Can you believe it? I’m only 7 days away from boarding my plane to Buenos Aires! …Well, DC first (since it’s not a direct flight), and then to Buenos Aires! It still hasn’t even hit me yet. It’s funny: I would have thought that because I’ve done so much planning in terms of setting myself up to study abroad that it would have kept me more connected to it. I guess organizing something is not nearly the same as actually doing it—especially in this case. How logical is it to think that filling out a bunch of paperwork, forms, and applications would, in any way, resemble traveling thousands of miles away, settling in with a foreign family/roommates, attending classes run in a completely different teaching style, seeing exotic landscapes, witnessing different traditions and everyday customs, and practicing or being around a language that’s at the very least a bit less than familiar?
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself! I believe introductions are in order. My name is Nancy Masood, and I’m currently a sophomore studying sociology. How did I end up choosing to study abroad in Argentina? Well, I personally wanted to break away from the status quo of Europe or Asia (no offense at all to those going there!) and just experience a real culture shock. I wanted to be in a land rich with tradition. I yearned to go somewhere that I knew almost nothing about, not somewhere that has been fabled about and put in movies time after time. I craved breathtaking sights and landscapes, and to actually use a language that I had studied throughout all of high school. South America was the answer to all those prayers. Now I just wonder… will studying abroad really be as amazing of an experience as people make it out to be?
I have always had grand dreams and ambitions to travel the world…but then again, so do many other people. Nevertheless, many of those individuals never get to do anything close to that, regardless of how much they want to. It’s unreal to me that this is the start of me actually fulfilling that dream. This is such a massive step for me that hearing all my friends tell me that I’m lucky or that they envy me doesn’t even cover it. My family has never had the financial means to travel, and though I always heard of “studying abroad,” I NEVER imagined that it was something I would be doing as well. My family and I came to the US from Egypt when I was four years old, and we’ve never returned since then. That fact has since captivated me to not only return to a place that held so much of my history and dear family members, but to also see the rest of the world.
For now, I’m in as much anticipation as you all are in! I guess I should focus on the actual world around me, though, right? We all know there are always some loose ends to tie up here and there in making any plans in life…
