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Overseas Study Brings Unexpected Rewards
Overseas Study Brings Unexpected Rewards
by
Jessi Burg
If
you were to ask me a year ago what I would be doing in three years, I
would have laughed at you. My persistent answer to that question was “I’m
20 years old, with two years left to graduation. I can do anything, so
why on earth would I have any idea what I’m doing?” For someone
who changes career plans more often than the oil in my car, graduation
is scary. Less scary however, is traveling and studying abroad, and so
last August, I packed my bags and split for Europe, ostensibly to study.
In reality, I found myself, along with a semblance of direction.
As a student, there are a million different
ways to go abroad. One can study, volunteer or just travel. I studied
in Rouen, France, but I also traveled to 19 cities in 10 countries over
the last 8 months. This has given me an entirely different perspective
on both the world and my place in it. Traveling cheaply is not nearly
as hard as one would think. Hostelworld.com
provides a great resource for places to stay, and studentuniverse.com
offers student airfares to and from anywhere in the world. I discovered
the Eurail pass, which allowed me to travel all over Europe via train
for not a lot of money; and budget airlines, which sometimes provided
penny airplane tickets. In short, as a student, everything was cheap and
easy.
Getting somewhere and finding a place to
stay and eat were always the easiest parts. It’s much harder to
go to a new place, be it for 6 hours or 6 months, and know how much of
yourself to reveal. I lived with a host family for 9 months and I never
once came out to them. Conversely, there have been people I met in a hostel
for three hours who knew I was bisexual. It’s all about your personal
comfort levels and how you feel. Sometimes, I knew intuitively that my
sexuality would be a nonissue; other times, it was a carefully guarded
secret.
In addition to the problem of meeting people
and making friends, it was also difficult to know where to go in any given
city. Luckily, lots of guidebooks have gay sections, as do many city guides.
I bought a museum pass in Oslo, Norway, and the guide to the museums included
a list of bars catering to various segments of the population, from Jewish
to gay. In Prague, I saw signs reading “it’s legal to be gay,”
and of the many things I expected to find in Prague, this was not one
of them. As I later found out, the Czech Republic had in fact legalized
gay marriage three days before my arrival in Prague, becoming the first
formerly communist country to do so.
There were no riots in the street, no beatings,
virtually no reaction at all as far as I saw. I did see several demonstrations
against George W. Bush, but no evidence of anti-gay sentiments.
Demonstrations are not uncommon in the states,
and the mentality of the people toward the demonstrations is completely
different. While in France, strikes against an employment law caused my
university to shut down for nearly two months. I saw demonstrations in
London, Rome, Prague, Ulm (Germany) and all over France.
These demonstrations were an accepted part
of culture, to the extent that a French friend once made the comment that
one isn’t truly French if one hasn’t protested something.
Frequently, these demonstrations were anti-American in nature, yet the
people protesting were not anti-American. I had many conversations about
the role of the American government on the world stage, yet not once was
I a victim of any sort of anti-American act. If there was one thing I
noticed in Europe, it was the ability of the people to separate the people
from the actions of the government.
I met many people who were absolutely furious
about various actions of the current administration, yet these people
were always willing to sit down, hold a conversation, and listen to my
ideas. This may not have worked as well had I been more conservative,
as being a conservative American in Europe is much like being gay: only
divulge that information when you feel it’s OK to do so.
Spending a year in Europe taught me many
things, about my place in the world and about how the world views me as
a woman, as an American and as a person. I discovered how truly independent
I am and that I really can do anything. This past year, I made friends
from all over the world, created a family in a place where I didn’t
speak the language, and left knowing that I will return.
Jessi Burg is currently a junior at St. Lawrence University who will
be living in Burlington for the summer, learning whatever she can pick
up about life and the magazine business. Her interests including traveling,
writing, photography, and finding new interests.