Study abroad opens minds

On my second night in Washington, D.C., some friends and I had the bright idea of going to the White House at one in the morning.

By 4 a.m., we had visited the president’s house, gone to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, and gone for a late night swim in the World War II Memorial (clearly, the sign to respect the fountain had been ignored).

For the past few months, I have bought book after book and read Web site after Web site in hopes of meticulously planning and coordinating my travels for the next six months

But despite my best efforts, I know that improvisation and spontaneity sometimes beat preparedness, and adventure can only add to the experience.

On this half-year journey, I will be interning in D.C. for a couple of months. Afterwards, I will be heading over the Atlantic to Europe to backpack for the rest of the summer. And finally, I will be studying in Granada, Spain, in the fall.

But I am only one of many students who go abroad every year.

I can name people who will be in London, Chile, Paris, Sydney, Mexico City and Rome this year. I have known people who have previously studied in Munich, Bangkok, Taiwan, Barcelona and Prague.

And from what they can testify, going abroad is an experience that changes your life.

Whenever I mentioned I would be away from Los Angeles for half a year, these people all seemed eager to share their story, bubbling with an interest to hear mine.

It didn’t matter if they were a friend, acquaintance or stranger. It didn’t matter where they went or how long they went for. There is something about going abroad and sharing that experience that incites excitement and a blissful connectivity in people.

One friend loved her experience abroad so much she offered to speak to my mom in order to convince her to let me travel.

Then there were acquaintances whom I rarely spoke to, but whom I bonded with over what were the best bars in Granada or how to say basic curse words in French.

So maybe it’s a certain perspective and experience that, as students, we all can come to share and relate.

Where we learn that no matter how different we are as people, in going abroad, we are all similarly engaging in a culturally saturated experience different from the comforts of home and the security of our own local culture.

Where, through our experience, we are gaining more insight into a different society, philosophy and way of life than any professor or university lecture could ever hope for us to understand.

Where, in the end, it reminds us how young we still really are and how big this world really is.

So for the next six months, I will be documenting my experiences through Daily Bruin News columns, not because my travels are any more unique or special than that of any other student. But I hope to continue and establish this connectivity in my columns, reminding readers what they have experienced in the past and to stir anticipation for those going abroad in the future.

For with each new place, there will be hesitations and insecurities. But at the same time there will be new experiences that can only enlighten positive change.

There will be spontaneous moments and local strangers that my preparedness of three Washington, D.C., brochures and maps, three Spanish language books and a 1,094-page Europe guidebook could not have predicted.

And these are the moments that we all come to share and remember ““ that is of course, if you don’t black out first.

Know of any good European bars or curse words? E-mail Indravudh at pindravudh@media.ucla.edu.

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