The most fascinating aspect of international experience is one seldom spoken of. It is an inescapable yet miniscule thing that permeates every moment spent in a foreign space, and yet it is a feeling that I can’t help but to return to. It is not simply found in the sites visited or cuisines sampled, or in any of the multitude highlights often advertised and projected. No, instead it lives in the mundanity home has programmed you to ignore. It lives in the shape of the buildings, the songs the birds sing, the feeling of the ground beneath your feet; it’s the everyday idiosyncrasies, the little things drowned out by time and routine, that together form a new world around you.
Last May, near exactly one year hence, I was given the opportunity to visit the Netherlands. Over two weeks we toured Amsterdam and Rotterdam, visited businesses from tulip auctions to chemical manufacturers to cutting-edge R&D centers, and between the hurried rush that was our day-to-day it was those day-to-day items that mattered. It was the uneven brickwork of the canal-side roads, the swans adrift off the shore of the IJsselmeer, and the way the floor of the tram cars swayed below that grounded me in that true sense of experience. It sated that hunger for the things we might have should we strive to implement them at home, and too it reminded me of the small comforts of normal life I had missed and taken for granted.
That is what drives my passion for international experience, and that is what I am looking for in the Czech Republic.
Swanson School of Engineering 