A week before I left for Chile I returned to DC to pick up my student visa and say goodbye to everyone mid-semester. The majority of my friends had studied abroad in Korea either the past semester or the semester before that and were in different stages of re-assimilation to school in the States. They had warned me that the night before I flew out would be the worst night of the entire process, I would question myself, why I was doing this, and do anything to find my comfort-zone again. pre-departure nerves. Three people told me that I could call them at any point in the night if I needed someone to talk to.
On the night before I left I slept normally.
Nothing happened.
I watched tv with my parents and then went to bed. That being said, for me, this experience is much different than many of my other friends that studied abroad because the opportunity presented itself, whereas I had been dreaming of going to Chile since high school. Wanting something for so long made this decision easy, made the process easy for me, but also everything had much more gravity to it.
My friends said that the first 3 days would continue to be filled with self-doubt and confusion as I´d get lost trying to find a pharmacy to pick up all the small things I had forgotten to pack, but that didn´t happen either. This is definitely where our experiences bifurcated. This being a GW Program, we hit the ground running. Day 1, most of us arrived 10 in the morning and by 2 PM we started orientation until 7 PM. I am slightly convinced that the reason I haven't felt dread or discomfort is because I haven´t had much time to feel anything. Right now is my first moment alone since walking off the plane on Wednesday morning and it´s now Sunday afternoon. The director of the program, Lise-Anne, seems like she's seen and been through it all. Making this entire process extremely thorough, but also overwhelming at the same time. Of course it´s necessary to talk about security and every possible thing that could go wrong, but it´s still scary. That's been the worst part of it all, hearing all of the things that could go wrong. Hearing about how in Chile you have to register for classes in person, students photocopy entire books instead of buying their own, how the syllabus means very little and they do oral final examinations. But, I have faith that the piles and piles of other students that have studied abroad before me managed, so I think I can too.