Where Have You Gone So Far?
Studying abroad is about many things but so often it becomes a race to the finish, a contest about how many countries, cities and world landmarks you can fit into our small duration of time while studying in a foreign country. Most of the time when encountering another study abroad student the conversation goes as follows:
“What school do you study with?”
“What are you studying?”
“Where have you gone so far?”
“Did you like _______ (insert country not yet visited)?”
Not only are we getting accustomed to our new home in a different country, but also who knows when we will get the opportunity to return to Europe, so the program encourages weekend excursions to other countries in and around Europe. Often traveling between countries in Europe can be comparable to traveling between states in the United States. Not only is the price range similar (or less for that matter), but so is travel time. It takes longer to get to Florida from New York than it does to get to Athens, Greece from Rome, Italy. So many major world landmarks are accessible once settled in Europe and it’s less intimidating because now they are only an hour and a half or so away, as compared to the nine hours these popular bucket list items would be from New York.
Initially, the first trip is always intimidating. While studying in Italy my first weekend abroad, I chose to stay in country and visit Venice for Carnivale. This is a wonderful masked festival that takes place at different times throughout the first couple months of the year in Italy. The planning of these trips is a bit frightening: everything is up to you! All of a sudden you have to find 1. Timeframe, how long do you (personally) need in that area? Is a day trip enough? Will you need the whole week of spring break to see all that you’d like? 2. Transportation: How will you get there? Trains, flights, bus, a way to and from not only to the city itself but from an airport, train station, bus station, or wherever you are getting dropped off 3. You have to find your own accommodations (Airbnb, VRGO, hotel, hostel, etc) 4. Touring! This also consists of seeing everything regarded as important throughout the area in such a short time span. 5. Food. Sometimes accommodations have kitchens and for longer trips, this may be more feasible and save money for more important things like the 45 euros it takes to see the Last Supper painting by Leonardo Di Vinci in Milan, Italy, or the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, France.
Sometimes it becomes hard to make the decision of where to go or if we’d just like to see the place we are taking up residency. Because St. John’s has students located in so many major cities around the globe (Paris, Limerick, Rome, and many other exchange programs) I can speak confidently for us as a whole when I say that we all have so much to see in so little time. It’s more common to see that students have mapped out every weekend until we leave to catch early deals on expensive flights or make it to certain events in different countries (St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, Easter in Rome, Carnivale in Venice, etc). Sometimes there are so many things to see, it becomes hard to just slow down and enjoy what is right in front of you. I live a ten minute walk from the famous Vatican City and have only been there twice since arriving four months ago. However, I will never regret the numerous adventures I’ve found thanks to St. John’s University’s Global Studies Programs.
- Jocelyn Bruchman, Social Media Ambassador, spring 2018
