed, except me of course.

I went to Thailand because I didn't think that I would be brave enough to backpack there without any help and because it was the cheapest study abroad program that I found in all of my research. I'm so glad that I did. Traveling off the beaten path meant being surrounded by people that were down for anything and everything. It also meant living in a country very different from mine back home. It's eye opening. I take for granted having a flushing toilet, toilet paper, and soap to wash my hands. A little bit of money goes a long way here.

My first day I was slightly worried. I didn't know what I had gotten myself into. I felt like I wasn't ready for this strange world yet. However, within a few of days of my orientation program I had friends, and I felt more comfortable. I better understood the food, transportation, and the culture. I was about as ready as I could be to be set free in Thailand. Of course there was a learning curve. For the first month or two every time I tried to take public transportation it NEVER worked out as planned. I always ended up somewhere other than where I was trying to go. Nevertheless, I would eventually figure it out. I just learned to not take public transportation when I was on a schedule. Honestly, a lot of my semester went that way. Miscommunications and confusion comes with the territory of moving to a foreign country. I learned from it and tried to do better the next time. I learned to better roll with the punches because it's necessary. Expect the unexpected.

Step outside of your comfort zone, face your fears, and have a semester full of new experiences, in new places, with new friends. It can be overwhelming, scary, and exciting all at once, but I am mesmerized by Southeast Asia and am beyond pleased with my decision to study abroad there. I am ready to travel more. I want to see the world and my new mission is finding ways to make that happen. It means making it a priority and I am more than willing to do that after my wonderful semester. An extra perk is the friends I can visit in their home countries as I travel the world.

My advice: 

Go alone. You will learn more and grow more when you don't have people you already know to cling to. You'll be forced to make new friends and step outside your comfort zone. Luckily, everyone else will be trying to do the same thing so it won't be too diffucult. You'll likely surprise yourself with what you're capable of.

Go somewhere outside of your comfort zone. You've already been to Europe? Go someone new! You speak English? Go somewhere that doesn't! It adds extra challenges and keeps things interesting. Trust me when I say I spoke no Thai when I went to Thailand. I can speak the necessary phrases now and know little tricks to getting by without speaking the language.

Try new things. You're already in a strange, foreign country alone so you're halfway there. Keep the new experiences coming. Say yes to more opportunities, especially ones you can't experience back at home!

Go with a program. If you're still concerned about going abroad go with a program that has an advisor, extra support, and an orientation program. It gives you a few days of assistance at the beginning to help you get accustomed to the country you're in in a smaller group so you can meet a few people and begin making friends before being introduced to the whole group of people studying abroad. Your advisor can recommend things to do and eat, teach you some important words and phrases, and is only a phone call away when you can't get back home because the taxi driver doesn't understand what you're saying.

GlobaLinks- my study abroad program