Category Stories: Family Matters
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A Homesick Student’s Guide to Spending the Holiday Season Abroad
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For me, November is always a hard month. By November, I’ve passed out of midterm hell and I wade through the month as a sort of holiday purgatory; it’s when I feel the most homesick. Normally, I don’t go home for Thanksgiving—the break is too short, the plane tickets too expensive—but as the air gets chillier and I…
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My Journey Home: The Struggles of a Transatlantic Adoptee – A Digital Story
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This visit home, to both China and Hunan, enlightened me to who I really am and gave me appreciation for what I’m blessed with. Having been adopted from China by American parents, Caitlin always felt out of place in her family and community. So when she decided to study abroad in Shanghai, she knew she…
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On Transitioning From Home to Abroad: 4 Must-Read Tips
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As I prepared for my three months in London at the end of this past summer, panic rushed through me. Scrolling through Facebook, tapping through Snapchat, and seeing all of my friends enjoying the beginning of junior year at my home university gave me major FOMO (fear of missing out). I began to question why I…
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How 3 Students Got Their Parents on Board for Study Abroad
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When it comes to studying abroad, we all have our own challenges to overcome—some we share, some we differ on. But what is a common thread among all of us is that it took the support of our families to get here.While a lot of my peers on this program, myself included, got the support and…
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4 Differences I Noticed on My Homestay
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Spending only a weekend at my Scottish homestay was not nearly enough time.The two days we spent with our host family in Cumbria were jam packed with all the touristy things—day tripping around the beautiful Lake District, climbing hills (by car, thank goodness) to see the rolling green spread out before us, visiting the Beatrix Potter attractions…
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My Parents’ 4 Fears About Studying Down Under
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“You want to study abroad? In Australia? But that’s so far away!”That was the reaction I received (followed by an awkward silence) when I first told my parents that I wanted to study abroad in Melbourne, Australia. At first, this response perplexed me. I couldn’t fathom why they weren’t immediately as elated as I was over the thought of me attending a school halfway around the…
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Skydiving In Scotland And Why My Parents Couldn’t Say No
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In preparation for writing this post, I read back through the journal that I kept while abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland. I tried to write an entry every day, and was successful in that endeavor most of the time. It was important to me that I chronicle my time abroad. I had been warned that the…
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Immigrant Abroad: A Chinese-American in London
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Did you know that by 2055, the largest immigrant group in the United States will be from Asia and the Middle East, and will comprise of about 15% of the US population (Source)? My own family immigrated to Atlanta, Georgia from China when I was just five years old. Growing up, I transitioned between various…
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Lack of Black
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I staggered in bursts When I first learned to drive My step-father brought me to a bank parking lot and told me to weave through a bright orange spine set deep in the asphalt black and unforgiving as coal When I first drove the roads Of the long white cloud I had to learn again-…
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You Are Infinite
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Everyone has a unique study abroad experience. We experience different cultures, different foods, and different languages. We meet different people and travel to different places. We bring with us different baggage, both physical and mental. Just as no two people are alike, no two study abroad experiences are identical. But there are common themes. Though…
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