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London: was it real or just a crazy dream? Studying abroad always seemed like the kind of thing that happened to other people who were lucky enough to drop everything and go to the other side of the world. Up until seven months ago, I didn’t think it w I applied for a program in London which was run by the American Institute for Foreign Study or AIFS and waited for their answer like a man on trial. After not hearing anything from AIFS for three weeks, I consoled myself with the, “at least I tried,” excuse. Then I got an email from AIFS which congratulated me on my acceptance to their program and that’s when my dream started to melt into reality. After the acceptance email, came the process of paying for tuition which I was able to do with help from the International Education Fee Scholarship, The Guadalupe and Lilia Martinez International Fellows Scholarship, and the rest of my bill was paid off with the help of friends and family. As my departure date drew near, I attended a pre-departure orientation which gave me an idea of what it would be like to be alone in a foreign country. There are rules and customs visitors have to abide by and even though I was going to be a tourist in a new country, I had to act like I wasn’t a foreigner. The orientation also prepared me for some of the grim realities about Studying Abroad which are rarely addressed such as keeping a lookout for pick pockets, what would happen in the event I got injured or killed, and being mindful of who I hung out with while abroad. The journey to London was one of the longest trips I’d ever taken. On Friday June 8th, I left Laredo at four in the morning and took a six hour bus ride t o Houston International Airport. From there, I called some friends who were kind enough to give me a ride from the bus terminal to the airport where I waited five hours for my plane to depart. Nine hours later, I was in a new country, seeing new faces, and mercifully ignorant of what was to come. The class I registered for was Travel Writing which I thought would be a perfect course to take since I would be keeping a journal of my trip to London. On the first day of class, my professor announced that one of the class assignments was to keep a journal of our daily activities which meant that I was accidentally ahead. The class met for three hours a day from Monday through Friday and we read excerpts from authors such as Dickens and Hemingway and then discussed how their pieces fell under the genre of, “travel writing.” Luckily, I didn’t get much homework in my class which meant I got to do a great deal of sight seeing.
OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Pellegrino Hall 301 - Tel. 956.326.2565 Email: studyabroad@tamiu.edu |
as possible for me to study abroad. Then one day in January, I walked into the Office of International Education and asked questions about what kind of programs were available. I met the staff and they gave me booklets filled with various programs from countries all over the world, and also showed me scholarship applications which would help make studying abroad a reality; I’m an English Major and only need one more English class in order to graduate. The next step was deciding which country I would like to study in and I made up my mind pretty quickly: England. Why England? It is the home of the Beatles, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and I couldn’t think of a more perfect way to finish off my English degree in the home country of many of my favorite musicians and writers.
Palace, Big Ben, Parliament, The Tower of London, Wimbledon, Abbey Road, and the Royal Albert Hall in less than a week? That’s what studying abroad was like; when I woke up in the morning I had no idea what amazing memories I would have by the time I went to bed. There were a few times when I would stop and ask myself, “How did I end up here?” Even now, a month and a half after I came home, I still ask myself whether my trip to London was real or just some crazy dream I was lucky enough to be a part of.