Five Things I Wish I Knew Before I Studied Abroad

Today is the third anniversary of my departure from London after my semester studying abroad. I, for one, can't believe it's been that long... nor can I believe that I'm still sitting here talking about it after that much time. But here I am, writing a sappy post about it for the second year in a row. (At least I'm consistent, right?) So here are a few things I would've told 2012 Darci before she hopped on that plane to Heathrow, and a few things that I think future study abroad-ers should know!

Not every day is going to be worthy of a blog post. It is, in fact, possible to have a boring, regular day when you're living abroad. You'll go to class, and take naps that last too long, and stay in because you have a cold, and watch a lot of your favorite TV shows. You might be abroad, but it's still your life, and you're still the same person. You're not going to be immediately transported to this fantasy existence where you can have grand adventures every day and where school work doesn't exist. However...

You're going to have some of the best days of your life. While study abroad isn't a fantasy world, it is a world in which you can choose your own adventure! Volunteer with London 2012 Ceremonies. Take stage combat classes at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Spend every weekend visiting movie locations. Seriously, the world is your oyster! You could do the typical study abroad thing and just bum around and drink... or you could follow your passion and improve your life long-term and make yourself ridiculously happy. Your choice.

Wear good shoes when you know you're going to do a lot of walking. Past Darci, please listen to me: I don't care that those Converse go with everything, or that they're comfortable now. You know that when they start wearing out, they start destroying your feet. Do you really want those death traps on your feet when you're backpacking through Europe for two and a half weeks? Why did you think that was a good decision? More than three years later, your Achilles heel still occasionally aches because of that choice. Be good to your feet. Please.

You may not need people, but they'll make your experience all the more amazing. I went to London confident that even if I didn't make any friends, I'd have a perfectly great time. How could anyone have a bad time in London? But some of my most treasured memories have almost nothing to do with London and everything to do with the people I was with. I'm not sure how I managed to stumble into the most amazing friendships and working relationships, but I'm not going to question it. It's like the stars were aligned or something. However it happened, I found people that made it enjoyable to sort stacks of ID badges until my hands were rubbed raw, people I huddled with for warmth during a night spent sleeping outside on concrete, people I was content to hang out with in a (slightly gross) dorm kitchen with a few bottles of cider.

You're going to miss it every day for the rest of your life. Alright, I can only speak for three years after the fact. And maybe it's just me. But for real, I'm still pining for my old life in London and would hop on a plane there in a heartbeat if given the chance. So don't sign up to study abroad unless you're willing to sign up for a lifetime of missing it. (It's so worth it, though.)

London's Natural History Museum

I love good architecture. I don't think I really realized it until I took an Architecture of London class for fun when I studied abroad, but just in the last few years I've really begun to enjoy appreciating buildings. That class was quite the experience; it was really hard, as architecture is basically this whole subset of art that I knew very little about, but it was equally as fascinating. Every other week we met up at a different spot in the city and our professor would walk us around to various landmarks and describe them architecturally. It was SUCH a cool way to learn more about London!

We also had to write two papers for that class. Again, incredibly hard but incredibly fascinating. One of mine was on Brutalist architecture, which I chose because of how much I loathe that style. (Seriously, I hate it so much that I almost love it for the hulking eyesores it left us.) For my other paper, we could choose from a list of buildings around London to write about. I chose the Natural History Museum, figuring I could make an afternoon of it when I went to see the building.

Guys. This building. THIS. BUILDING.

Is it possible to fall in love with a building? I know there's a woman that married the Eiffel Tower. Can I marry the Natural History Museum? Because holy cow. I went there to browse the museum and spent most of the time gazing open-mouthed at the walls and ceilings.

Not only is it a gorgeous building without knowing a single other thing about it -- those staircases. I swoon! -- but knowing all the little details makes you appreciate how it was built exactly for its purpose. It's covered in terracotta tiles; now that only serves to look pretty, but it was initially chosen because it could resist the acid smogs of Victorian London. Inside, the ceiling panels are covered in intricate paintings of plants and animals. But my favorite part is that there are also plants and animals carved into the walls. Everywhere you look, there they are. Wall panels. Columns. Random details. Interior. Exterior. Everywhere. It's the coolest thing. This building is honestly a work of art.

Oh man, I miss it. I miss a building. Never in my life did I think I'd say that, but here we are.

Anyway, the museum's website has a whole section on the history and architecture of the building, and you can even take a virtual tour of sorts to see and learn more about it! But if you happen to be in London, please swing by and see it in person. Admission is free, so you can go and ogle to your heart's content. I most certainly did! :)

The Home Tour | Where I've Lived

I spent the first 18 years of my life living in one place. (Well, my parents and I moved when I was around three, but even then we only moved a town over.) But since leaving home in 2009, I've lived in three extremely different places. I've taken to calling myself "semi-nomadic" ...though now that I've been in Colorado for almost two years (omg?!), I might be losing that label! In any case, I thought it'd be kind of cool to take a look at all the places I've called home.

My permanent home base (i.e. where I grew up and my parents still live) is Baldwin, a suburb of New York City. People tend to think of Long Island as rich and glitzy, a la the Hamptons, but Baldwin is solidly middle-class. On paper it's really nothing special. A lot of it is pretty blah, there aren't any attractions and there's really not much to do. But honestly? I'm so grateful to have grown up there. I got all the benefits of suburban life (a backyard to play in, our local park in walking distance from my house, a pretty safe and quiet neighborhood) mixed in with incredible diversity (my high school is 50% black!), with the bonus of the greatest city in the world less than an hour away. I was so cultured without ever living anywhere else, which is something I couldn't be more thankful for. Baldwin really shaped me into a well-rounded person.

My next stop was Coral Gables, Florida, to attend the University of Miami. I don't think one can truly understand Florida without having lived there; northern Florida is like the deep south, but southern Florida is like a mix between Long Island and Cuba. (You think I'm joking? Go into a store in Miami and start speaking Spanish.) Coral Gables in itself is equally strange, with some super ritzy areas and some super sketchy areas. Campus is, like, smack in the middle. It's a suburb that you really need a car to get around in and, as I was car-less, I spent a lot of time getting aggravated by the terrible public transportation and the occasional Zip-Car. I wish I'd explored Miami more, but I'm still happy with my taste of Florida living. It was like living in a sauna. Or a rainforest. And sometimes I still crave plantains and yucca.

While I was still going to school at Miami, I spent five months living in London for study abroad. I've covered that topic pretty extensively already but, as always, it bears repeating. I adored living in London. It was my first time living in a city, with two tube stops each less than five minutes away from my flat, and it was where I discovered that I'm truly a city girl at heart. I adored having the whole city at my disposal; adventure or culture or simply a new experience was always right around the corner. And I loved living in the East End -- it's gritty and multicultural and steeped in fascinating history. Such a cool place to live. I'll stop rambling now, but suffice it to say I'd live there again in a heartbeat.

I currently live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is technically a city but certainly doesn't fit into my definition of the word! There are about five square blocks of "downtown," if that, and my office building that's six stories is one of the taller buildings. And with the closest big city (Denver) upwards of an hour's drive away, I'm feeling a little stifled. But I will never -- honestly, never -- get tired of looking at the mountains. I've always lived closer to the beach than the mountains, so moving out here was eye-opening in a phenomenal way. Nature is amazing.

All of this makes me wonder where I'll be heading next. I guess only time will tell!

Where's the most interesting place you've lived?

My Favorite Travel Memories (Part 2)

When it comes to travel, I'M STILL LIVING IN THE PAST, GUYS. Next week (and probably for the foreseeable future) I'll have all sorts of tales about my Lake Placid adventures (have I mentioned I'm excited about this trip? Because I'm pretty excited about this trip), but for now I'll relive my past trips. For the umpteenth time. I know. But hey, I feel pretty lucky that I can keep reminiscing about old trips and continuously come up with more things to talk about. I've had some amazing travels! (For part 1, click here.)

+ When I went to Israel, I went as part of a birthright group and we traveled with a handful of Israeli soldiers. Not for protection or anything; Israel has a mandatory draft so they were our age, and they essentially use the trip to see their own country through the eyes of foreigners. Pretty cool. But anyway, we spent one night in a Bedouin tent in the Negev Desert, and the next morning we got to ride camels. I shared my camel with one of our soldiers, Dafna, and at some point during the ride she casually mentioned that she's ridden camels before but never ridden a horse. What?! Cultural differences are so fascinating.

+ Probably one of the most gratifying moments I've ever had was visiting Copenhagen and seeing Nyhavn (that famous canal lined with colored buildings) for the first time. I'd wanted to go to Denmark since doing a school project on the country in fourth grade. For so much of my life it had been a sort of pipe dream, and finally being able to realize it over a decade later was simply indescribable.

+ I studied abroad in London in the spring of 2012, and on my last day in the city I spent the afternoon wandering my favorite routes by myself. I started at Westminster to see Big Ben, made my way to Trafalgar Square, swung by Chinatown for a bubble tea, and then spent some time just sitting in Leicester Square. Leicester Square was the site of my very first outing to central London at the beginning of my study abroad experience, so that was a particularly cool moment of coming full circle. I still can't really articulate how much I love this city, and saying my final goodbyes was impossibly hard. I'm so glad I decided to head out on my own and take some time to be reflective and get closure.

+ I don't even know if this technically counts as a travel memory, but while I was studying abroad, my friends and I camped out overnight for the first Hunger Games world premiere. It was March. In London. It was cold. The ground is really hard. None of us slept much, if at all. But there's no bonding experience quite like sleeping on the street with people in the name of fandom. (The red carpet and getting to watch the movie immediately afterwards didn't suck either!)

So what about everyone else? Can you relate to any of these? What are your own favorite travel memories? :)

London Love Affair

Flags. One of my lasting memories of my first trip to London is the flags.

It was the summer of 2004, and in less than a year the International Olympic Committee would be choosing the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games. London was one of the cities bidding (spoiler alert: it won), and the city was draped in London 2012 flags.

As a 13-year-old taking her first steps on the journey to full-blown Olympics obsessiveness -- six months removed from an Olympics-themed Bat Mitzvah! -- I was thrilled with this little detail, and filed it away in my memory, where it has remained even a decade later.

I have very few specific memories from that trip anymore, but I remember the flags and the way London wormed its way into my heart. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I know that I left the city with a slow-burning desire to go back.

Flash forward to 2011. I finished my sophomore year of college, started my junior year, and couldn't decide where to study abroad. Thanks to a bunch of AP credits and no gen ed requirements, I didn't have to take any required classes overseas and therefore had almost total freedom when it came to choosing a program. The study abroad office, bless its heart, offered me zero help in narrowing down my options. I toyed with the idea of Germany for awhile, or maybe Denmark... but then it hit me. If the Olympics are going to London in 2012, shouldn't I be going to London in 2012?

Um, duh?

I applied to an exchange program Miami has with Queen Mary, University of London, and got accepted. I applied for a study abroad scholarship designed to fund anything but program expenses; I got it and suddenly had $5,000 on which to backpack through Europe. I applied for a student visa instead of just getting stamped with a visitor visa upon entrance to the U.K., because I wanted to be able to work... and it was a miserable, stressful process that I shed many tears over, but I got approved and my passport was sent back to me with an official-looking sticker in it. But most excitingly, I applied to be a London 2012 Ceremonies volunteer.

My plane didn't even have to touch down at Heathrow for me to know I'd made the right decision. Two or three weeks before my departure, I was on my laptop with my parents Google mapping the area around my future school. We checked out which tube stations were nearby, what the grocery store situation was, if there was a pharmacy in the vicinity... all that practical stuff. The conversation turned to exploring the city and the potential for getting lost. And I said, with complete confidence, without even thinking twice about it, "Oh, as long as I can get myself to a tube station I'll be totally fine."

Keep in mind, this was a city I hadn't set foot in in seven and a half years. And when I'd been there the first time, I was 13 and my grandparents did all the navigating. But for some reason, after just a quick glance at a tube map, I was 100% sure in my ability to handle myself just fine. (It bears mentioning that the New York City subway map doesn't inspire that level of confidence in me. Not even close, actually. And I'm AWFUL at directions and finding my way around. So believe me when I say that this level of confidence in how I would get around London was truly bizarre.)

Friends who take creeper pictures occasionally come in handy. ;)

But that premonition was completely correct. On my very first evening there I was walking a mile down the road off campus in search of a converter, completely by myself. I learned the tube map like nobody's business and felt free to wander around the city, because I'd been right: as long as I eventually found my way to a station, I couldn't get lost. It was SO freeing! So I explored and tried new foods and made amazing friends and saw all the iconic London sites (and a whole lot that are off the beaten path).

And I was chosen as a London 2012 Ceremonies volunteer. So eight years after I was a newly-minted teenager all wide-eyed over the London 2012 candidate city flags, I was a college junior with my picture on a London 2012 ID badge and my name in the opening ceremony program. And I got to walk around during the Games and see the London 2012 host city flags, displayed proudly in every color of the rainbow.

How's THAT for coming full circle?

London and I have come a really long way in our relationship. I was there as a new adult in the eyes of the Jewish community, when I thought fizzy lemonade was the weirdest thing ever, and I was there when I became an adult in the eyes of America's legal drinking age... and, okay, I still thought fizzy lemonade was the weirdest thing ever. I was there to watch the beginning of London's Olympic journey, and I was there to watch its culmination. I'm happier and more comfortable there than anywhere else in the world; being there is easy and simultaneously exciting, and I just feel like myself.

So until I get seriously wooed by a man, I think it's safe to say that London has been the big, sweeping love story in my life. And you know what? I don't hate it.

My Favorite Travel Memories (Part 1)

It recently occurred to me that I can't remember the last time I went on a trip that wasn't for work or to visit home. I guess my weekend in Breckenridge counts, but prior to that, I don't think there was anything since good ol' Eurotrip in the spring of 2012. WHAT THE HECK?! Everyone says to travel while you're young, but listen, my student loan deferment just ended (so I'm now short several hundred bucks a month) and any time off work shrinks my paycheck. So for the foreseeable future... I'm stuck where I am.

Life as a millennial: ain't it glamorous?!

All that being said, I'm really missing the days when I could hop on a train and be in another country. So today I'm taking a walk down memory lane and revisiting a handful of my favorite moments from my travels. :)

+ On our last night in Paris, Amanda and I swung by the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up. What we didn't know, however, is that it sparkles. Exiting the metro and turning a corner to see the Eiffel Tower lit up and sparkling is a moment of breathlessness I will never forget.

+ I went to Israel on a birthright trip, which meant I traveled with two dozen other Americans and a handful of Israeli soldiers. Israel has a mandatory draft, so everyone joins the army before going to college. These soldiers were the same age as all of us, but while we were in college, they were thinking wistfully of the day they could finally go back to school. That alone was quite a realization. But one day, we were on our bus between cities and I was sitting next to one of our soldiers. We were chatting about basically nothing. Pop culture nonsense, TV shows, what-have-you. And it was somewhere between our discussions of That '70s Show and Friends that it hit me like a truck: this girl is me if I'd been born in Israel instead of America. I'd be watching That '70s Show and training in the military instead of watching That '70s Show while complaining about schoolwork. That one inane conversation changed so much about the way I see the world. We're all exactly the same but for where we're born and the life circumstances that presents us with. It's incredible.

Two students, three soldiers, and it's impossible to pick who's who.

+ An equally life-changing moment was visiting Dachau, the concentration camp. I'm a Jewish girl that walked into the gas chamber, and was alive to walk out the other side. Had I been a Jewish girl in that exact spot a mere 65 years previously, I wouldn't have had that luxury. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

+ It would be totally remiss of me to NOT mention some of my Olympic travels, right? ;) One that has a special place in my heart is seeing my first Olympic stadium: London 2012. I made sure to get my butt over there about a week after I'd arrived in the city to study abroad. While I could see it from the windows of my flat, I was so jittery and excited on the way over... and I may or may not have cried a little bit when I finally got there.

Give it some time and I'm sure I'll be all nostalgic and putting together a part two. ;)