This study abroad experience helped me in more ways than just adding it to my resume for future jobs. This experience facilitated more self-growth in three months than I could have had in three years. This study abroad program has greatly impacted my identity. It pushes you to places that you didn’t think you could go and that’s when the magic happens, that’s when you realize that you can, you can push through and go further. My advice to anyone who feels on the fence about being in the program would be to jump. Choose to make that jump and I promise you that you won’t regret it. At first, it’s comfortable but if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be growth. This is an opportunity of a lifetime that will teach you lessons you will keep with you for your entire life. It can give you lessons that you can’t get from inside a classroom, reading out of a text book.

There were many accomplishments that I feel proud of while living in Trujillo such as, learning the language better, having more cultural awareness, and even making new Spanish friends. I am very grateful for those experiences but the ones that truly got to my soul were the experiences where I fell down, scraped my knees up but still decided to keep going anyways, to keep trying to be better. It’s the things about yourself that you’re not so proud of that drive you to learn about who you are on a more intimate level. I would love to study abroad again but I only have one semester left of college so it won’t be an option for me, but if I could do it again, I would in a heartbeat. Living abroad is an experience like no other and shapes you into who you want to become. Jobs will fill your pockets, but adventures will fill your soul.