Complete and Creative

Studying Abroad - Ordinary or Extraordinary? (1/2)

As of the writing of this article, to many college students, studying abroad is still something extraordinary (some high school students study abroad too, but they’re a minority). If you’re an upperclassman and you tell an underclassman that you’ve studied abroad, the typical response is probably still an extended “Wow!” But studying abroad doesn’t have to be something extraordinary.

The front gate of the university where I studied abroad for the very first time, East China Normal University in Shanghai.

With increasing communications among the nations of the world, it should be compulsory to study abroad during higher education. In many European countries, college students have to spend at least a semester abroad studying or interning. In America, that is obviously not the case. However extraordinary studying abroad may be, it is the little things, the perfectly ordinary things that you might miss most.

Almost always coupled with studying abroad is additional travel. You’re already spending thousands of dollars on airfare, program fees, living costs, and incidentals. Might as well dish out a few more hundred to see some neighboring cities, provinces, and countries. I’ve traveled a bit, and sure, it’s great to be able to tell friends and family that I’ve walked across the Great Wall (only a section of it, of course), climbed Mt. Fuji (yes, all the way up), seen the Tower of London, and gone through as many galleries of the Louvre as my human eyes and legs could bear. But the things I miss most about the places I’ve visited are not these tourist attractions.

Since Paris used to be the most popular tourist destination in the world (it probably still is, but I don’t know), I’ll use my trip to Paris as an example. It was my first time there, so naturally it was going to be an exciting experience, but I didn’t go for the city.

In Paris, I stayed with a friend I had met while studying in Shanghai two years before. He wasn’t an American or a Chinese national studying in Paris, so it wasn’t as if I would be able to see him once I got back to the US or on my next trip to China. I was looking forward to being able to hang out with him, talk about old times, but he was busy writing a 100-page research paper and transcribing an interview he conducted with the assistant of or some gentleman who works for the Secretary General of the UN, or something like that.

Sure, I enjoyed Paris. I liked going to the Eiffel Tower just to be able to say I’ve been there, taking a cruise down the Seine with the summer sun beating down on me and the other tourists, watching teenage girls with their awed looks surrounding the statue of Cupid and Psyche in the Louvre, and suffering the sounds of American tourists tongue-wrestling each other in the City of Lights (I firmly suspect in the summer there are more sets of American couples PDA-ing than local Parisian couples doing the same thing).

Okay, sarcasm aside, it was a worthwhile experience admiring the stained glass windows of San Chapel (a lot cooler than Notre Dame, I think), observing the grandness of Versailles, and touching the gravestone of Victor Hugo in the Pantheon, where Voltaire, Curie, and other French celebrities are also buried.

But what I wanted most was some quality time with my old roommate. After all, he was the main reason I visited Paris instead of some less traveled places I would’ve preferred, like Kiev, Budapest, and Prague. Well, you couldn’t say no to free lodging.

to be continued…