by Andrew Vorderbruggen| Summer 2025 |
Going into the trip, I was not quite sure what to expect, but I was ready for an adventure. While I definitely did experience many adventures, what I did not expect to find was a home. When people ask what my experience abroad was like, I always say it was “indescribable” because it’s hard to give the experiences we had, the relationships we built, and the places we visited justice. I think that the best way to capture a bit of what we did and the lessons I learned is to walk through pieces of my day-to-day life in Oxford.
Our house is this beautiful three-storied red brick home with a green garden in the backyard where we could eat, play, and relax in the perfect 70-degree weather of Summer in England. On a typical Monday through Thursday morning, I would wake up bright and early and head to the classroom in the garden for my 8 am International Business class with Dr Golden. Dr Golden always brought energy, passion for business, and a bright love for this world (and sometimes snacks) to class, which made waking up for it so much easier. After class, I would often have the rest of the day free and would take the opportunity to explore the beautiful city of Oxford. If you went to the left when walking out of the house, you’d run into Summertown, which had great shopping, and this chic restaurant called Joe’s Bar and Grill. To the right was downtown Oxford, where many of the historic buildings and colleges are located, along with some of our favorite food trucks (shoutout to Ali’s Kebabs). The third main place we often adventured off to was Port Meadow. Port Meadow has historically been a grazing field for cattle for centuries and is now cherished by the Oxford community as a place to go on walks, runs, play in the river, and have quiet time in nature, where you can see herds of cows and horses just walking around in the daytime. No matter which way you go, I found the most important part to be the people I went with and the experiences that we shared together. The people on the trip, the people I met around town, and around Europe as a whole were really what made this place feel like home.
There is something special about the bonds you make through shared discomfort and crazy experiences. A time where my discomfort turned into something I will forever remember happened on one of the first evenings in Oxford, when I was in the living room playing guitar while hanging out with some others in the house. I started to sing “How He Loves Us,” and my friend joined in with me and began to beat on the cajon. I had never led worship before, and this was so out of my comfort zone, but soon enough, the whole room joined in, the nerves faded away, and it just became a room of people in worship together. Throughout the trip, we would have worship nights like this, except they were far more planned and more of us got to lead who knew different songs. This was an unexpected experience of pressing in and growing in boldness because of it. After this trip, my desire to get to know strangers and use the gifts God has given me to the fullest to bless others has only grown.
There were so many other adventures that I don’t have the space to talk about in this blog, like when we went to Rome and a stranger named Gabriel helped us reach the Colosseum during a train strike, or the time we went to Belgium and had the most mouth-watering, incredibly delicious waffles in the world. There is so much to these stories, and sharing them is truly a blessing. If you’re debating whether or not you should go on a study abroad, I would encourage you to do it; you won’t regret it. And even if you don’t know anyone else going, I’d still encourage you to embrace the discomfort and go, because you’ll get to know the people on your trip like family! Cheers!
