Study Abroad & Travel

The first chance I got to study abroad was in June of 2025. We spent 10 days in Ireland going between Donegal, Derry, Sligo, and Dublin. I always thought people were overdramatic when they said that going abroad changed them, but suddenly I understand. Getting to walk amongst these buildings, so many of which are so much older than my own country, was such an experience. 

We learned of the statistic that there are more people with Irish ancestry around the world than there are in Ireland since the famine happened. I myself am one of those people with Irish ancestry, and knowing so many of them were from the general Dublin area, I could just walk those streets and wonder to myself. Did my however many great-grandparents walk in the exact place I'm walking? Did they see that tree too? That building? What was it then? A different business? A house? It is in the same way I walk the streets of Tucson, AZ, knowing my dad grew up here. Knowing my grandfather I never met lived here. And again I ask myself, did he walk where I am walking? You never feel more connected to yourself and your ancestors than when you have those moments. They were real. They were here. They laughed and talked and cried. They didn't know their descendant, whether hundreds of years later or just 80 years later, would walk the very same path they did. 

This one experience left me yearning to go abroad again. Walk in yet another place my ancestors did. Feel that connection to them that I would never feel otherwise. And again it makes me think, this is exactly why I am studying history. To feel closer to these people. To humanize them. And in some sense, to feel closer to my own ancestors.