When I attended the orientation for my study abroad I remember being drilled about mental health concerns.  In that time I remember thinking how could someone be sad/upset/depressed/anxious when they are having the time of their life in a foreign country?! Well, I hate to break it to you, but it happens.

So, take a ride with me along my study abroad roller coaster as I share the up’s and down’s I faced in my time abroad.

The wait.

Here you are, looking up at this big attraction right in front of you, debating if you want to ride it (or spend a summer studying in a foreign country).  You look at all of the ups, downs, and high speed corners and begin to question this insanity.  But you’re sold when you see the joy people are having as they ride the ride.  You begin to imagine all of the fun you’d have once you decide to strap yourself into that seat.  When you finally decide to go you make it official and step in line.

Time spent in the line waiting is a complex mix of emotions.  Initially you are excited like WOAH this is really happening!  But eventually this excitement wears off and you kind of forget about what you are about to do because the wait is so long – this isn’t some county fair ride, this is a top attraction in Disney’s Magic Kingdom.  So as your standing there (for hours, days, weeks…) the upcoming commitment you’ve made seems a bit unreal, like it’s never going to actually happen.  Until before you know it your at the front of the line, looking at the car your about to strap yourself into thinking; “OMG! – this is actually happening!”  And then you (figuratively) poop your pants a little.  I reached this point about a week before I left.  When I finally comprehended that this was actually happening I turned into a nervous wreck.  I think I would describe myself as a big ball of emotions, one minute super excited, the next not wanting to go at all, and the entire time just so anxious.  I remember feeling so unlike myself that day I left.  In fact I didn’t even want to go, like at all.  An adventure I’d spent the last half a year excitedly planning and waiting for – how could I not want to go!?  After talking to some friends who have also studied abroad I think it is pretty common to feel this way prior to leaving, but once your strapped in that car there is no turning back – your on a ride of a lifetime – and you won’t regret a single thing.

The first climb.

Here you go: up, up, up – click, click, click.  Adrenaline is pumping through your veins and your anxiety is through the roof.  This occurred to me as soon as I boarded my 7 hour flight to Amsterdam.  The traveling part was the worst.  One second you want to turn around the next you’re just trying to imagine what you are going to experience once you arrive.  Couldn’t we just be there already?!  Anticipation keeps building up inside of you until…

The initial fall.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! You touch down in your new home and take in all of the views.  This feeling (in my opinion the best part of the roller coaster ride) lasts for a weeks.  Everything you do in your new home is an adventure.  Everyday brings something new and exciting and you just never want to leave.  This first fall is truly the most magical, but believe it or not you do reach the bottom at some point.

The up’s and the down’s.

From here, for me atleast, there were so many up’s and down’s.  At this point in the trip it no longer feels like a vacation, but more like a new reality.  You realize that you have responsibilities – and let me tell you responsibilities in a foreign country are not like responsibilities in your home country.  You need groceries?  Better learn how to shop at an Italian grocery store.  Time to take the garbage out?  Not even close to what you are used to in the states.  Clothes need to be washed?  Just start pushing buttons until the washer starts to go and hope for the best!  After the initial excitement wears off you begin to comprehend how long of a ride you’ve strapped yourself in for.  But adapting to this new culture just adds to the adventure – and that was my favorite part of being in Europe!

The biggest downer for me was checking in with my friends back home.  FOMO is a thing and even when your 4,000 miles away having the time of your life you do find yourself in a sour mood when you miss out on something fun back home.  Social media makes it easy for you to keep up to date with all of your friends (mostly only showing you all of the fun they are having without you!) which definitely made me sad at times.  Or missing out on big things like your grandmas birthday or your cousins first baseball game.  It’s kind of funny, I would actually start to feel bad about feeling bad because nobody should be feeling bad when they are LIVING IN ITALY – first world problems I guess.  But no matter how hard I tried to fight those bad days I just couldn’t shake it.  But I’ve come to realize that it’s normal, and it’s okay.

I’m living proof that it’s not all sunshine and gelato when your in a foreign country.  The bad days were the days they warned us about.  Those were the days you realize you have nothing left in your bank account, you have a midterm due tomorrow, your roommate is driving you loco, AND you’ve just checked all your friends snapchat stories from the Fourth of July.  Those days/moments suck, but then you wake up the next day, head to the bar for an early cup of cappuccino, and take a moment to soak in your surroundings.  Stopping to remind yourself where you are and what your doing will humble you very quickly, and your sorrows will soon be overcome with gratitude.  It’s like you’ve reached the top of another tall peak and you understand, in this moment, that this experience is worth all of the bad days.  And at the end of your trip the highs are what you remember and they are what make the experience so enjoyable – so try not to let yourself dwell on the bad days.

They say at some point these feelings level out.  You apparently adapt to a new reality and the new normal.  I don’t think I was in Florence long enough to really feel that new normal.  Most of my time there was a lot of up’s and down’s, but I can say that I did start to feel more familiar, more comfortable in Florence towards the end of my stay there.  In fact, on our weekend trips, I found myself often homesick.  But that feeling was subsided once I had returned to my apartment in Florence.  Even in my short time there it had become a home to me.

Departure.

This is the last stage of the journey, when you unstrap yourself from that crazy ride.  For me initially I was SO excited to get home and see my family again.  But after I was home for a day or two and the excitement wore off I began to really miss Florence.  More than I ever thought I would when I was actually living in Florence.  I find myself often thinking about my time there and how I can ever get myself back to Florence.  I don’t think a month long summer term was long enough for me.  My time abroad made my travel fever more intense than ever before, and I can wait to strap myself into that roller coaster ride once again.

Well, 6 weeks in Europe goes by a lot quicker than you think.  Turns out I didn’t have any time to blog at all.  Oops –  The extent of my writing efforts went into a personal journal I kept.

But as I reflect on my greatest adventure I am reminded of the goals I made awaiting my departure:

I hope that to try as many new foods as possible.

Check, check, checkedy, check.  This was no challenge for me.  Everyday I woke up thinking: what amazing food am I going to eat today?  Truly, the cuisine in Europe is reason alone to travel there.  I don’t think I had one bad meal in my 6 weeks abroad (apart from the ones I tried to make on my own, I am no cook no matter how hard I try).  Gnocchi, eggplant parmesan, panino, pizza, granite, panna cotta a lot of it was food I’ve had before, but somehow so, so much better!

Oh, and the food culture is the one thing I really miss being back in the states.  How great is it to head over to a fresh market every other day with a handful of euros and come back with so many fresh fruits and veggies? In Italy almost all of the produce is grown within the country, meaning everything was SUPER fresh.  The fruit was the best I’ve ever had.  So fresh, so free from preservatives.  Seriously you could buy a box of strawberries at the market and they would last maybe two days, if your lucky.  But it felt good to be eating food that was so real – and so delicious!

Portions were definitely smaller, but yet still filling.  They were the perfect amount of food, not fill-you-till-you explode portion sizes you get in America.  In Europe I’d walk away from dinner feeling perfectly satisfied, instead of like you are going the throw up (as I do often in America)  In the beginning I was disappointed with the portion sizes, but after I got used to them I began to admire the Italian food culture even more.  Having less food on my plate taught me to take my time eating and really taste the food.  Each meal was carefully crafted to produce the best flavor and I learned to savor every bite!

I hope to meet new people.

Well, this one might not have been fully accomplished.  Going into my trip I hoped to meet a good friend or two (Italian ones) in Italy.  While I definitely met some new people most of them were American girls in my class.  What I didn’t really know going into this trip was how touristy Florence is!  Seriously the place is just packed with tourists, many of them Americans.  So it was hard to really get a sense of the locals in the city because it seemed like there were just tourists everywhere. Plus, most of the actual locals seemed pretty annoyed with all the tourists, and they definitely could tell I didn’t belong there, so they were probably pretty annoyed with me too. Don’t get me wrong, I loveddddd Florence, but it was hard to truly escape the tourists, especially being that I was there at the height of tourist season.

Towards the end of the trip I spent a couple days in Sicily with one of my friends and her aunt (who lives there).  She introduced us to some guys close to our age and we hung out with them one night.  That was an interesting experience where I felt I was learning more about the Italian culture.  Staying in Sicily with a real Italian and a woman who has been living in Europe for about 30 years definitely taught me more about the Italian lifestyle than I ever learned in Florence.

I hope to learn more about the Italian culture.

Going into this study abroad experience I knew practically nothing about the Italian culture.  I really felt bad not taking the time to learn more about it prior to going.  So of course I accomplished this goal no brainier, but there are times when I wish I would have learned more.  But I think that would have came with spending more time abroad.  Much of what I learned about Italians came from observations.  Every new place we went we watched for locals to see how they were behaving.

I remember our first trip to the grocery store.  We had been warned about buying produce at the store (you have to put on a plastic glove, bag your fruit or vegetable, look at the number associated with the item, weigh it on the scale and then plug the number in on the scale so the machine can calculate the price, then it prints out a sticker with the price you pay listed on it).  So the first time we went to the grocery story we were too nervous to buy any produce, the next time we went we watched some Italian do it then bucked up the courage to do it ourselves.  From there on out I loved buying produce.  Such an easy thing to do, but this simple little task felt so rewarding for some reason.  My favorite was when I saw other tourists in the store trying to figure out how to buy the produce and then I got to go over and help them – it made me feel like an expert!

Towards the end of my time abroad I spent a couple days in Sicily with one of my friends and her aunt (who lives there). She introduced us to some guys close to our age and we hung out with them one night. When we got there they had all these cheeses, meats, breads and olives out for us.  They made us dinner, which I guess is pretty typical in Italian culture, but I have NEVER had a guy make me dinner in America – so we were pretty impressed with these boys (should I call them men?).  They were so concerned with making everything perfect for us – they had to have the right music, a variety of beers and wines, a spotless table out on the porch, and someone to entertain us the entire time.  It was really gentleman like of them, and I think that is more of the Italian culture (or maybe I just haven’t met the right American men?)  We also were kind of surprised to learn that both men still lived with their parents (they were in their mid-20’s), which apparently is also typical for Italians.  But the most memorable experience of the night was when they called us out for cutting our pasta.  Actually, they seemed very offended with what we were doing, so they taught us how to correctly eat pasta in Italy.  (Which, in case you were interested, involves a twirling a fork on a spoon – a method I thought was just a made up “Italian” thing Americans do to look fancy).  Turns out that’s how they actually eat pasta!  The night was a lot of fun and I feel like I learned more of what it was like to live in Italy than I ever did while living in Florence.

I hope to live like a local, as opposed to being the typical American tourist.

Live like a local in Florence?  Kind of hard I think, especially when you are there for such a short period of time and all your roommates are Americans.  Plus there are so many dang tourists there and so many dang restaurants and cafes catering to the American culture.

But I did my best to eat more of an Italian diet on Italian time.  This meant maybe a piece of bread for breakfast, (still not really sure what they do for lunch), a snack around 5:00pm, and then a larger dinner around 8:00pm – or should I say 22:00?  The hardest part of this change was how late dinner was! In the first few days we were starving by 6:00pm, but after a while we started to adapt, so if your planning on going to Italy you can too!

I also loved, loved, loved going to the “bar” in the morning.  Yes, you heard me right – the BAR!  Only, in Italy bar’s are places to go and get coffee in the morning.  It’s great, you order your expresso (or in my case a cappuccino because the expresso is way too strong for me), then drink it quick at the bar.  It’s almost like taking a shot, so I guess bar is fitting?  But let me be clear a cappuccino in Italy comes in a tiny little mug (think the size of a shot class in mug form), half filled with expresso and the other half steamed milk.  Add a little sugar, chug it quick at the counter, and off you go to start your day.  Luckily, my professor accompanied us to the bar on our first trip to show us how Italians really do it.  It’s kind of frowned upon to take your expresso and sit down at a table, and in many cases it will cost you more money so don’t do that! Oh, and fair warning – expresso is like a cup of coffee concentrated into a tiny shot.  It’s very bitter, packed with caffeine, and the Italians love it.  It’s definitely an acquired taste, but something you must try at least once while in Italy!  However, as an American it was too intense for me, so I recommend ordering a cappuccino (which is still strong but at-least you can drink it).  Ugh, all this coffee talk really makes me miss the Italian cappuccino and morning trips to the bar.. (sniffle, sniffle).

I hope to go off the beaten path and make my own path.

This goal was probably the one I was least concerned with, and the one I really did not accomplish what so ever.  Every path I took in Europe was beaten, very well beaten by loads and loads of tourists.  If – when – I go back I definitely want to spend time visiting the less touristy areas and find my own hidden gems.  Even if they aren’t as marvelous as things like the Eiffel Tower I think experiencing small towns and avoiding large masses of tourists will invoke a more authentic and personal experience, which are the experiences I’ve learned that I love.  For example, one of my favorite weekends occurred when we visited Cinque Terra (5 small picturesque fisherman villages on the Italian Riveriera).  Here we stayed in a near by village called Bonnasola in a beautiful AirBnB up on a cliff with a rooftop patio that had a fantastic view of the sea.  It was a bit of a challenge finding the place and communicating with the owner (who really didn’t speak English), but those are the adventures that make traveling so fun!  Also, we got to see more of what Italian life was like in this small village with almost no tourists.  Unfortunately I didn’t have many other experiences like this, but I wouldn’t change anything I did this summer.  It just helped me to understand what I want to get out of travel – and I can use this knowledge in my future adventures.

Lastly, I hope to travel as much as possible. 

Cross this off the list of hopes.  In my 42 days abroad I traveled to 7 different countries, flew 14 different times, rode 11 different long distance trains, and learned so much about this great big world we lived in.  Every weekend I was gone to a different city (or sometimes a different country), and the last two weeks I just spent bouncing around Europe.  That is what’s so amazing about that continent, in an hour and twenty minute plane ride I could go from Pisa to Paris.  In an hour and twenty plane ride in American I could go from Minneapolis, Minnesota to maybe Nashville, Tennessee? Those 42 days were definitely a lot of fun, but it was exhausting as well.  I think I slept in a total of 14 different beds, and by the time I was on the plane home I was ready to sleep in my own bed again.  However, in planning this trip it was all about getting to as many countries as I could.  Now I know that I would rather spend a good amount of time in one place and really get to know it instead of just adding to the list of countries I’ve visited.  Although it is pretty cool to see a picture of a place I’ve been on Instagram or TV and shout out “I’ve been there!”