As my studies are coming to an end and all my friends prepare to pack up and leave Lyon, I sit in my room and reflect upon what this experience has brought to me. I had never even been on a family vacation before, and now I’ve traveled alone in multiple countries. It’s allowed me to begin trusting my own judgement. I have begun to second-guess myself less and less: Booking plane tickets without excessively checking if I have something super important that day that I completely forgot about (I never do), feeling assured in my choice in accommodation and holding the knowledge that I can see the world on my own terms at my own pace. It’s a liberating thing to know that you can find your way around any environment no matter what life hurls at you. If you want to see a museum, monument or landscape, then it’s just a FlixBus or EasyJet ride away. Likewise, home — Lyon and Missouri — always awaits me.

It was a weird feeling, when I returned from Amsterdam. It was my first solo trip. I had been surrounded by signs, posters, advertisements and menus, all in Dutch. It was alienating — the first time I’d been in a country where I did not understand a word of the language. I felt like I was missing something crucial about the culture and lacking in my understanding of daily life at all times. On my way home, my transfer first stopped in Paris. I had felt this sort of relief sink into every corner of being — a sense I was in a familiar space with a familiar language, a sense that brought with it a gentle ease. In that instant, French became to me a language I could understand. A language that, even if awkwardly and stuttering, I could articulate myself in. I can order my favorite dish at restaurants, ask where the nearest metro is and express my opinion in French. I had been so focused on all that I couldn’t do that I never realized how much I could do. Leaving Paris, I was lulled asleep by the whirr of the engine, head resting on my North Face backpack. When I awoke, I looked out of the window. I recognized the skyline dappled with rouge toits and beige walls, the gentle curvature of the hills and limestone houses embedded into a rocky cliff face. I didn’t need to check my location. I knew immediately I was 20 minutes from Perrache, and 40 from home.

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: University Jean Moulin-Lyon III