You win this round, London. Exam period at Queen Mary University means separate testing buildings off-campus, alphabetical assigned seating (with desks spaced approximately two feet apart), and supervisors who are guaranteed to pull a hernia if you leave articles of clothing on the back of your chair. You know, because I obviously knitted a cheat sheet into my cardigan sleeve.
So, because I had the joy of basically taking the SATs all over again, there’s been a brutal lack of updates. I’ll probably jot down the details of my various trips in the near future – but for now, as I sit hunched over in the Chicago terminal after a solid eleven hours of flying + being drugged up on a pharmacy’s worth of NyQuil, it’s time to draft a conclusion to my abroad experience/10 month-long blackout (depending on who you ask). It’s been quite the year.
Let’s start with the fun: I’ve scanned through dozens of (okay, one or two) blogs as fellow students cataloged their adventures across the Atlantic. And I couldn’t help but notice a theme to them… they were family-friendly. There was no gossiping about their heiress flatmates who offer dowries in the form of chocolate (see entry #25), tales of drunkenly sassing their study abroad advisers on a booze cruise across the Thames (see entry #4), and – dare I say it – not even warnings of how British men most closely resemble the third stage from covers of Animorph books (see entry #16). I would’ve really appreciated hearing that last bit of knowledge beforehand, FYI.
To my greatest astonishment of all, while reading these blogs I could actually feel myself learning. It was then I made a vow: leave the class in San Diego. Let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with those PG-rated tumblrs that sprinkle in historical fun facts and assure relatives that their Christmas money is going towards museum tickets and other academic endeavors. I’m sure you make your parents proud. And by that, I mean they probably don’t fear for your abduction by foreign slave owners on a regular basis like mine do.
But call me Anne Hathaway because I dreamed a dream. And that dream was to create the epitome of exactly what USD wouldn’t want to advertise in their study abroad brochures – and I’d like to think I achieved just that. Everyone has their talents, I suppose.
However, as much as You Stay Classy, San Diego zeroes in on my blunders across every open bar in the continent, there was much, much more to this extended vacation than getting threatened by Russian bouncers in Piccadilly and yelling at line-cutting couples (who happened to be English celebrities… oops?) in Shoreditch. I learned a lot. I saw a lot. My path intersected with some of the most fascinating people I have ever met in my 20 years. I’ll think back with fondness of the Hungarian and Austrian couple who bought my Munich train ticket and traveled alongside me until I was reunited with my friends; of all the advice I received from our Jamaican flat maid, Rosemary, as I would lazily hang around the kitchen. There were the many families gracious enough to host me – whether it was in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, England, or Italy. My teachers, my relatives, my friends.
And then there were the memories themselves. I’ll never forget gorging on churros con chocolate at 3 am after a night dancing at Joy, falling even more deeply in love with Cristiano Ronaldo at a Real Madrid soccer game, standing on tables and chanting German drinking songs with the locals of Oktoberfest, admiring the works of Michelangelo and da Vinci in Italy’s famous Uffizi museum, skipping through the Tiffany blue waves of the Mediterranean Ocean in Valencia, lighting candles for my loved ones who had passed at Notre Dame, preparing a Thanksgiving feast with my roommates for a dozen Spaniards, chugging butterbeer at the Harry Potter Studio Tour, and trying (and failing) to make the English royal guards crack a smile.
There were the places I got to see: from Delirium, the bar in Brussels with a record 2000+ beers on tap, to CERN, the Swiss physics center where they developed the Internet. The BMW museum, the Louvre, the Tate Modern, Ponte Vecchio, the London Eye, and Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia.
Of course, as much as I’ll hold these vivid and culturally rich experiences close to my heart, it’s ratchetness like the Black Out or Back Out scavenger hunt that make the best stories. During my final week in Madrid, I decided it was only right to create one lasting memory with the rest of my hundred or so USD classmates. The solution was obvious: an alcoholic scavenger hunt.
The only rules were that you must stay with your team at all times, always photobomb every picture you take (for instance, consider the bonus task of “getting a photo of a girl walking around barefoot and/or a shirtless guy”… so if you find a girl without shoes on, get up close and personal with those feet), and to get weird. Needless to say, USD followed through with these instructions impeccably.
(Nailed it.)
The degree of difficulty with the bonus points varied. Some were child’s play, like convincing a stranger to sign your body, while others were a bigger challenge, like documenting someone peeing in public (double points if it’s you). Naturally, petty theft was highly encouraged; bars scattered across Madrid found themselves losing drink coupons, take-out menus, wine corks, and handcuffs (although no team accomplished that last task, much to my great dismay). And while participants got a bit of leeway with those extra points, I did what I could to design straightforward rules. In case you’re also interested in destroying your liver:
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1. Let’s start off easy: get a picture with a Tribunal hipster. Bonus points if they look like they haven’t bathed in a week.
2. Go to O’Donnells Irish pub and buy a round of 1 euro shots for the group.
3. Get 3 drink coasters from any Tribunal bar of your choice (must have bar logo).
4. Take a picture of a couple engaging in excessive PDA. Bonus points if they’re two girls.
5. Go to La Via Lactea aka Milky Way and get a picture of your group posing on the pool table. If you see someone in the bar wearing plaid (which you will), everyone take a drink.
6. Get a picture of someone falling down or passed out in the street. Be sure to lie down next to them.
7. Go to Tupperware and ask the best looking stranger in the bar for their number. If they say no, take three shots of tequila. Minus points if the number turns out to be fake.
8. Take the metro to Sol and try to get a picture with someone selling beer on the street. If they refuse, everyone buy a beer and shotgun it.
9. Get a picture with a cop in uniform. Bonus points if you document someone getting arrested. Even more points if it’s you.
10. Find a woman dressed half her age and ask her for a cigarette. Bonus points if she gives it to you.
11. Head over to Dubliners and have everyone in your group order a pint. Then get a picture with the bartender. Bonus points if you can get a team member working behind the bar.
12. Now who seems most sober on your team? Make them take two shots of vodka next door at O’Connell’s.
13. Serenade anyone in the bar and bonus points if you can get someone to serenade you. Be as creative as possible with the song selection.
14. Climb on the bear or horse statue in Sol and take a picture. And as for posing… use your imagination.
15. Go to O’Neills and convince a stranger to chug a drink against you. If you lose, order an Irish car bomb.
16. At 2:00 AM, go downstairs! Congrats, you’re reached the end of the scavenger hunt.
I’d like to think I’m a good influence.
Fun fact: at approximately 6 am, when I was finally back at my host mom’s house and ready to fall into an alcohol-laden slumber, Kayla walked in and dumped 8 condoms – all different brands – on my bed. “I won the game,” was all she said. I couldn’t disagree.
Alternate title: “The Devil Wears Wedges”
The Office finale recently premiered and a quote from one character, Andy, resonated with a lot of people: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
I feel the same way about many things; that’s how I view my experiences in Youth and Government, my last moments of high school, and countless times here in classy San Diego. But it was never that way studying abroad. I knew – every moment I boarded one of those piece-of-garbage RyanAir airplanes to a new destination and prayed I would live to see tomorrow, every double decker ride through the city feeling like Amanda Bynes in What A Girl Wants – that this was it. It was crystal clear to me that these would be the days I would smile back on and think, “Life may never be perfect, but I sure did get pretty damn close.”
To my parents, Marti and Tim: you’ve stuck with me since that time when, at nine-years-old, I asked what a blowjob was in the middle of our huge family Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not so sure you were grateful for my inquisitive nature that year. But despite my shortcomings, you both are never lacking in unconditional love, support, and hilarious texts for me to quote in my blog. When it comes to family, I sure did get lucky.
To Julie, just because you do things like attend “patriotism” parties and wear a red, white, and blue shirt with sponges attached to it. Self-absorbed American… classic. (Also, you’re my best friend and the star of way too many of these blog entries.)
To Kayla, the other star of this blog. Thanks for still talking to me even after I posted all of your hungover snapchats. And to Camilla for screenshotting each and every one of them.
(Also, to my douchebag friends who incessantly pointed out my blog’s random floating balloon because I screwed up the website coding. You all suck.)
And most of all, to those of you unsure if you want to study abroad. I can’t say if my misadventures stumbling from one country to the next convinced you to send that study abroad form to the international office – in fact, it probably persuaded you to do the opposite.
But take it from the girl who hasn’t quite abandoned her dream to become first president (again, get over it, Washington): being away from home may not be easy. It may even be downright scary at times. Exhibit A: when I woke up in the middle of the night at my Amsterdam hostel and found my Spanish male roommates watching me sleep. (But that’s a story for another time… probably in therapy.) However, all that I’ve learned, the friends I’ve met, and the places I’ve seen have made it worth it a million times over. I wouldn’t change a thing.
And remember, it’s like they always say: if Britney Spears can make it through the year 2007, you can do anything.
The Art of Being Basic 
