Submitted by Kristen Pruett on the 2018 spring semester DIS program in Copenhagen, Denmark…
I had an amazing experience in Berlin! I went to Berlin last weekend to attend an Ultimate Frisbee Beach Tournament. It was a small tournament of 16 teams on the beach of a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. We had two fun, sun filled, and very tiring days of ultimate games. While in Copenhagen, I joined Hucks, one of Copenhagen’s Ultimate Frisbee teams. A friend on the team was recruited by La Bamba, a team in Sweden, to play in this Berlin tournament. La Bamba needed more players, so I, another DIS student and two Danes on Hucks headed to Berlin to join La Bamba. While it was supposedly a team from Sweden, it consisted of two Americans, two Danes, one Norwegian, a few Germans and only one Swede! It was quite the mix of people which made it all the more fun. What I have loved so much about studying abroad is how many people I have met from all over the world. I met an American while in Paris, an Irish couple while in Rome, an Australian who studied in Montana for a semester, and an Indonesian, who studies in Hong Kong, but is studying abroad in Denmark for this semester. It is amazing how easy it is to meet people from all over the world when you put yourself out there, join clubs and activities and simply talk to new people. While I know I can only consider myself acquaintances with most of these people, it is still fun to know people from so many different places, and if it came down to it, they are people that I could contact if I was ever in their country. Studying abroad has definitely taught me a lot about other countries. However, while we usually only think about the differences from country to country, it is amazing to see how similar to each other individual people can actually be.