On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the fall of 2025, I would walk just under two kilometers from my flat to the class of the morning: community development, which I hoped would apply to my International Development Studies minor. On my walk to class, I was usually accompanied by rain as it was quite common weather for Cork, Ireland. Community development was a 3rd year module and was filled with students from different backgrounds that gave it a feeling of being an Irish version of the “Breakfast Club”. Doing my best to understand the thick Cork accent of my professor, Pat, I attempted to diligently write notes that maybe I could apply to a future Peace Corps Service—if I could first prove to myself that I can live abroad for a year and could be away from my family, managing a life with more of my own organizing and management. I had bought a pack of pens from “Centra”, the Irish version of 7-Eleven. Halfway through writing my notes—with my Centra pens—the professor paused and called out to me and one other American student “Are ye Americans coming?” to which I immediately asked, “To where?” looking down at my computer screen that showed the class was only half-way over. “Do ye smoke?” to which I proudly answered, “No.” Pat, who wore his hair back in a thin wispy pony tail said, “It’s never too late to start!” I watched as the students all filed down the stairs or rummaged through their bags for packages of nicotine and their papers and filters. I was so curious to witness a professor having a cigarette with his students; it’s not something that I thought I’d ever see and if I did I would have to report it, at least in America, right? Every class after, these smoke breaks would occur and I quickly realized that although Ireland boasts a lot more similarities to the USA than Beijing or Dar es Salaam, both places I had traveled and loved, things in Cork were different.

From prior travels, I had understood that setting expectations for new traveling experiences was foolish, so the only thing I brought through the customs line was my bags, passport, and excitement. I was excited to get into the overpriced airport taxi, I was excited to drive past billboards, or see the names of Irish supermarkets, I was excited to pay for my groceries in euros or make an international call to my parents from my flat which I would share with 3 other girls: one Irish, one Bangladeshi, and one Japanese. The experiences I had always carried out in my regular life now had so much new pretext to them—I couldn’t wait to figure it all out. One of the areas that I was most fascinated by was European perspectives on politics, development, or leadership. This was a whole new side to the topics that I had exclusively been learning in the USA. 

From the time I first stepped out of Cork International Airport to the last time I went into it with no plan to return—and the many times in between—I had realized that I was already ready to accept new perspectives, ways of living, and new experiences. But what I wasn’t quite anticipating was the personal changes that would now be the starting words of the compliments I would receive as I returned back to the United States. Those same kind words would be something that I would begin realizing had actually changed the way that I would operate in the world. I began to notice that the way I articulated my thoughts has changed, judgements and my interpretation of other people’s actions was different, a new confidence and self-certainty had set in at some point between international weekend trips or conversations with taxis drivers. I realized that conversations accompanied by language barriers was not a reason to not try but an offer to climb up over the barrier and ditch American idioms and over explaining. Our shared humanity was and has never been the acceptance of foreign ideals but in the effort to create some sort of workable dialogue between people. Whether or not I was lucky enough to be one of the people in these conversations has always been a goal of mine, and something that I purposefully saturated my days with while I was abroad. This had allowed me to develop a confidence in myself that had been absent up until this point in my life. I felt confident enough to make the first point of contact, or speak in a foreign language, or ask the first question. Having had the opportunity to develop facets of my leadership and personhood was all but surreal when reflecting back on it, 4,080 miles away.

Sláinte!

Julia