Travel/Rest Balance when studying abroad

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Lolarose Deforges

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Lolarose Deforges

<i>Home Institution</i>: Florida Gulf Coast University <i>Expected Graduation Year</i>: 2024 <i>Academic Major / Minor</i>: Sociology / Spanish & Global Studies <i>Destination</i>: Seville, Spain <i>"Hello" in your host country's language</i>: Hola <i>Program Provider</i>: CEA <i>Demographics</i>: First-Generation College Student <i>Future Career Goals</i>: I would like to work with Non-Profits at an international level that focus on humanitarian action. Hopefully being able to work both behind the scenes through project management, and on the field leading projects but also working on them with a team in order to help people in need around the world. <i>Top Three Study Abroad Goals</i>: Become fluent in Spanish after studying it for a few years; Meet new people and have a ton of new experiences, push myself outside of my comfort zone; Be successful in my Internship abroad and gain useful skills and knowledge for the future.

A lot of people who study abroad will tell you how important it is to not travel every weekend and I am here to tell you the same. I think I did a good job of balancing out my travel weekends even though I was only in Sevilla for 4 weekends out of the 17 of the semester…

I’m glad I was able to travel as much as I did, some of these were school trips with my study abroad program, others were with friends and one was even a solo trip, but with that said I still wish I got to spend more weekends in Sevilla.

I realized this during my last couple weeks in sevilla when I was able to do things like go sit in the park with friends, paddle board on the river, go out for tapas on sundays or just stroll through the city center… Those last few weeks are when I felt the most like a local and really appreciated my time in the city. Not that I have any regrets, because the traveling I did was amazing, but if you’re planning on studying abroad anytime soon try to balance out your weekends and spread out your trips as much as you can!

I think the other thing that I’m really glad I did was travel a lot within my host country in Spain. One weekend I did a road trip with my mom through Andalucia and another I simply took a day trip to Cadiz for the Carnival and two of my trips with my program were to cities not far from Sevilla and I think that made it feel less like “big travels” because I was still discovering my host country. I know some students who were traveling every weekend to a new country and I have no idea how they did it because it does get exhausting.

In total I got to visit 4 countries, 5 if you include Spain and I saw: Cordoba, Granada, Madrid, Barcelona, Ronda, Malaga, Cadiz, Mallorca, Morocco, Lisbon, Paris, Bordeaux, Rome and Naples. It sounds like a lot but I did all of it on a budget and had the time of my life getting to see new places. But there’s more to studying abroad than just traveling.

Don’t feel pressured by others to go on trips, or feel like you need to travel everywhere to have a good time! Do what you think is best, and this goes for everything but this is your experience and you create your own moments and memories, so do what makes you happy!

Photos attached are from some of my travels :))