I remember around the exact moment that I made the initial decision that a year abroad would be right for me. Study abroad was always in the cards, if you will. When I went college hunting, the two big things I looked for were a good music department and a good study abroad office. I knew that I was going to definitely study abroad after my two week exchange experience to Valencia with my high school-- it was when I first fell in love with Spain.
Okay now with that mini history section done, we're back to the 2009-2010 school year at the University of Pittsburgh where I had just gotten back from a study abroad fair in the William Pitt Union with a stack 1.5 ft tall of study abroad program books. I entered the university with the mind track that I was going to be a Political Science major with a Spanish minor. At around this time, I had just changed those majors all around and was now a Spanish and Business Dual Major.
The idea of studying abroad abroad for an academic year instead of just a semester pretty much started growing in my mind after that fair. I started doing my research into various programs that offered a year program, talking to all my advisers (whose number had just grown due to the addition of my business major), and trying to work out, academically, the next 3.5 years of my life. I had to make certain that I could still graduate in 4 years, that I could afford it, and that my parents (heck, and myself for that matter) would be okay with me changing from 4 months abroad to 8.5 months. The easiest part of this? My parents. I was a little nervous to approach the "year abroad" topic, to be honest. Since I wasn't entirely sure yet if it could work out logistically, it was still this abstract dream of mine where I thought "How cool would that be if I could pull this off." As with sharing dreams in general, it was a bit touchy for me. But, when I brought the topic up and we all realized it could logistically work out with graduation, I couldn't have been happier with their reaction. They immediately were, and still continue to be, so supportive of me. To be frank, without this type of support from them, it would have been a lot more difficult to do what I'm currently doing. I am eternally grateful for everything they have done for me during this process considering, although it's not on the list of things to really prepare for during a year abroad, it is one heck of an emotional roller coaster.
As my time here is wrapping up and I will be back stateside by Wednesday night, I am so full of happiness and every other type of emotion. In my short 20 years that I've lived through and as I look ahead to my life to come, this is possibly be the best decision I could have ever made for myself. I could not be happier with how everything happened this year and where I am now at in life.
This will probably be my last blog post live from Spain. I'm off to have una cena de despedida -- a farewell dinner -- at my apartment with a bunch of my Spanish friends here as well as some other friends from API. I'm making pasta and homemade chocolate chip cookies :) Mmmmm. Can you believe that many Spanish people have never tried a homemade chocolate chip cookie? They think of Chips Ahoy! Tisk, tisk.. time to show them a bit of the baking culture that I love so dearly.
Love to all and thank you all so much for following me and my traveling tales :)
There will be many more traveling tales to come---
xoxo
Katie
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