Why the Four Years I Spent Abroad Were Better Than My College Years
Shortly after I moved to South Korea at the age of 25, this old saying came to mind: Your college years will be the best years of your life.
I remember being at a cherry blossom festival in Jinhae, South Korea, admiring the pretty pink flowers that only blossom once a year, as I thought: whoever said that has NOT lived abroad.
At the risk of sounding giddy or intolerably cliched, I really do mean it when I say that moving abroad was the best experience of my life.
In my early twenties, I had been wildly obsessed with the Travel Channel. Samantha Brown’s shows were my favorite. I’d wondered what it would be like to go to the places she’d been to. I was living at home with my parents, and I had slowly been planting a seed in their heads.
I think I want to move to another country.
If you had told me — quiet, reserved, introverted high school me — that I’d up and leave everyone and everything I knew at 25-years-old for a country I’d never been to, you would’ve gotten a laugh in your face.
Socially anxious me — the me who spent (and still spends) a laughable amount of time planning out conversations just before going to parties and socializing with other people — would’ve told you that that was absolutely preposterous.
Can you imagine that person conversing in a language completely unfamiliar to them, in an environment that was totally foreign and unknown? HA.
Welp, that’s me — the innocent smile of a person just before they embark on a hike for the very first time up a mountain which happens to be just under 2,000 feet.
As a socially challenged twenty-something-year-old, the story of how I worked up the courage to jump thousands of miles outside of my comfort zone is for another time. I’m actually still trying to figure that one out.
The point is that I made it there. And I could probably fill a whole book with why the years I spent abroad were better than my college years. But these are the ones that stick out to me the most.
Living in Korea was like a 2-year party
I’m not kidding.
Yes, I still had bills to pay and long long hours to put in teaching 4- and 5-year-old cookie crumb gremlins (they were the cutest gremlins, though).
But my jobs paid my rent. They even paid for my flights to Korea and back.
I taught English at two different schools in Korea. Considering the great big list of all the red flags to watch out for when teaching in Korea (the list is extensive), the most important thing is that those two schools paid me what they promised me, and paid on time. Looking back, I can be grateful for that.
So the time that I didn’t spend teaching was spent traveling around Southeast Asia, making new friends, meeting new lovers, and learning who I was. Becoming who I am.
I’m not sure why college didn’t provide me with those opportunities. Or maybe they were there, and I didn’t take advantage of them because I went to college in a city I was already familiar with. I had to be a certain person there.
Living in a foreign country in my twenties gave me the chance to find out who I was without the pressure or constraints of the familiar.
I had the freedom to be my own person, or create my own person because I was surrounded by people who didn’t know me, in a place I didn’t know.
And for someone who was used to being labeled as “shy” or “quiet,” let me tell you — it was pretty f*cking liberating.
Living in Germany taught me things I didn’t know I needed to know
Living in Korea was the catalyst that brought about a lot of changes in my worldview.
It’s where, for the first time, I met native English speakers who are not from the United States (which blew my mind at the time — I know, ridiculous). It’s where my American bubble was popped, and I started to challenge the views I’d grown up with.
By the time I got to Germany, the 2-year party in Korea was over. I was in a committed relationship with a guy I’d actually followed to Germany (he ended up being pretty cool, so I married him).
However, I got to travel to ten countries in Europe with the previously mentioned guy. And I don’t say this to brag.
I did the stereotypical tourist traps. I took pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower. I wore the beret while walking the streets of Paris like a dumb American tourist (and you better believe I ate the French Onion soup, too). I had my then-boyfriend take the “strolling down the narrow alleys of Santorini” pictures like I wasn’t aware he was taking pictures of me.
At the time, I was probably more focused on getting the right pictures at the right angle (do it for the gram, right?).
But looking back, each trip to each country changed me in small ways that grew over time.
I feel more self-aware.
I try not to sweat the small things (when you’re stranded in a kleine German town in the middle of the night, two hours from home, the small things are cake).
I’m more willing to take risks, and I’m vastly more open to opportunities that I would’ve put a full stop to before I moved abroad.
So yeah, I grew eons more in the two and a half years I spent in Germany than in the five years I spent in college. And I’m damn proud of myself.
Going back to earlier, when I said I didn’t know how I worked up the courage to leave my comfort zone, one of my favorite quotes has come to mind.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”— Anais Nin
I guess I was tired of remaining tight in a bud.
I was ready to blossom.
So, I’m curious — what have you learned about yourself from travel?
