It’s hard. It’s expensive. It’s stressful. Things go wrong and you’re in charge of fixing them, or you have to wait anxiously because you can’t fix them and the people who can won’t be awake for another 3 hours. You will be pickpocketed, your card will be declined, your phone will be stolen and you will have to deal with it all by yourself, and more often than not you will have to deal with it in a country where you do not understand the language well or at all. You will be homesick, even if you’ve never been homesick before in your life. You will be lonely. You will have days where you wish that you could just jump on a plane home and be done with it. You will book a reasonable amount of trips, feel guilty for not traveling enough while you’re here, panic and book another trip, and then find yourself panicking more because you have no choice but to go on that trip or waste hundreds of dollars. You will constantly feel like you’re spending too much. You will feel like you’re doing everything wrong. You will wish that you had picked another location, another semester. You will wish that you had just stayed home. You will burn your self out, you will feel like you’re not doing enough, you will feel like you’re doing too much. You will find yourself struggling to find a balance between schoolwork and vacation and time for yourself. You will feel like crying in the grocery store because you can’t read any of the labels and you just want to make a meal that reminds you of home. You will tire of eating the same 5 meals every day because eating out is expensive but your options are limited. You will wish that your mom was with you nearly every day. You will miss your friends more than you think, even if you do make new ones quickly. You will have a list of things you’re excited for back home longer than you can imagine. You will be more excited than you can imagine to go back home, even if you know you will miss where you’re staying dearly as well. You will have a good time. You will not regret studying abroad. But it’s not easy. It’s not a life experience you can’t go without. Don’t study abroad for the instagram pics and the crazy life stories if you can’t handle the breakdowns and the hard times.