I had been looking forward to study abroad since my dad told me such a thing existed back when I was in middle school. I had known since entering college that I wanted to go to New Zealand. After all that time, it still didn’t hit me until a week before I left: I was going literally halfway across the world for five months, and I knew nobody. Leaving all of my friends and family behind was upsetting and sometimes tearful, especially with the 18-20 hours of planes to dwell on it. However, once I arrived and made a few friends, I never looked back.
My life at Victoria University of Wellington, in the capital city of New Zealand, was almost completely opposite of my life at UMBC. I was living in a house with ten other international girls from all over the U.S., Taiwan, Vietnam, and Germany instead of my two-bedroom apartment with one roommate from high school. I was living a ten-minute walk away from a major metropolitan city while I had always shunned city living back in Maryland. I was without a car, or any friends with a car, and had to rely on public transportation including buses, cable cars, taxis, planes, and ferries to get me from place to place. However, it was a wonderful experience and I miss it every day.
I spent as much time traveling as possible. New Zealand, in my opinion, is the most beautiful place in the world. Every way you turn, you’re greeted with a fantastic landscape. In addition, New Zealand is a country that tries to preserve its landscapes and its greenery; there are over 200 species of ferns within the country, approximately 100 of which are only found in New Zealand. I only had to walk a few feet down the road where I lived to get a view down the coastline, and a five-minute walk placed me in the Botanic Gardens where I would walk around for hours on a clear afternoon. The variety of scenery is astounding for a country smaller than California; I traveled from beaches to glaciers to deserts to fishing towns to large cities and much more.
School at Victoria University was also a new experience. Although our degree in HAPP focuses on the U.S. healthcare system, I was able to study the New Zealand healthcare system through a sociology class on health and illness. It was humbling to be so uninformed of their system, but I was able to learn quickly and also compare its system to the U.S. system through one of my research papers. It gave me a completely different experience about physicians, health insurance, and health-related facilities; it was helpful to see a different system, especially when the U.S. is going through major healthcare changes today. Understanding the pros and cons of another country’s healthcare system could be a marketable talent in the upcoming years of possible healthcare upheaval.
Overall, my experience in New Zealand was much more than I could ever have hoped for or imagined. If you have a chance to study abroad, I would take it in a heartbeat—you will grow, learn and experience so much in a few short months.
I hope this counts as a reflection of sorts, although it is brief. In all, I could never get everything I feel about my experience in NZ down on paper...but it's something that will stay with me forever.
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