ERASMUS HAS CHANGED ME

On this September night, I feel like writing and sharing some of my more personal thoughts around this recent experience in my life - Erasmus. Erasmus can seem temporary, but I am sure of only one thing: its duration. Obviously, the duration is temporary, it wouldn't be as special if it weren't. This experience that I have had the great opportunity to be able to go on has left a mark on my personality, my thought processes, how I see the world and how I relate to others. For me, the word Erasmus represents opportunity, not all this that I have just said to you. The word Erasmus and the grant it comes with has given me the "opportunity to" do a lot of things that would have been impossible to do in any other situation.

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From acting crazy, to opening myself up to others, to seeing new things every moment, not thinking about time, crying with laughter, to falling in love, to sharing, learning, speaking without limits, to being myself, feeling free, and appreciating life. In life there are moments in which we need to put the brakes on the crazy pace of life that we are so determined to follow so that we can achieve everything we want to. The brake in my life was the time I spent on Erasmus. It is a year of your life when you can have time for yourself, for your mind, to get to know yourself and learn about what you want form life and what you do not. It was like medicine. An amazing person who I met during this year once said to me: "we have to be able to focus ourselves on every single thing we do, no matter how insignificant it seems, and we have to enjoy it, live it for real. " - The first time I heard this it was immediately ingrained in my mind, and I let go of the impossible.

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If I were to write a letter to my future self, the first thing that I would say would be: "live time on your own terms, not those established by others, the kind of time that never lets you enjoy anything for real. " Each and every one of the conversations I have had over the last year, without me realising, have all been important. There were so many times when I stopped talking to people who I did not know before, I may have even broken my own record. All of them have been before my eyes, some have returned, others have not. But the fact is that each and every one of them have left something in me that was not there before.

My feelings after having returned from Erasmus are of gratitude. A gratitude that was born through breaking. I have broken many of my own prejudices, many of my judgements... If I imagine my mind before and after this year, it would look like a perfectly trimmed hedge before, and after like a beautiful tree full of little branches that are all different and clashing, and with a lot of colours. I think my perception of many aspects of life has changed after this experience. Thanks to be able to experience things that before were unimaginable to me.

I have had a lot of luck to have been able to come across so many people that in another life wouldn't have been possible. Without them, right now I would be a little different, in another place, doing different things and not writing about my feelings so truthfully as I am right now. For this, I am lucky. Right now I am sat writing about my experience and I feel more now than ever before. Happy, so happy to have been able to do this. Do not stop yourself from this experience just because you think you aren't capable of doing something like Erasmus - you will discover parts of yourself there that you didn't know existed before. Maybe you can't even imagine it right now, but it is time to fly - more now than ever before.

Good luck,

Elena.

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