About nine months ago, I wrote my last blog, “Notes from a scared traveler.” Now, after my return, I have a new adjective for you — longing. I am longing for my time abroad. I miss the people I met, the city I lived in and the cities I visited, but mostly, I miss the feeling of being afraid.
Before I left, I heard how amazing studying abroad was from people who had done it before, but I could only believe them to an extent. My nerves clouded my every thought. In my last blog, I expressed my worries of feeling “FOMO” from back home and not making friends while abroad. This could not be further from the truth.
Back home, as my friends stumbled home from their favorite dumpy college campus bar, I was walking onto a rocky beach with clear water in Nice, France. When they were first waking up and getting ready for class, I was already doing a wine tasting in my Business of Wine class. I never felt like I was missing out because I was too busy falling in love with my new life.
As for the fear of not making friends, this dissolved within 12 hours of arriving in Barcelona. On my first night, I joined a large group of maybe 15 girls to wander the city searching for a place to eat. It wasn’t long before five of us fell behind the others discussing plans to travel Europe every weekend. We sat down and ate our first-ever paella and sangria, as my nerves settled because I had found my people.
I’m not going to say it was instantly perfect, because it wasn’t. The first week, I found myself missing home more than I expected. I felt lonely and out of place. I was scared to do things alone because I didn’t speak the language and didn’t know my way around the city. Losing my independence is a fear I did not anticipate. I’ve always been proud of my ability to be alone, but in that first week, it filled me with anxiety.
Slowly but surely, things fell into place. I grew closer with my friends and discovered they shared many of the same feelings. I learned how to ask for a bag at the grocery store in Spanish and figured out which metro lines went where. My independence felt infinite. I walked 10 minutes from my apartment to the beach and went for a swim. I laid in Ciutadella Park and read a book. I walked the Gothic Quarter and wandered in and out of local shops. I did all of these things alone, and my mindset changed. As it turns out, my unfamiliarity with the city was a positive thing as it left me with endless places to discover, and my inability to speak Spanish gave me a new goal and motivation to reach it. I was an outsider in a new world, and I loved it.
The lessons I learned while studying abroad are endless, but the biggest lesson learned was to not let my fears stop me. They didn’t stop me from studying abroad, and they didn’t stop me from falling in love with a new city. I learned this lesson over and over again — like when I paraglided off a mountain in Switzerland and rode camels through the Sahara Desert. Some of my favorite experiences began with fear, so now I find myself longing for it. When people ask if I’m happy to be back, I say yes, but this is a lie. I like my life in Pittsburgh because it is comfortable, but I loved my life in Barcelona because it wasn’t.