My semester in England was filled with a variety of ups and downs. I traveled a lot, made some friends, and felt more deeply connected to the United Kingdom afterward. However, I also experienced days filled with stress and difficulties. Throughout this trip, I began to realize that while studying abroad and traveling is something that I thoroughly enjoy, it doesn’t mean that these things can’t also cause discomfort and unhappiness.
My semester began with a long and exhausting flight. We were all super excited and ready to arrive, but I was also beginning to feel a small sense of nervousness and dread. I love to travel, but I’ve always done so with my family. However, I began this trip alone, and it seemed like I was the only person who didn’t know anyone else. I felt somewhat isolated, and I was worried about going to an unfamiliar place alone. However, luckily, these feelings did not last for long. Soon, I was in England and beginning to integrate into the culture. I made friends with the people on my floor, and my journey began. After only a few weeks, I felt pretty comfortable in the UK.
Although the first week was filled with confusion, I quickly adapted to my new environment. Once I had settled in England, the main stress of my trip became traveling. Trying to decide where we wanted to travel to and what to do there was a difficult and stressful task. While we could often agree on the place, it was hard to plan the actual trip in a way that pleased everyone. Even when we were done planning, the logistics of the trips sometimes fell short. On our trip to Switzerland, we had less structure and less time which left people confused and unhappy. We tried splitting up, but not everyone was happy with this trip because we didn’t get to do very much.
Furthermore, we were staying far away from the town, and public transportation was extremely expensive, which left us with limited time to go into the city to do things. Even when we planned the trip well, the airport experience was stressful. In Scotland, we were unable to take our train back to Oxford because of a major storm which forced us to take a 12-hour bus instead. We ended up missing class and getting little to no sleep. Despite our best efforts, it seemed like every trip had one or two mishaps that caused some extra stress and difficulties.
Finally, the biggest devastation occurred when we were told that we had to go home early. This news was heartbreaking for all of us and upset me. There were so many amazing trips that I was hoping to go on, and I still wanted to stay in the UK for a few more months. The combination of these events taught me about how important it is to fully enjoy the good parts of life and how to overcome the hard ones. With the weekend trips, it became important to live in the moment and try to enjoy the good experiences while moving past the small mistakes or difficulties that try to destroy an overall good trip. With my study abroad semester, it became important to cherish the time that I had and to try and get over the fact that I also lost some time that I would have had. Good things and good experiences are not only made up of happy moments. Instead, life is full of ups and downs.
