Did a semester in Belfast, NI studying the politics of deeply divided societies. Totally useless academically- I was unaccustomed to and ill-equipped for study at a large university, and ended up blowing off most of my classes. I actually still have nightmares where I'm attending the final exam and realize I haven't showed up for a single class. Which was pretty much exactly how it went down, actually. Besides that, while the town was rich in history, the old sectarian rivalries had congealed into little more than gang warfare. The stakes were no longer as highfalutin as the soul of the territory (or at least not overtly), but rather control over turf, and drug/contraband distro therein. At least that was my lowbrow Yank perspective, which was carefully tended to by my classmates, who either felt it necessary to protect me from harsh realities, or else really didn't have a sense of their own history or a desire to mull over it. Or maybe they were trying to leave it behind and were practiced in the art of re-directing academic tourists such as myself hell-bent on clodhopping all over their carefully-established social boundaries. I wasn't smart enough then to tell the difference and it's been long enough that I can no longer reliably pick it all apart from my armchair.

It was vastly informative, though, on a lot of unexpected levels. It was a master class in loneliness, for one. I made a couple acquaintances there, but for one reason or another (see above, perhaps) I remained at a remove from most of my classmates. They were polite enough and included me in whatever, but I wasn't really friends with anybody. I spent days walking through the city by myself, or in some movie theater or another, or in a pub. I had a shower in my room, like the bathroom was a big shower with a sink and a toilet, and I remember spending maybe an hour at a time just sitting under the hot water. No matter what I was doing, you can rest assured that I was stumbling-drunk for most of it. Stoli was cheap, way too cheap, and we'd mix it with anything. It came packaged with coke, but I think we tried milk one time late at night just because. Blech.

It was also a great lesson in money management, or else the consequences of a lack thereof. I'd pissed away pretty much all of my student savings around 3/4 of the way through the semester (again, see above), and found myself with a month left and about 100 pounds to my name. I ate boiled potatoes, made my own crumbly bread, and when I was feeling decadent I'd buy one of those awful sausage-in-a-buns they sold at every corner store. By the end I even had to give up, gulp, my enormously debilitating drinking habit. Hard times, man.

Are you getting the sense that I was a shitty kid with a shitty attitude who pissed away an opportunity to learn something in a culture-rich setting? Hopefully so. I can't impart any wisdom about where to go or how to experience it, because I was so hilariously bad at the whole thing. I can only provide my own crooked experience as a sort of morality tale: here's what not to do.

If you're gonna go abroad, do it for the right reasons, be respectful, and drink it in. But not literally, because that's a goddamn waste, it turns out.

EDIT on reflection, this comes off as really discouraging. I don't think there is anything wrong with semester abroad programs per se, I think there was a lot wrong re. my attitude. I've been abroad for protracted periods of time several times since then, and I've gleaned a lot from it each subsequent time. Think maybe the trick is to approach it with a sense of wonder rather than entitlement. Which shouldn't be hard for a lot of people.

Also, bet humanodon would have a thing or two to say about productive time abroad.