This past fall was the first semester of my senior year at ACU. I always imagined this school year being full of moments I would cherish forever and to say I had no idea what I was in for is an understatement. For 15 weeks, I spent my semester 5,334 miles from campus living in Leipzig, Germany alongside 10 people whom I’d get to know quite well, for ACU’s first fall semester in the villa. During my time abroad I had the opportunity to explore 7 countries, all of which contributed to the new lens I now see the world through and provided me with a better appreciation for both foreign culture and my own. Kind of crazy for a girl who never even thought the idea of studying abroad was in the realm of possibility for her college experience.
My time abroad revealed a curiosity in me that I never knew existed before. I found myself constantly looking for new ways to explore the cities we spent time in and becoming “blissfully lost” as Stephen Shewmaker would say, almost indefinitely throughout the semester. As a picky eater back home in the states, I surprised myself with the plethora of new foods I was willing to try and even more shockingly enjoy. These foods and the customs that revolved around them gave me a glimpse of the culture I hadn’t anticipated experiencing. Whether that be enjoying Swedish cardamom buns while partaking in the Swedish tradition of Fika or walking around the Christmas markets of Germany with the world’s best hot chocolate, the food and the feelings I associate with how and where I consumed it is what I’ll be longing for in the coming months.
Another thing I sincerely enjoyed about my time in Europe was seeing how excited people were to share their slice of the earth with me. I’ve lived my whole life in a small suburb of Fort Worth, Texas and I think I have a decent grasp of what hospitality looks like. But this…this was different. I remember sitting in an art shop in the small mountainous town of Delphi, Greece, full of a woman’s life works. There is something so humbling and admirable about listening to a tiny, old Greek woman in her very broken, yet beautiful English as she shared with us some of her heart’s greatest desires through the paintings and figurines that lay in our hands. I don’t know if you can imagine that, but I will tell you it was incredibly moving to spend that short time with her. Looking at the paintings she had created of the beautiful mountain and ocean we had just explored for hours earlier that day, left an impression on me that I don’t think will ever fade.
Everyone tells you that studying abroad is such a great experience and that it will change your life. And they’re right, but even more important is a message that our faculty on the trip, Dr. Susan Lewis, began the semester with. I can still hear her saying it, “from this point on, there will always be a piece of your heart on the other side of the earth”. I never knew what she meant by that, until I came back home to Texas, and experienced aching in my heart, because I had left a piece of it behind, in the city of Leipzig, 5,334 miles away. Then I remembered a sweet saying that a dear friend of mine kept at the forefront of my mind that semester in Europe, “How lucky are we to have something to feel nostalgic for?”. That. That is what I learned during my semester abroad, just how lucky I am.
