Hi! If you’re reading this from Denver, know that I am unfathomably jealous of the snowstorm you got last week, and I would do absolutely anything to be in the snow right now. The Athenian fall is…temperate, to say the least. For example, one day last week, it was about 60ºF here and I saw someone wearing earmuffs. Fuzzy ones. So, you can imagine how the Greeks would be doing in Denver right now.

I was going to write my blog post this week on my friend Ruby coming to visit from Maynooth, or maybe my trip to Barcelona to see a friend from high school, or something else. And I am definitely going to write those, and I hope you will read them, but if being abroad has reinforced anything for me it is the idea of authenticity, so I am choosing to be authentic this week. For the (real) adults who are reading this, my next sentence might come as a no-brainer, but I think you’d be surprised to know how many of us are being hit in the face with this reality right now:

The world doesn’t stop just because you’re studying abroad.

(The crowd is…silent!) I know, I know- I was shocked, too. Maybe not shocked, necessarily, but I didn’t have the words to verbalize my feelings until just this week. Obviously, studying abroad doesn’t equate to falling off the face of the earth, but as a student, your perception of reality certainly becomes altered during your time away. It’s not just your school life that changes, though. It’s the whole world.

I’ll admit, without getting too personal, that I was sad to miss voting in person for my first presidential election. As a resident of a swing county in Pennsylvania who cares a lot about exercising my civil liberties, I had way less fun dropping my ballot off at the US Embassy in Athens than I would have if I had voted at home. It was also really, deeply weird to watch the election happen in a time zone nine hours away. Going to do work at a coffeeshop felt insignificant while the state of my whole country was in limbo, and no one outside of my apartment understood that.

Europe isn’t inside of some bubble, either. I was more prepared for this concept coming into my abroad experience, but I think it’s still jarring to see the truth behind it. The day after I flew back to Athens from Barcelona, the airport I flew out of was closed due to flooding. Freak rainstorms in Valencia, three hours south of Barcelona, had moved up the coast and flooded the airport and parts of the city. Spain is still experiencing storms, but I got to experience three crisp, dry fall days while I was there. It’s hard to see that the events that have been destroying the East Coast were not a specific injury, but a global wound. The grass is always greener on the other side, especially if it’s the other side of the pond.

Stepping outside of the room where the fantasy of studying abroad lives was a big and necessary step. The world doesn’t stop moving just because you’re abroad, but because you’re abroad, you should be more tuned in to where it’s going. While I’m here learning about the refugee crisis in Europe (and specifically Greece), I’m relating it back to a similar history of sanctuary cities and immigration in the US. When I am done eating at the cafeteria I see signs encouraging me to reduce my food waste and I am thinking about the new Plant Futures organization on campus aimed at sustainable food consumption. I talk to my classmates about what COVID-19 was like for them and compared it to how I experienced it. I’m working on being where my feet are while also looking at the footprints around me. I’m not in a bubble, I’m in a giant, international community, and that is exponentially better.

The world hasn’t stopped but I’m grateful to be somewhere so charming to chase after it.