By Katherine Bakke

Deciding to study abroad easily ranks as one of the best decisions I have made; definitely in the top five, if we’re going to do a “High Fidelity” style ranking. I had never been outside of the States before coming to Dublin, which made me both excited and terrified about traveling, and living for nearly five months, in Europe.

I decided to go abroad with no expectations, to be an amateur cultural anthropologist and immerse myself, without judgment, in whatever was thrown my way. During the summer, I bought one skinny Lonely Planet guidebook to Dublin, read James Joyce’s “Dubliners,” and called it sufficient research.

An 18-hour flight plopped me and my two weeks worth of clothes in Dublin at 9 a.m. on the last Saturday in August. I haven’t looked back since. Now, it’s the first of November, I’m swimming through the fastest semester of my life, enjoying every moment, and lamenting the fact that my time in Dublin will soon be over.

Studying abroad has been a lot about reconnecting with myself.

I was a creative person in high school—I sang in the choir, played piano, sketched, acted—but somewhere in all this Mawrtyrdom of fulfilling pre-medical, divisional, and major requirements, that creative aspect was pushed aside.

Abroad, I have met some incredibly talented people: musicians, thinkers, poets. Getting to know them has made me rediscover my own creative side.

One weekend, I bought a sketchpad and some pencils, and drew a self-portrait for the first time in nearly four years. This past week, I performed in a stage adaptation of “Girl, Interrupted.” I was the only American in the cast, which initially made me highly self-conscious of the way I talked, but by our last performance I had a whole new group of Irish and English friends.

Dublin is a beautiful city and Ireland a magnificent country. I traveled to Galway, a western town in Ireland and a three-hour bus ride from Dublin, one glorious 70-degree weekend. Galway itself was beautiful in its coastal quaintness, but it was my afternoon trip to Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, that blew me away. Biking around the island, with marshy coastline on one side, sheer cliffs on the other, was spectacular. I climbed on Neolithic circle forts, eating lunch at the top and staring at the sea. The water was turquoise and warm, like how I imagine the Caribbean Sea to feel.

I’ve realized here how much I love the coast. Some of my best days have involved being in close proximity to water: my trip to Inishmore, the night I stayed up all night with my friend, Daniel, to watch the first game of the Angels v. Red Sox playoff series and then watched the sunrise on the River Liffey, an afternoon excursion to Howth, a coastal suburb of Dublin, where the gray skies and choppy waters entranced me for hours.

It is remarkable to me how, as college students, we revert back to being small children again. At twenty, we don’t directly say to another person, “Will you be my friend?” as a five-year old would, but we put our trust in one another, despite being strangers, instantly. Take for example my my friend Katie, a Dutch student. We became friends standing in line waiting for Damien Rice tickets. It was straightforward similarities—waiting in line, worrying tickets would sell out, and a love for Damien Rice—that made us exchange numbers and actually meet up for coffee the next day.

But, all that being said, it takes leaving one’s country to make her realize how incredible it is.

It astonishes me how homogenous the population is in Dublin, and conversely, how amazingly diverse the population is in America.

Only in the past ten years has Dublin experienced any sort of diversity, with its recent influx of African and Eastern European immigrants. It has been difficult for the Irish to welcome different peoples into their everyday lives.

I have to admit, as an American, living in a place where nearly everyone looks like the same is a bit jarring from time to time. The mere fact that America can function daily, that we can all be different ethnicities and races but united under the same nationality, is truly remarkable.

It’s funny: James Joyce lived most of his adult life in Paris, but could never stop writing about Dublin. Abroad, I constantly think about what it means to be American; christ, I’ve read more Emerson and Robert Frost here than I ever did on American soil!

Maybe my strange ways of nursing homesickness—with American literary greats and dinners of “American style” ginger ale and frozen pizza—will lend me greater insight into the intricacies of country from which I come.

Or, at the very least, it will make my homecoming like arriving to a new country. I’ll be sure to have my eyes wide open to take it all in.

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