In T-minus seven hours I will finally be flying off to London for the very first time! This week has been so crazy with finals, packing and moving. Today was actually a crazy day where I had to move everything out of my apartment by 9am, but will be flying out of the country at 10pm. I’m not even jet lagged yet, but I’m already so tired and sleepy! I feel such a big mix of emotions. The homesickness is already starting to hit me, and I feel scared and sad that I’m leaving my safe home in Philly. Throughout the week I’ve been having second guesses, like “Maybe I should’ve just played it safe and just have another regular summer term at Drexel.” I think the reason why I’m so nervous is because growing up, traveling abroad was never a big thing in my family. We never had the time and money to afford visiting foreign countries, so we would usually stick to home state road trips. The furthest places we’ve gone were Canada, Mexico and our home country of Vietnam. I’ve never traveled anywhere without my family before, so having this independence scares me. However, I keep reminding myself that I’ll be taking on this journey with a bunch of other girls in my major, so if we get lost, we’ll get lost together.
The study abroad opportunity was also one of the main reasons why I applied to Drexel in the first place. I read past Design and Merchandising blog posts, and saw how so many of them had the chance to go to London. I’ve been waiting to be a part of this for so long, and London is actually my favorite fashion capital of them all. This entire term I’ve been nothing but excited, and have been longing for my stressful classes to be over so that I could finally treat myself to a more relaxing term abroad. It wasn’t until this week that I got cold feet, and I know I’ll be extremely sad leaving everything and everyone behind for a long three months. However, one of my main life goals is to continue to go out of my comfort zone and try new things. This is a part of growing up, and I can’t wait to come back home and look back on this journey to see how independent and strong I’ve become.
