Two words that I thought I knew and understood until I came here. After coming to Italy, I have a new perspective on what these words truly mean. I feel like oftentimes, we take things for granted without even realizing that they are a privilege to have.

Over the past few weeks, we have learned about the values that we hold close to us as individuals. Some of the values that I wrote down were religion, family, friends, quality time, and learning/knowledge. One that I didn’t write down but learned about was time.

This past week I had a conversation via text with one of my friends who took a week-long trip to Peru for missions. They would text me about every other day, and today, it just hit how short their time was down there. It was then that I realized the majority of trips in my life usually are about a week long. 

Studying abroad has definitely opened my eyes to a new world and culture around me. Every day I am learning new things. I think that up until now, I took for granted the amount of time that I get to spend here going to school. I have always known that not everyone gets to study abroad, much less travel abroad. But yet, I still never had just as much of an appreciation for it as I do now.

It’s not every day that you just get to decide, “Oh, I want to travel to another country on the weekends,” or “Let’s go to Rome after class.”

• Erica Fogle

This is a picture of Sarabeth Elkins, Abby Kramer, Emma Childs, Caroline Ward, Hailey Benting, Sydney Jaffe, Emma Rutledge, Paris Maness, and me on our second night in Ariccia at the beginning of our study abroad program.