For my first post as Students Studying Abroad Editor, I want to tell you more about myself and what you can expect from my future posts. I’m a junior at Temple University in Philadelphia. My major is Strategic and Organizational Communication, with a concentration in Public Relations. I currently intern at the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau in the travel and communications department. This summer, I will be attending Temple University Rome for six weeks from mid-May to early July. I CAN’T WAIT! I really wish that I could study for a whole semester but it’s a little too expensive, especially right now. I also want to graduate in four years and leaving for an entire semester will push me back.

I’ve been abroad twice before. When I was six years old I went to England, Belgium, The Netherlands and France with my family and our church. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember going to the Anne Frank house, seeing beautiful tulips in Amsterdam and sitting in a huge wooden shoe! (The pictures help, too!) I still have my wooden clogs from Holland, but they definitely don’t fit anymore! One thing I remember vividly – I had strep throat for a large part of the trip. I was miserable! But I still loved being in Europe! Here’s the best part: I was the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris with my parents and I was starting to feel pretty crappy. I had to sprint out of the Cathedral and ended up vomiting in the street right outside! To make things even better, a family friend of ours got everything on video! Having no clue it was me, he saw a little girl run out of Notre Dame and followed to see what was going on and then realized it was me! I was miserable then, but seeing it a week later when we were back home was hilarious!

I also had the opportunity to take a very similar trip the summer I graduated from high school with a group from my school. We went to England, Belgium and France. I had a blast! Loved every second of it! Bruges was amazing with all of its canals. We took a boat trip through the city and it was amazing! No strep throat this time, luckily!

Preparing for Temple University Rome is very different from preparing for a two-week vacation. I will be living there for six weeks! Two of my friends (Jess and Melissa) are also coming on this trip. We will be rooming together in an apartment that Temple provides for its students. We talk about the trip every single day and have a countdown – just under two months left! We’ve paid our deposit, requested classes, filled out our housing form and bought our plane tickets, but there’s still so much more to do! After our program at Temple ends on July 4, we are flying to Athens and spending about a week and a half in Greece and the Greek Islands! This means that we have to figure out where we will be going in Greece (thank goodness for guidebooks!) and find safe AND cheap places to stay! It sounds so silly, but we’re pretty much on our own for this trip. I know that we’re 20 and 21 years old, but it’s so stressful trying to plan a European vacation all by ourselves! Yikes!

Rome. Photo Wikimedia Commons: Radomil

Here are some of the things we’ve learned so far:

*You can’t predict when airline prices are going to change. They’re up one day and down the next, but we think we’ve found some good deals. My round-trip ticket from Philadelphia to Rome and from Athens back to Philadelphia was about $900.  Compared to what we’ve seen on other sites (we used StudentUniverse.com), we think we got a good deal.

*People bathe in Europe. We started to panic for a second about how much shampoo/conditioner, body wash, hair products, etc. we had to pack, and then realized how much that would make our luggage weigh. Then it hit us – they shower in Italy too! Luckily all we have to do is pack enough toiletries to last us a few days until we find a market to buy all of our beauty essentials!

*We still have to take classes in Rome. We knew this all along, but we keep forgetting! All we talk about is how much fun we’re going to have and what parts of Italy we need to visit and then what other cities we’re going to visit (Paris, Barcelona, Berlin). But then we remember that we’re taking seven credits and attending classes during the week. Whoops!

*We can’t rely on English. Even though most big cities speak English, or at least try to tolerate ignorant American tourists, we can’t get away with it all of the time. Luckily for us, Jess has been taking Italian classes at Temple. Even looking at the public transportation websites for Italy is confusing! Trying to figure out a completely different transportation system in a foreign country is going to be interesting. Hopefully there will be pictures to help guide us along the way when we have trouble translating.

We still have so much to do before we leave, so stay tuned for more of our experiences getting ready to study abroad!

#StudyAbroadBecause

RFies is the Students Studying Abroad Editor for Wandering Educators.

This is part of a series on international education, as part of our commitment to #GenerationStudyAbroad and our commitment to the White House Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship. You'll find many more inspiring stories here on Wandering Educators!