Let the Adventure Begin

I'm going to be blogging on my university study abroad website while I'm away. Here's the first entry. We'll see if I have the energy to keep two blogs!
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In less than 24 hours, UCBA’s Summer British Study Abroad 2012 program will begin. Our group of 23 students will join me and my co-leader, Eric Anderson, for three and a half weeks overseas, where we’ll study American expatriate literature and media and culture. We’ll spend time at fabulous Harlaxton Manor near Grantham, England, where students will take one or both or our classes. Next, we’ll travel to London for four nights, and then board the Eurostar for five nights in Paris. We have some spectacular things planned: we’ll tour Westminster Abbey, the BBC, the Imperial War Museum, the Musee d’Orsay, and Versailles. We’ll watch a taping of a BBC television show, wander past Buckingham Palace, picnic in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, sip coffee in one of Ernest Hemingway’s favorite cafes, and people watch in two of Europe’s greatest cities. By the time we’re finished, I feel certain that our students will feel the bite of the pest that bit me over thirty years ago: the travel bug.

When I graduated from high school in 1976, my brother and his family were living in England. Tom had lived abroad off and on since he’d joined the army right after college, and I spent many childhood nights listening to my mom or dad read his letters–full of foreign place names–to the family, or watching slideshows of his travels in our darkened living room. Over the course of my childhood, he moved from Germany, to France, and finally, to England, and as my high school graduation neared, I decided that I would take him up on his invitation to visit. My parents gave me a matching set of harvest gold luggage for graduation, helped me pack, and drove me to Toronto where I boarded my very first plane, bound for London. I was incredibly nervous–flying, traveling alone, heading off to see my brother and his family who I hadn’t seen in years. It didn’t help when an hour into the flight, the pilot announced that we were having some mechanical difficulties that made it so we had to turn around. I spent a free night in a Toronto hotel, and the next day, I was London bound. I spent three weeks in England, France, and Belgium on that trip: I shopped at Herod’s with my sister-in-law, saw the White Cliffs of Dover, toured the palace and gardens of Versailles, and ate at a restaurant in Brussels where I ordered Peach Melba and felt astoundingly continental. I had the travel bug in a big way.

It took me until June of 1981 to pack my bags again–this time for a five-week study abroad program in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain. Our group came from all over the U.S., and it included two or three high school students, about a dozen college students, and a couple of retirees who wanted to see a little of the world. We didn’t have a single pre-trip meeting to encourage bonding or prepare us for Spanish culture, but that trip was one of the best experiences of my life. I arrived with a Spanish vocabulary that consisted of a handful of words and only two full sentences, taught to me by friends back home: “What color is your bathing suit,” and “Where is the bathroom.” The Spanish class I took on that trip helped enormously. On one of the last days in Spain, our group went into Madrid to visit the Prado Museum, and in the gift shop afterwards, I was able to speak enough Spanish that the clerk actually thought I knew the language–well, until she found out I didn’t. Back in San Lorenzo, I spent evenings with my new friends, talking about politics, art, music, and literature every evening. We met a group of young Spaniards who worked at the place we were staying, and they invited us to fiestas, a bullfight, and on several hikes in the mountains. Study abroad changed my life.

About a year and a half ago, Eric Anderson and I started planning this Summer British Study Abroad trip. We spent hours and hours coming up with the overall program concept, we researched destinations, and planned our individual courses. We wrote a proposal and submitted it to the UCBA Study Abroad & Exchange Programs Committee in February 2011, and once it was approved, the planning started in earnest. Neither one of us can quite believe that the trip is upon us already. Our students are excited–and for good reason. Study abroad is a remarkable opportunity. It allows students to see the world, make friendships that could last a lifetime, and participate in experiential learning for college credit. Eric and I are excited, too. Leading a study abroad trip is a lot of work, but it’s also a privilege. It’s extraordinary to be the person who gets to take these students abroad–many of them for the first time. This will be my third stint as program leader, and every time I do it, it takes me back to my early travels. I imagine myself as that high school graduate or young college student who left her little Pennsylvania town and stepped into the heart of Europe. Travel and education have changed my life, and it will change the lives of our SBSA students, too. Let the adventure begin!


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