This evening I will board a flight to Europe for the summer. It feels surreal, given the past two years of Covid related restrictions on travel, that in a few hours I will be flying across the Atlantic to begin my 85 days long adventure across Europe. I’ll begin my trip in France, where I will take two classes and reside with a host family in Paris. From there, I have plans to travel to Portugal and Greece to simply be a tourist. I’ll end my summer travels in Naples, Italy where I will take another class and be an intern at an NGO that provides social inclusion services to refugees in Italy. Wow, simply typing all that out made me a tad overwhelmed. Naturally, I’m experiencing quite a lot of emotions at once: excitement, nerves, anxiety, and anticipation for what’s to come. Mostly, though, I feel very eager and ready to take on and accomplish this next challenge.
Studying abroad in France while being given the opportunity to intern at an NGO in Italy that works directly with refugees feels quite full circle to me. For as long as I can remember I’ve had an interest in learning French. Perhaps it was because my paternal grandmother is from French-speaking Canada and her first language was French. Or maybe it was because my mother studied French herself in high school. Nonetheless, my desire to learn French goes back to as early as 2009 when I used the money my parents had given me for a book at the Scholastic Book Fair to purchase a French-English dictionary. (the very dictionary in the photo above) I, truthfully, didn’t read much of this dictionary but the intention was most definitely there. I began truly learning French in middle school and continued on in high school. It was in high school that I was fortunate enough to have participated in a French exchange program that my school had with a partner school in France. My family and I hosted two French exchange students and I was also able to travel to Paris, France as an exchange student myself. To make a long story short, these experiences completely changed my life in such a positive way. Not only did it enable my French to reach the level I’d always dreamed of but, additionally, as I was unsure of what I was going to pursue in college at the time, these experiences made it evident I would pursue International Studies.
Flash forward more than four years later and I’m pursuing degrees in International Studies and French at the University of Florida. What’s more, this summer I’m going to return to the very city that made me fall in love with International Studies and French in the first place. I’ve learned a lot about myself throughout these past four years and one of the major interests I’ve discovered during my time at UF is an interest in both women’s and refugee studies. As the NGO works specifically with female refugees, this journey that I’m about to embark on feels truly meant to be. It seems as though all my experiences thus far have led me to this new adventure.
I’m currently sitting in my childhood bedroom as I type this trying to take in the last moments of familiarity that I’ll have for a while. I know I won’t be able to fully process all of the experiences I’ll gain this summer for a good bit, so I have decided to write a weekly blog to help myself document and process everything. I know 8 year old Andrea would be proud of my present-day self and I’m hoping future Andrea will enjoy having these posts to look back on. However, if you are in the slightest bit interested in what I will be doing this summer, feel free to follow along with me as I compose these blog posts!
Until next time when I am in Paris 🙂
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