Story Location: Chile
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Living With a Host Family | Love, Language, and Learning
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“Cabra chica, a comer!” My host mom endearingly called to me from the kitchen when it was meal time. I helped set up and the two of us, along with my host sister and dad, sat down for an evening meal called “once”. This is a particularly Chilean meal that resembles an extravagant tea time more…
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A Feminist in Chile
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Where to go? Being a woman, much of life is different for me and studying abroad is not an exception. From contemplating where to go, to actually studying there, there are extra considerations. As a strong feminist who is extremely critical of the United States’ gender issues I was intimidated about what study abroad would…
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Low Income Students Can Study Abroad Too
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When I was asked by my friends, family, and teachers if I wanted to study abroad, it was a no brainer. Of course I wanted to go away on a new adventure. But when it finally came down to actually going through the process and confirming my decision, reality struck. How was I going to…
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4 Reasons to Volunteer During Your Semester Abroad
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There were many incredible things about my time in Chile, including traveling, my host family, and improving my Spanish, to name a few. However, what might have been the highlight of my semester was the time I spent volunteering. During my semester, I volunteered every Monday for about six hours at an incredible organization called…
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Five Key Tips for Living Abroad with a Dietary Restriction
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As a vegetarian, traveling has always held extra challenges for me. Would I be able to find enough food? What should I bring? Would I bother the people around me? On family vacations and class trips, I was always sure to prepare for the day or week ahead, doing my best to make sure I didn’t…
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How My Semester in Chile Made Me a Better Historian
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Before I arrived in Valparaíso, Chile, I had never thought about how history is taught. I never considered how many sides there were to an event, how many opinions there could be about a figure, who and what affected my own learning and finally, how alive so much of history still is. I am a…
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Mad to Live: Engaging in Action Sports and Their Respective Communities
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I was extremely fortunate to spend much of my time in South America pursuing my passions and dreams of backpacking, skiing, surfing, and mountaineering. To supplement my memory of the experience I wrote journal entries, landscape descriptions, and poems. Here is a journal entry from 25thof July, 2017 Miercoles, Día 16 con los Avydonkeys, Day 8…
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Mi Familia Chilena: How I Found Home After Being Uprooted Abroad
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About a month and a half into my semester abroad, I had to switch host families for reasons beyond my control. While this experience was disorienting and stressful, in the end it turned out about as well as it could have, and it revealed a lot to me about the support network that IFSA-Butler cultivates…
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Let’s Get Real About Study Abroad: It’s Hard, and that’s Exactly Why You Should Do It
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When people ask me how my semester abroad was, they are sometimes shocked that I don’t immediately respond with, “Amazing!” or, “Incredible!” or, “The best five months of my life!” Most of them are family members or friends who haven’t studied abroad before, so they have the same idealistic image of study abroad that I…
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Escape the Familiar
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You arrive in a foreign country. Your program directors teach you that you have to tip the baggers at the grocery store, the Spanish you have spent twelve years learning in preparation for this trip shares little resemblance to what you will hear on the street if your ears are even fast enough to isolate…
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