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Life lesson! One should not bring two heavy luggage, a duffel bag, and a backpack when traveling through Europe...don't recommend it.

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Welcome to my last blog! This has been a life changing experience and I have gained a lot from this adventure. Through this last post I will go through how this experience has shaped me, and the things that I learned.

The biggest skill that I learned throughout my time abroad and will be bringing back home with me is how to stay calm in high tense situations. What I mean by this is to be able to navigate a different country all by oneself and having to keep composure when things are going not as planned. Being able to think quick and have creative solutions on the spot was a skill that I discovered I had that I wasn’t aware of before. Here is an example that best describes this: I was in Berlin for a school field trip and some of my friends and I decided to stay a little longer in Berlin while the class headed back to Bielefeld. While we were in Berlin, I wanted to go to a museum and my friends didn’t want to go, so I decided to go to the museum by myself. While I was in the museum, my phone was at 2% and I didn’t have a portable charger on me. Back home, if I was out and my phone died, I would have panicked because I use my directions for everything. Just imagine me using my phone back home for everything and times that by ten because now I am in a different country, don’t know the language, or even the directions of the area. Instead of panicking, I came up with a gameplan. First, I texted my friends that my phone was at 2%. Then, I realized that I had my apple watch on me. If my watch didn’t work, my plan B was that I had a paper map in my backpack. In the worst case scenario, I planned on taking it out and using that. In the end, one of my friends was near by and he just gave me his portable charger, but the moral of this story is in like 10 seconds I came up with two gameplans and kept my composure.

One takeaway I will cherish is how much I learned about myself. Throughout the program, I traveled to Munich and Netherlands by myself. Traveling with others is fun, but it is a completely different experience when you travel by yourself. One sees more when they are by themselves than when one is with others. When one is with others, one is in their comfort zone. This can lead to missing out on talking with people and gaining new experiences. When I get back home, I want to have some adventures just by myself and experience new things that I might not have experienced if I was with others.

One quote that one of my directors, Mr. Carlson, said to me during the program was, “Take parts of different country’s cultures that work for you and use them to mold yourself to the best version that one can be”. I am going to use this advice when I head back home. When I get the reverse culture shock, I am going to reflect on the best parts I gained from Germany and include them in my transition back.

Thank you so much for reading about my journey and I hope to read other future bloggers diving into the amazing adventure of studying abroad.