Georgia Tech Lorraine by MK Schmersal
A few days ago I returned from my summer in Europe. While I am very excited to be back in the US, I find myself frequently looking back on all of the fun memories I had during my three months at Georgia Tech Loraine (GTL). At the beginning of last semester, I was very hesitant in signing up for GTL. Originally, the plan had been to do the Oxford Program that offered more business classes, as I am a business major. However, as we have learned in the past year and a half, things do not always go as planned. Unfortunately, Oxford was canceled in late January. After talking to Abbie Cochell, I decided to go to GTL. For those who don’t know, GTL is Tech’s campus in Metz, France where classes are offered every semester.
I arrived in France a few days later than everyone and was greeted with a ham and cheese sandwich from Grace. It was a small gesture but after nearly 24 hours of travel on planes and trains, it helped me take a deep breath and soak in my home for the next few months. We then began planning our weekends of travel. At GTL, you take classes from Monday to Thursday and then most people travel over the long weekends. We had 11 weekends to travel and knew that we had to start planning.
Over the course of the semester, I was able to travel to ten different countries and complete ten credit hours. Some of my favorites were Switzerland where the hiking was unbelievable, Germany which reminded me so much of Atlanta and had some of the best pretzels, Italy that gave me some of the best pasta and gelato I have ever had, and Croatia that may have been the hottest trip but had the best national parks and island hopping.
While I loved traveling, the best part of the summer was the friendships I made. Before coming to GTL, I knew that a few of the girls in my PC were going to be there as well as a few older girls. However, I didn’t really know any of them that well. After just a week in France, I seemed to have found a family of six Alpha Xi girls that were always there for me. While we didn’t travel together as a group of six every weekend, I stuck with two of them, Grace and Paige, pretty much throughout the entire summer. From nightly walks to Cora to get bags of croissants to jumping off boats in the Mediterranean and climbing up stairs to a castle in Prague, I will be forever grateful for Grace and Paige. They found ways to make me laugh when I missed home and always ventured along with me to find good food. While we spent pretty much every weekend and lots of weekdays together for the past three months, I find myself so excited to give them a big squeeze when I get back to Atlanta this fall!
