Category Stories: Family Matters
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“Mi mamá chilena:” Living with a Host Family While Abroad
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Cooking with mi mamá chilena During Fall 2019, I traveled to Santiago, Chile – a city of 7-million people in a part of the world that spoke a language I wasn’t used to speaking. As a lifelong small-town dweller who had never practiced Spanish in a conversational setting, I was nervous about how I could…
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Mañanas Con Gumer
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Living in Lima, Peru for the fall of 2019, I stayed with a host family – la familia Saco-Vertiz – in the district of Miraflores. Living in the apartment were Maritza (my madre anfitriona), her brother Miguel, her adult son Alejandro, and Gumer, their cocinera, who felt much more like another member of the family. Huevos Revueltos In the…
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Thriving Abroad Despite Adversity at Home
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I’m used to moving around. I grew up in London and then left for college in California when I was 18, at which point my parents moved to the east coast of the US. It was a difficult transition and the situation at home (wherever that was) wasn’t always easy, but I adapted and grew…
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So You’ve Chosen to Study in England: A Guide to Picking a Uni
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3 Pros to Ditching The “Big City” Life: UK Edition Note to the reader: Picking a studying abroad program is all about personal preference. Every country and city has something unique to offer every individual. I spent a year and a half searching the internet and various leaflets until I decided on IFSA and then Leeds.…
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Learning to Live Independently from Home
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Freshman Year When I made the decision to study abroad I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy transition. I am a homebody who has never lived more than a few hours away from my family. My first few weeks at college back home were spent calling home basically every free minute I had.…
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Navigating Relationships Abroad
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Navigating Relationships Abroad: Three Kinds of People You’ll Miss When you leave the country for three months, you take your life into account. Affairs must be put in order: bags packed, calls made, storage containers rented and filled. The practical takes precedence and you become objective in your choices, taking only what you need. Then…
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Home Base: Host Families in Santiago
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The emotions that accompany the idea of living with a family that’s not your own during your time abroad fall in the gray area between exhilarating and absolutely terrifying. You’ll find yourself experiencing the whole spectrum of these emotions; both before your time abroad and during it. But students in Santiago have navigated this challenge,…
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How To Overcome First Generation Hurdles While Studying Abroad
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Let me start by saying that I am a first-generation college student who grew up in poverty. I have also struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life. At one point, I started failing classes and had to drop out of college for a year and a half. Studying abroad has always been…
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Exploring My Mexican Identity in México: Part II
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“Cuando la ire a ver?” “When will I see her again?” my grandmother says with such despair as tears gather in her eyes. She’s holding my phone, looking at a photo of my mom. They haven’t seen each other, hugged each other, or held each other in 20 years. “No, creo que ya no la…
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My Homestay Experience Abroad
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Once I had become acquainted with my new Glasgow surroundings after a week, I traveled to Shap in northern England through my IFSA program to stay with a local family in what was called a homestay. Many of my friends in other countries live permanently with a local family for their semesters abroad and raved…
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