Culture Shock for all: studying and traveling abroad on the cheap.

Studying, living, and volunteering abroad gives you a new perspective on life. Shockingly, only 42% of Americans have a passport. This statistic definitely makes sense, given our political climate, and how divided our country is. The superpower has crumbled, and the world is watching, awestruck.

Let's bust the myth that education & travel is expensive. Did you know that you can travel from SFO to Spain for $230, that's less than a Costco or Amazon Fresh run for average American families. You can fly from Spain to France for $30, that's the cost of a decent bottle of wine, if that's your thing. Supposedly, you can get a Master's in Europe for less than $300 a year.

True stories:

Palenque, México:

My freshman year in college I had the first taste of travel, and I never looked back. I did an Alternative Spring Break with a group of 10 college kids and a priest at a daycare & orphanage in Mexico. I vowed to come back, and my dream back then was to open my own school. The next chance I had to travel was my sophomore year, when my professor offered an opportunity for a student to intern at a family run hotel, a short walk from the Mayan ruins.

I used to be fearless back then. So at 19, I got on a plane, flew to Mexico and took a bus for 24 hours, only to be picked up by two strangers (owners of the hotel) and spent the next 6 weeks speaking only Spanish while serving in the restaurant, prepping food in the kitchen, changing beds, and working the front desk. I volunteered and immersed myself in the culture in exchange for some credit hours and the crappiest room in the hotel. The experience was unforgettable, even the flying cockroaches, and all.

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Salamanca, Spain:

Just months after getting back from Mexico, I got on a plane and flew by myself, with my now "advanced" Spanish-speaking skills, to spent a year studying abroad at the University of Salamanca. I cried for two weeks, every single day. I just turned 20 and I was far away from everyone and everything I knew. I didn't know anyone in Spain, besides my eccentric host family whose family dynamic wasn't suitable to host students. I knew I would be better off by myself, so a few weeks into my host family arrangement, I announced to them that I made a decision to move out, and live by myself. This was 2002, back when text messaging was already hip in Spain, but Internet cafes were still a thing, since few people had internet at home. I bought the local newspaper, browsed the ads while sipping my café con leche, made a couple phone calls in my broken Spanish, and a couple hours later I was the brand new, proud renter of a one bedroom cockroach-infested apartment. It was just above the grocery store, and a short stroll from the University. The rent was much cheaper than living with the family. $200- something/month is pretty awesome, especially since I did end up getting a roommate a few weeks later.

Ironically, I saved a lot of money studying abroad that year. My entire tuition, for the year was just a little over $1,000. The history, geography, grammar, and art classes, that were completely in Spanish, and at the University level gave me many more credit hours than I would've ever gotten at my home university. It was a win-win.

And even though the year in Spain started out bumpy, I learned to adapt. I made amazing friends, traveled all over Spain, had many failed attempts at cooking and shrunk many sweaters I had to donate later. I came back richer and with a suitcase full of books that I remember reading while listening to the quiet streets of Salamanca, in the midst of a siesta.

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Córdoba, Argentina:

The year after coming back from Spain, I was finishing up my junior year and working, just so I could pay for my ticket to Argentina that summer. I didn't come home smelling like fries every day to spend my money frivolously. I was off to see the world! In exchange for a very discounted hostel room, I volunteered at Caritas, a Catholic organization that promotes justice and one of its causes is ending poverty. I spent the mornings volunteering with hilarious church grannies, where they gossiped about their telenovelas and told stories. People would drop off their unwanted clothes, and it was my job to go through the items and separate them into bags that families could pick up later. In the afternoon, I volunteered at an English institute, teaching 8th graders English. In my free time, I traveled to Buenos Aires and Iguazú Falls, while sipping on Yerba Mate and agreeing to try the country's famous steaks, which were legendary.

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New experiences and adventures make you grow as person. You deepen your self-awareness, compassion, and appreciation for the world. How can one feel safe and secure in an environment when they are afraid to eat a meal in a crowded restaurant by themselves or sit alone at the movies? How can one grow if they never see and hear the other side? After all, "We get together on the basis of our similarities; we grow on the basis of our differences."