When we arrive home one day and we tell our family “Mom, Dad: I’m going abroad,” butterflies with a pinch of unease begin to travel through all the nerves of our body. We enter into a state of mixed feelings and nothing we can do will change the fact that we are leaving soon: leaving our comfort zone.
The day of preparations comes all of a sudden and you start with your greatest work of art: the best organized square Tetris ever! With one ultimate goal – to not exceed the kg set by the airline. And suddely you realize you’ve arrived, you’ve settled in, you’ve found your soul mate in college, work or flat, and you’re learning the best of this newfound culture: the potato omelette (with onion!) and (most importantly) siesta.
The weeks and months pass, and every day you are happier to have spent that fatiguing period of filling out the paperwork with your international relations coordinator to be able to leave. You grow as a professional with an international vision in your line of work and, above all, as a person: you meet people from countries that you probably did not even know how to pronounce; you learn to find the lowest-cost offers to travel throughout Europe; you speak poorly, at least, several keywords in the languages of neighbouring countries; your workmates/classmates invite you to play bowling or billiard and you discover that you are much better than you thought; you taste food that you did not know ever existed; you become a citizen of this place called World…
They say that when you dream in a language that is not your mother tongue, it is because you are really learning it. Well, just at that moment you wake up and you see yourself sitting on a plane, with watery eyes, a suitcase full of experiences and a flag signed by the waiter of the best kebab in the city.
The majority of the people that work at Erasplus + have partaken in an exchange, either with the Erasmus scholarship or to work outside of our countries, and that makes us agree that it has been, is and always will be the best decision of our lives!
