Leaving the US

10 August 2011

It’s hard to believe that the day is finally here; today is the last day I will spend in the US until late December.  I am heading to France a week and a half before my program start date with my family for a vacation before they return to America and I stay behind. 

I first made the decision to study abroad the summer after my freshmen year (I’m now in my super-senior last semester).  At the time I was like many freshmen and bouncing around from one major to another with no clue at all what I wanted to study.  French wasn’t even an option up until that point.  Finally that summer I stumbled upon a PSU program that allows students to double-major in engineering (which was my major at the time) and French (which I had enjoyed all through high school).  Feeling lucky that I found a program that let me combine my two interests, I decided to go with it.  The only hitch was that the curriculum “requires” students to study abroad in order to graduate.  Woe is me, right?

So, this trip has been three years in the making.  Anyone who has ever looked forward to something for an extended period of time can attest to the fact that waiting stinks.  As a to-be sophomore looking forward to a trip I was planning to take after my senior year it seemed the date would never come; three years might as well have been thirty.  On the other hand everyone also knows that looking back on it the time has flown by.  It seems like in the blink of an eye I went from being a rising sophomore to being one short trip shy of my diploma and entering the real world.

All-in-all this experience has been a long time coming.  I know I’m about to learn things I never expected to know.  There will be memories that I’ll never lose and friends I’ll make for a lifetime.  I’m also aware that before I know it it’ll be December and I’ll be on a flight home to snowy Pennsylvania.  So, I’m going to make the most of it.  I’ll learn and experience as much as I can.  But I also know that I need to step back from time to time and take it all in because it’ll be over as quickly as it began.   

Location: Kennett Square, PA