The metro is not my friend. The world of public transportation has proven to be a mystery to me. I have gotten on so many wrong trains all the way to the end of the line that at this point, I think I have passed through every station in Brussels, Belgium. The glamorous world of study abroad is not always glamorous. Sometimes it is missed metros and maddening miscommunications. It is rolling your ankle on cobblestone streets and becoming aggressively familiar with the layout of a Belgian ER.

But, before I left for this program, my dad told me a story that I have carried with me through it all. During his and my mom’s honeymoon in Paris, they got lost on their way to a tour. Being young and in love (and more than a little high-strung), they raced through the streets to ensure that they saw exactly what the brochures said they were supposed to. They made the tour, but in those 20 minutes of sprinting, they missed so much of the city.

Coffee shops and flower carts and beautiful sights passed them by in a blur. My dad’s only advice to me coming on this program was to get lost and stay lost. There is so much you miss when you are just pushing to get from one point to the next as quickly as possible. This idea has become about more than navigation; it is a life motto. It has applied to my work, my schooling, my restaurant choices and more. It is the most beautiful souvenir.

I have learned to laugh at my mistakes and get unnervingly comfortable with awkward silences. I have become extremely familiar with the fact that I don’t know anything at all, and then I have given myself the space to learn as much as I can. Appreciate the uneven sidewalks, torrential rain, and the thick, palpable air you can only get underground.

You can’t make any experience picture perfect, but you can appreciate all of the quirks that a postcard could never capture. I will still be doing my best to get on the correct trains, but I am doing a better job of taking a moment to appreciate everything I learned at the “wrong stop.”

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: Journalism: Brussels Internship