I miss Utrecht, my friends, and my life there a lot, but I am so grateful to have had the experience of living life there for one absolutely unforgettable and life-changing year. I will never forget this or the many lessons I've learned. From Intro Week, to hitchhiking to Spain, to couchsurfing in Switzerland, to going to Efteling with my unit, to getting lost when biking to the castle outside Utrecht, to spending Christmas in Europe with my cousins, to learning to ski in the Alps, to turning 21 on a Greek island, to spending Easter in the south of France, to celebrating King's Day, to sailing in the Friesian lakes, to sitting on the beach on a Dutch island with Cassy, I'll always treasure these adventures and have so much happiness in remembering them.
And while these experiences were all super exciting, I think my favorite memories are still just all those quiet days in Utrecht, going to Janskerkhof for the flower market or walking through town along the Oudegracht and maybe stopping for some ice cream or a kroket. I miss that a lot already (everything...not just the kroketten), and most of all, I just miss being with everyone. Thank you to all my friends at UCU and beyond -- you were the most wonderful group of people to share my year abroad with, and in the end, you were what made it so special. I love you guys!!! <3
Last thing -- I had to write a reflection for my Honors Program after getting back, and I thought it captured my year well, so if you would like to read it, here it is! :)
My experience studying and living abroad in Utrecht was a thousand times more influential, more powerful, and more impactful on my growth as a student and individual than I would have ever imagined ten months ago. To begin with, the classes I took were exciting and new, and my learning was greatly enhanced by the fact that I lived in Europe. I found the art history courses I took to be very valuable and extremely fun, as we would frequently go on excursions to museums around the country, and within a half-hour train ride, we would get the chance to see the paintings we had been learning about just the day before. It was simply incredible. It was also a great experience to take Dutch language courses the whole year, as I was able to improve my language skills by simply going around town and speaking in Dutch while in supermarkets and small shops. My political science courses were also very insightful and helpful, and I found that I almost learned more from being in a classroom with students from twenty different countries than from the curriculum itself. Every comment offered up in discussions was so interesting because my classmate from Uruguay would have such a different view than my classmates from Greece and from the Netherlands, yet every opinion was valuable and relevant to the topic at hand. Simply living at UCU, in a community of students from all around the world, taught me just as much, if not more, than what I learned in the classroom. Interacting with and becoming friends with so many people of so many different cultures and backgrounds really helped me become more open-minded and easy-going, and I gained such a deeper understanding of the world. In less than one year, my idea of our world evolved from being a giant, incomprehensible place to a more comfortable and inviting community full of people I now know and love, especially after having traveled to thirteen different other countries during breaks and long weekends. Perhaps my favorite part about this experience though was fully immersing myself in the culture I lived in. Discovering that I love eating kroketten; finding it extremely "gezellig" to celebrate King's Day with my friends; spending Sunday afternoons walking along the canals of this beautiful medieval city; biking back with my friends from the nearby Albert Heijn while holding a crate of Heineken on the back of my bike -- these are the memories that I will miss most. While they are small and simple, they are the ones that truly made me realize not only that I am capable of being independent and of adapting to foreign environments, but also that I belong to a world much bigger than UW or Seattle or the US. I am a citizen of the world, and I exist as part of a larger framework and a wider network that are not limited by manmade borders. I no longer feel confined to my corner of the world, but rather inspired to explore every other corner and to experience different cultures, learn new languages, and meet and understand people who are more different than me and yet are also more similar than I would have ever thought. And while this adventure is coming to an end, I know that another one is waiting just around the corner...here's to the next one!
