1) Meeting new people! — I love it here at UPS, but at the same time, I am so excited to go on my trip and meet new people and potentially make some new lifelong friends! I’m going on the AIFS Prague program, so I get some field trips too, which I’m really excited for as well!*
2) Seeing new places! — Building off of that, I’ll get to see new places and travel, which is going to be awesome! I’ll still spend most of my time in Prague, I think, but even the possibilty of travelling on my own besides field trips is exciting!
3) Independence! — Since I’m here in Tacoma and my family is an hour away in Seattle, I do have some measure of independence here. But in Prague, I’m going to be completely on my own.** It’s a little scary, but pretty exciting at the same time! I’m looking forward to seeing how I’ll do!
4) Learning about a different culture! — A bunch of my academic classes are about the history of Prague and the Czech Republic, so there’s that; but also being there and learning the language and eating the food will be great too! I know that those are all surface aspects of culture, but hopefully I will get to learn some deeper aspects as well!
5) Snow! — I know that I probably won’t be quite as excited when I actually go and have to go outside in it, but Prague already looks like a fairy tale, tbqh, and it’ll look even more like one covered in snow!
* The trips I signed up for are the eastern Czech Republic, Budapest, and Berlin. However, I’m still planning on also travelling on my own to like, everywhere. It’s probably not realistic, but I’ll see how much I want to travel when I get there.
** Except for the program people and my new friends. But no family!