The Flight

The Flight

Your carryon should hold your fragile items, electronics, and valuables. Important paperwork, ID, cash, and other items that you will need immediately should be at hand.

At your seat you should bring support items. I had a pillow that was compact and I could fill with air at my seat and lean my face on and put my arms in. Magical! I will link to one like it HERE. My flight was 5hrs with a 2hr layover in Texas and then another 5hrs to London.

Unless you wear a watch regularly, don’t bring one. It isn’t that important just for two flights. Instead prepare yourself to have a dead phone battery. Bring portable batteries! I brought three of them and I could have used an extra (because of all the time I kept having to waste making sure they were all plugged in because I used them up so quickly). Make sure they are as compact and large capacity as possible. You won’t want to carry bulk around every day. Slim charger in your pocket is nothing however!

 Apps. For London I recommend WhatsApp or Kik (if you want to hide your real number) to talk over Wi-Fi for free. To travel City Mapper is perfection, you can search for walking, bus, tube, or Uber routes and times. I would recommend using widgets on your screen to keep track of your HOME time. It is easier than counting every time you want to know; you can check in the same time it would take to check your foreign time. This will also save you during your flight to calculate travel times while crossing time zones.

Don’t bring things specifically for your flight. You will have to drag these items all over your foreign country and unless you will be travelling extensively for your entire trip, don’t coddle yourself. You can survive a flight with your ear buds instead of heavy duty noise cancelling headphones that will be cumbersome and added weight on your way home. Your ear buds may get annoying but you can handle it, I promise.

Tissues. Virtually weightless and for some reason, I swear, everyone’s noses run on planes. These can double as toilet paper as well!

Comfortable clothing (be aware of weather)

Charge everything before you leave!

Bring an empty water bottle (TSA will stop you for carrying liquids but there are loads of places to fill this passed security). Keep hydrated and eat a balanced meal before travelling. It is tempting to eat taco bell as a quick option but it will come back to haunt you mid-flight. You don’t want to be in and out of the toilet with embarrassing issues. Be prepared with Beano, heartburn, or diarrhea medication!

Get up and stretch during flight. Blood clots are a worry even for those of us without circulation problems. I personally wore restriction socks (like diabetics wear) to ward against them because I had a window seat). Sitting for long periods of time can be dangerous, because you risk of DVT (deep vein thrombosis) rises. It isn’t going to hurt anything or anyone for you to do a couple laps around. If you are worried about bothering staff, ask them for a route and best time to accomplish this during flight.

The woman sitting across from me during my flight clearly had circulation problems because she would constantly stand up next to me and stomp her feet… she was in pain! It was horrid.

My flight to the UK and back (and flights while I was there) weren’t bad. I watched movies, tv shows, and such on the flight over.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask any questions in the comments below.

Happy Travels,

Elle

Preparing to Go Abroad

Preparing to Go Abroad

This process can be a daunting one. It will be a long journey but the results are worth it. This post will outline and try and explain each aspect.

1.       Contact

2.       Choose a program and country

3.       Degree requirements

4.       Finances

5.       Culture preparation

The first step is to make contact with your study abroad department. They are ready and willing to help you through this whole process step by step. They will have pamphlets, previous experience, and everything you will need to begin. There may be certain restrictions and requirements specific to your school that are important to know from the beginning. One such restriction may be the semester you are allowed to study abroad. Once such restriction could be that you are not allowed to study abroad in your last semester of your degree due to your senior thesis requirements.

This second step in your process is to choose a program and country. Depending on your degree, school, and personal goals, this may be decided for you. As a criminal justice student, I had very little choices in terms of the program and in my opinion my country of choice. Not a lot of the programs had schools in their listings that were applicable to my degree. I chose England as my country of choice because it is the birth place of our criminal justice system. I could have justified other countries to do a comparative analysis with our own but England makes way more sense. These decisions are very important because you will need to justify your choice in applications and scholarship essays.

The third step is figuring out the semester you will be able to go abroad. It is very important to go over your degree requirements to see what you still have to complete. If you have used all your electives already and you only have classes required to complete for your degree you will have to choose a school abroad who is offering those classes.

Finances are your fourth step. Your study abroad advisor should go over the costs of the program you chose, the school, housing, and local costs with you. If not, you can research, research, research. The information is out there. You need to make yourself a budget. Start with how much you will need and then you can work out if it is possible to afford it. There are a lot of options available to you.

a.       Saved money

b.       Familial support

c.       Scholarships via your program, school, state, country, honor societies, and clubs.

d.       Crowd funding

e.       Selling items

f.        Part-time job before leaving

Your fifth step is to prepare for months in a different country and culture from your own. It is your reasonability to prepare yourself for this task. It is important that you try and be as respectful as possible of their laws and culture while you are abroad. You are representing yourself, your school, your degree, and your home. There will be more differences than you can adequately prepare for. These differences could be appearance, language, customs, etc. Make an effort to look up large differences to prepare yourself. The most important differences to research are laws and maybe common social faux pas.

Preparing lists. Research. Be prepared with tourist destinations that are important to you, not places important to others. You may feel pressure to see Buckingham Palace. If it isn't important to you then don't do it. One of the most important things to be was Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, and the Sir Robert Peel statues (in London and Glasgow, Scotland).

•             Shops to frequent

•             Food to try

•             Grocery store names

•             Gift ideas

•             Addresses to send post cards to

•             Inspiration lists

•             Learning about your country of choice (phrases/tips)

Social media holds all the answers. Pinterest is a black hole of travel lists. I pinned every list I could find about unique stops, must see options, and out of this world eateries. Once I had down time I sat down and went through all of them and took note of places, people, and things to see. After creating this master list of amazingness I narrowed it down to the places that really spoke to me. They are at the top of my lists and are a priority depending on time, money, and location.

Remember that you are only human and nothing you can do will make the entire process perfect. I suggest creating a realistic list for yourself to complete before you leave.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to leave them in the comment section below.

Happy Travels,
Elle