Hola a todos!!
It's been a long time coming for some catch-up on how life abroad has been. I have been traveling a lot and really just embracing the moments these past few weeks so I've neglected writing any new blog posts. This week I decided to have one of my good friends, Maximilian Silvano Righetti, write a blog post about his experience abroad. I am doing this because so many of us experience change and adaptation in different ways. While I've had an extremely smooth transition into the South American lifestyle, others haven't. Max tells his story about his experience and ways to overcome "culture shock".
WARNING: Max likes to talk a lot so it's a long one (but the topic is very important for those traveling or deciding to study abroad so it's worth the read)
"Hi LeAnne’s blog readers! I’m Maximilian Righetti, a friend of Leanne’s from Mount Union. I’m from Salem, but we didn’t know each other until she started hanging out with my old roommate, Mitchell, who is now her boyfriend (it’s my favorite story to tell guys who come up to LeAnne in Montevideo). LeAnne and I are both in the same majors, Marketing and Spanish. Now that we are in our major focused classes, we have most of our classes together. One day in Spanish class last spring, we talked about studying abroad and decided we should do it. She decided that we were going to go to Uruguay, and I said alright sounds good!
Before we came to Uruguay I had no knowledge about the culture of South America, and honestly I thought I was never going to go to there, which I was perfectly happy with. Anyway, we decided to come here (Uruguay) and now that we are a little over halfway done with our semester, I am extremely happy that we did. However, not every moment has been pleasurable, especially not the first week.
In the United States, I am fortunate to still play sports as I am a kicker on the football team at Mount Union. We normally have good success every year, which means our seasons go very long into winter, and we practice outside until the middle of December. Being an Ohio based team, winter gets cold and your body becomes very adapted to that. After our season was over, I worked a mixture of inside and outside until the week I left, in temperatures around 20 degrees F and below. As you can probably tell, I was extremely adapted to the cold.
I was nervous to arrive in Montevideo, as this was a experience I felt I was going into blind. I didn’t know how I was going to get around, where to buy food, the normal things you would be concerned about. I didn’t realize that when we would arrive the temperature would be smoking hot, which I was not ready for. Due to the extreme heat, I caught a Virus by my second day and couldn’t eat anything or drink anything. I wanted to make a good first impression with all these new people, so I didn’t want to complain about how I felt sick, so I just sucked it up and dealt with it. I was nauseas all the time, and had to be close to the bathroom at all times. The only thing that would relax my nausea was being in air conditioning, which we didn’t have at home yet. I needed time to adapt to being in heat. At night on the hottest day, the temperature felt like 91 degrees, with high humidity. I froze some bottles of ice to cool myself down, but they would thaw quickly and I wasn’t able to sleep. It was honestly the worst 5 successive days of my life. I told my parents that if by Friday of that week I was still feeling that bad, I was buying the first plane ticket home because it felt like torture.
Thankfully, I had very supportive roommates who helped me out, one who had already done an exchange in Colombia for a year, and two who already had been in Uruguay for a semester, so they helped me get through those 5 days. By the time Friday rolled around, I finally was feeling better and could eat and drink, and I was making up for the 10 pounds I lost that week.
For me, the most important thing I learned from that week is that if you are struggling, especially in a study abroad program, people are willing to help you BUT you have to communicate that you need help first. Now that I have been here for about half of a semester, we have traveled around to multiple different towns and cities, I’ve learned how to make travel arrangements and plan for events, I’ve made new friends and I’m having an unforgettable experience. It’s important to know that if you want to go abroad, you should be prepared to face some struggles. The most important thing to do is find people who can support you in your adaptation, and don’t quit and go home. Because if I had decided to go home, I would’ve lost a semester of college credits, worked for 15 weeks while all of my friends were out of town enjoying college life, and I never would’ve taken advantage of this experience. I would encourage anyone who has the ability to study abroad to do it. Immersing yourself in a new culture is a liberating experience which opens your eyes to the differences of cultures, and you learn a lot about yourself because you get to be away from everyone and everything you know in the United States. It is an experience that you can’t obtain by learning in the classroom, but an experience that I believe everyone should have."
So there you have it, study abroad from a different perspective. The most important take away from this is it does get better, adaption and adjustment is TOUGH but overcoming adversity creates stronger people. Learning about and experiencing different cultures is one of the best things you can do for yourself, you not only learn so much new, tactical information but you learn to appreciate and accept differences. If you are deciding whether to travel or study abroad, DO IT. Find your support system, ways to cope with anxieties if they ever approach, and most importantly enjoy your time to the fullest. Our days here in Montevideo are quickly coming to an end and remembering where we started in this experience helps us appreciate how far we've come.
Stay tuned for an update on travel experiences later this week :)
LeAnne