Maybe it takes walking into a completely new place for the feelings to set in. Maybe it’s each new corner turned and each new road walked. Somehow, you can’t get enough until you soak it all in day after day, night after night. And a week was not even remotely enough time.
This past spring break, I was able to go on a trip with nine other girls from Illinois’ College of Media to Belgium and France. We visited Leuven, Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges and Paris. It was my first time out of the country and proved to be the spark to get back to abroad as quickly as possible.
While we examined the role media plays in Belgium, we also experienced a new culture and forged friendships with each other and those we met throughout our days.
Every day there was the promise of something new and exciting, a sense of magic lost to Christmas mornings of the past. And we all had wide-eyed stares for each new thing we saw, smelled (there is no gross subway smell in Belgium-just imagine the scent of warm bread wafting through the tunnels) and heard.
Everything we did made me wish to stay and never come back. A little overdramatic, yes, but all of us were enamored by the experiences we had.
I was able to eat fantastic food for every meal, and no amount of street vendor waffles and crepes were enough. Even their sandwiches, called Broches, were better than anything in America.
I was able to take part in a college class in Brussels, learn about the global interconnections of 20th century immigration in Antwerp, see the Madonna by Michelangelo in Bruges and put my French minor to use in Paris. There was so much to do with so little time.
All of these reasons are why I’ll be headed back abroad next spring semester. I don’t know where, but I will be abroad someplace using that same curiosity and joy of learning new things for a whole semester. To the students debating a year, a semester or even a week long program, JUST GO.
I know I speak for the nine other girls I went with in saying we had one of the best experiences of our lives. Because for that week, we were constantly learning. Everything from reading the menu to having a conversation with a professor or other students was eye opening.
Take a chance if you’re hesitant, because you’ll only benefit from the new people and lifestyles you encounter. Go while you’re in college to use each experience you have upon coming back to the states. Enjoy it and do crazy things like pull all-nighters just to see the sunrise over a completely different city. Dance the night away with people you’ve never met and who don’t speak the same language as you. Walk the streets and absorb the enormity of just how long those cobblestones have been there.
And it was on our last day, a few of us joked around saying we were “leaving our hearts in Leuven.” I’d like to think I left half of it and will soon get the opportunity to reclaim it come spring, regardless of where I end up abroad.