Your Story

If I had to name the biggest personal takeaway, however, it's that being abroad has influenced my ability to see the story. What do I mean by this?

When you embark on anything, really, it becomes a part of your story. You can connect the dots between it and other events in your life, or witness its impacts on your present self. The reason people have the saying that we are all unique is precisely because of this - none of us have had the same experiences as each other and as a result our stories are ours and ours only. Studying abroad for a semester and having all these experiences has made me tempted to spill every detail about every, cultural difference, trip, feeling to anyone who has asked about the semester. But the reality is, at some point you just have to accept that it's much easier to communicate the small, objective parts. Sure, I can say that I went to X number of countries this semester or that I tried souvlaki in Greece and loved it. It's easy to talk about a small cultural difference between the U.S. and Spain, like how they have siestas and things are open late. But a lot of the more personal, subjective feelings that flowed through me at some point, or some of the biggest things I learned, I just have to accept may be stories that never get told.

Everyone's journeys are stories full of challenges and hopes, and I really think its our responsibility to study and absorb each page as it comes. Only by examining and seeing the nuances of our stories do we truly protect them. What I've hypothesized is, especially in these very important years, if you don't mold your story, someone else will mold it like theirs. Protect your story.

While driving to Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers a few days ago, I was wearing my Chupiteria 69 shirt (from a bar in Granada), listening to Belgian rap, and wearing socks that had been stained orange from the Saharan sand in Morocco. And in the meanwhile I was on a straight section of Route 66 in the same car I've always driven and glancing at the Chick Fil-A and McDonalds I frequented as a kid. I couldn't help but laugh a little at such a juxtaposition, and sped off into the distance.