• Biking

A fun fact about The Netherlands is there are two bikes for every one person. I heard this going into Holland, but I never actually visualized what it would look like. There are bikes everywhere! Every time I walked across the road I was worried about getting hit by a bike. I truly did the “look right, left, and right again” walking around the city.  Within the first week of walking miles a day, I did the Dutch thing and bought a bike. I fell in love with my bike, because I used it every single day. Now, being back in the United Sates, I miss it more than ever. I will start taking weekend biking trips and remember the good times I had biking to the North Sea.

• Easy/Spontaneous Travel

In the States, I can hop in my car and drive anywhere I want, but I usually just drive to school or to get food. In The Netherlands, traveling was just as easy if not easier. I didn’t have a car in Europe, but that didn’t stop me from waking up early to catch the first three-hour train to Paris, or jump on the ten euro Flix bus for an eight-hour drive to Belgium. When I was in Europe, I had a sense of adventure. I only realized that I can do the same kind of adventures right here in the States when I talked to the people from Europe asking me if I’ve visited California. I now know how easy it really is to just make a destination a goal and go for it.

• Language

I’ve always had an interest in foreign languages, but I never actually understood the importance of them until I went to an international school. I knew a little bit of Spanish, and I even got into an introduction to Dutch class, but none of those were quite enough for me to actually communicate with some of my closest friends in their native language. Hanging around many Spanish speaking people, the once English-speaking majority soon became Spanish. I was unable to fully understand what my friends were saying, but I could see the expressions on their face which gave me a little bit of an idea. Being back in the States, I am going to make it a goal of mine to practice different languages with the help of my newly made international friends.

• News

In Europe, I started every single day by reading the news. I got my news from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other forms of online media postings. This was a great way for me to be able to stay in touch with my friends and family back home. The only problem with my news was that it was a majority from the United States. I realized that for me to learn what was happening around in Europe, I had to ask my friends and classmates. They briefed me on the major events that happened in The Netherlands and what was happening in their home countries. This showed me that I didn’t have the perspective of the world like I thought I had. I now start my day on talking to people I have met, because it is usually mid-day for them, and get caught up very quickly on what’s happening around the world.

• Friends

Friends and Family are the most important things in life. This is something that I believe and hope that everyone understands. I was very lucky when I met a group of friends on the introduction day at The Hague that lasted until the day I left. Even though oceans are between us, we still stay up to date using Snap Chat and Instagram.

Social media had a huge impact on the people of 2017, and will continue affecting people for years to come. Every time I got on Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn, someone was posting about not being understood for who they are. Going abroad has allowed me to realize just how important it really is to understand someone for who they are instead of the stereotype that people portray them of being. To begin with, I went to study in The Hague, The Netherlands. On the opening day for the exchange program all one hundred and fifty exchange students, including three University of Louisville students which were the only United States citizens in the room, watched what the school thought was a great introduction video to break the ice. The instructor first began the video saying, “I know all of you have seen this video before, but we can watch it again.” The video consisted of a foreign television host making a fool out of President Donald Trump. I felt absolutely humiliated, because before I didn’t have the chance to speak to anyone, and everyone made their stereotype about The United States. It was only after everyone in the room was laughing at the obscene footage that the instructor asked if any Americans were in the room. Two others and I raised our hands in shame and humiliation. This story is not to convince anyone not to participate in study abroad, because it was an experience of a lifetime. This allowed me to break a stereotype to every single person I had met. Over the four-and-a-half-month period I was in Europe, I had the opportunity to prove that I was not a stereotype. “You can’t be American. You aren’t rude. You aren’t fat. You aren’t something.”  For the entire beginning of the trip, I had to prove to people who I wasn’t before they could get a chance to meet who I was. I had to break down cultural barrier that should have never been built in the first place, and needless to say, I loved it. I got to show my new friends from all over the world what made me a United States citizen, and I stopped letting stereotypes make a name for me. As much as I felt like a victim of being misunderstood, I was also culturally uneducated. I have heard many stereotypes of countries, and as much as I knew they couldn’t all be true, it did give me a bias. One night I vividly remember was my friends and I cornering all parts of the globe sat around and began to allow each other to explain where the stereotypes come from. By the end of the night, we were all laughing at the common belief of people that new absolutely nothing about the culture of our countries. Now, I can finally say I am culturally taught, but I could never be able to assume anything about anyone based on where they are from.