Over this past summer I went to Greece, Italy, and France, as a Student Ambassador representing the United States. I have developed as a person and now understand different cultures better. I have also experienced different challenges where I met new people and attempted to learn their language.

Greece was my first stop of my trip to Europe. Greek is not an easy language but I attempted to speak it anyway. Athens was beautiful and the people I met made me fall in love with Greece even more. My favorite part of Greece was the national park where we volunteered to save the ducks by cleaning the lake and the park itself. I felt that doing this volunteering made a huge difference, because it shows that even though it’s not in America, our community also exists away from our home. One day I hope to be lucky enough to go back and learn even more about the culture.

We went on a ferry to the next stop of the trip, Italy. On the ferry, we met an enormous amount of people from places other than just Italy or Greece. Each person I spoke to changed me in different ways because it showed me that no matter where you are and what culture you are, we all could communicate. I will never forget Rome because we had a scavenger hunt traveling through Rome trying to get to different exhibits, and places of interests and end up in our meeting place. I was in the only group where no one knew Italian, which resulted in my taking charge and if we weren’t positive which way to go, I attempted to speak Italian to passersby to get directions. We came in second place, of all the four groups. The orphanage in Italy was interesting because it was like its own society. It made me happy to see that we made the children happy by just being there and spending time with them. In Assisi, Italy we did this full on adventure where we repelled off this building, which was a life-changing event that I will never forget. We also got to do trust falls, which taught us to work more as a team.

My final stop was France, which we got to by an overnight train. In France, we left our delegation and did a home stay. This was remarkable even though my home stay family didn’t speak any English. What was so amazing was that besides me and three other delegates from my delegation, my home stay family also had a Spanish exchange student and a Japanese exchange student. It was really astonishing that I was able to communicate with both the exchange students because I took Spanish for about six years and I had someone teach me a little Japanese. I actually taught them some American Sign Language. It made me feel that language should be universal, so everyone can talk to each other without having a language barrier.

Overall, this trip was a life-changing experience and something I will always remember. Hopefully one day I will make it back and help volunteer in my global community. Being a Student Ambassador, and representing my country, the U.S.A. made me grow and develop knowledge of my global community.