Authored by Lindsey Towle

Travel can be stressful. Foreign languages can be stressful. Bus schedules can be stressful. New places can be stressful. This semester I’ve realized that traveling isn’t always the sunshine and rainbows that we see on social media or that people like to highlight. Sometimes it takes a couple mental breakdowns in a bathroom stall in an airport to get to that point. If you can’t tell, I speak from experience.

Knowing myself, I should have anticipated breaking my phone. When it happened, I really regretted bringing my old phone or an iPod touch so that I wouldn’t be without a device for a long period of time. Electronics are very expensive to buy in Uruguay and it is close to impossible to get electronics shipped here from the States. It would have been much easier if I had brought one just in case.

Coming to Uruguay, the only sort of background I had in Spanish was a few short Duolingo sessions on the plane ride there. I figured it would be a “learn as you go” type of experience. Needless to say, my first day in Uruguay was somewhat of a reality shock for me, when I attempted to greet my non-English speaking host family and could only smile and nod.

When I told my study abroad advisor I wanted to go to Uruguay for my semester abroad, she told me, “I hope you’re prepared to eat a lot of beef.” As a vegetarian, this probably should have been a red flag.