{"id":4271,"date":"2017-08-28T17:52:44","date_gmt":"2017-08-28T22:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/?p=4271"},"modified":"2017-08-28T18:01:53","modified_gmt":"2017-08-28T23:01:53","slug":"4271","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/4271\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales From Abroad: Embracing the Clich\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Study Abroad changed my life. Clich\u00e9, I know, but it\u2019s nigh impossible to come up with any other way to put it. This semester has been a strenuous, wonderful, exhausting, and exhilarating experience. I have been constantly challenged, and had to adapt and grow in ways I didn\u2019t feel possible before this semester.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Studying abroad was more than a vacation- make no mistakes about that. Every trip had a purpose, every interaction a learning opportunity. There was always a way to grow and change, always the ability to be better. You didn&#8217;t have to take it, but doing so made it all better.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t always take advantage of this, but I got much better at is as the semester went on. I don&#8217;t have much space to let you know, so I&#8217;m going to try to condense this entire life-altering experience into just a few words. Let&#8217;s do this.<\/p>\n<p>At the start of the semester I had limited experience with interstate travel no experience with inter-country travel, much less intercontinental travel. I had never been thrust so into another culture, never really felt like the outsider. To be honest, I was so nervous about this semester. I mentioned several times in the written assignments leading up to this that I would not be able to predict how I wanted to grow, because I had no frame of reference. Even now, I find it hard to pinpoint anything, but here&#8217;s a short list of things that I\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A grasp of the span of History. Through our bible classes and places that we\u2019d visit that have so much history behind them, I grew in my understanding of just how important the past is. We can\u2019t just shove it aside, and we shouldn\u2019t. We\u2019d visit cathedral after basilica, ancient pubs and even more ancient hills. We\u2019d climb fells that many others have climbed before. So much has happened in these exact places, and these places that were important to them gained importance to me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4272 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-13-240x160.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"278\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-13-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-13-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-13-140x94.jpg 140w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-13.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 278px) 100vw, 278px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>[Climbing the fells in Grasmere, within walking distance from William Wordsworth\u2019s cottage. Featuring Jake Buller on the right. One of my favorite spontaneous adventures.]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An understanding of my relatively narrow cultural experience, and having a firmer grasp on how important broadening that is. While I had always seen myself as a relatively open-minded person, I was not in many ways. Considering different ways to do everything is never something that I was good at, but here even the ways in which we use utensils are different. They don\u2019t scoop with the indention in the fork &#8211; rather they use the bump to put the food on. It makes no sense to me, but it\u2019s how they work!<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4273 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-14-240x180.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-14-240x180.jpg 240w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-14-500x375.jpg 500w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-14.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain. Seeing these massive structures made for worship was something that I was definitely not used to &#8211; the idea behind worship here has historically been so different from how I have worshiped all my life. I was speechless when visiting this basilica in particular.]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A wider idea of just how much language shapes culture, and culture language. About how the ways we talk about things change how we think about things. The trip to Spain was the major player in this, although learning French and visiting Paris were both also quite impactful here. Seeing the ways in which others interacted in other languages was so fascinating, and discovering the differences between them was just so fantastic.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4274 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-15-240x415.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"415\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-15-240x415.jpg 240w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/files\/2017\/08\/Untitled-15.jpg 404w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/>[Taken in Versailles, Paris. The sheer opulence of the palace was stunning, and I even ended up translating some of the plaques lying around. Seeing just the way that language could be used differently while making use of it here was so cool. ]I learned a lot more than that as well &#8211; from various lessons on community to lessons about investing time in places that won\u2019t last forever. I learned about being vulnerable and about how social interaction works. I\u2019ve learned to question more than I\u2019ve ever had before. I feel like a different person &#8211; grown, matured, and more ready to face an ever-darkening world. And that, my friends, is a brief glimpse as to how Study Abroad changed my life.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Study Abroad changed my life. Clich\u00e9, I know, but it\u2019s nigh impossible to come up with any other way to put it. This semester has been a strenuous, wonderful, exhausting, and exhilarating experience. I have been constantly challenged, and had to adapt and grow in ways I didn\u2019t feel possible before this semester. &nbsp; Studying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14370,"featured_media":4274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tales From Abroad: Embracing the Clich\u00e9 - The Honors College<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/honorscollege\/4271\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tales From Abroad: Embracing the Clich\u00e9 - The Honors College\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Study Abroad changed my life. 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