A year ago, I arrived home after studying abroad for a semester. I had just left England and flown eight hours to the United States, with cookies cradled in my backpack. Exhausted, I stayed up late with my parents, sharing everything I had seen: Big Ben and Parliament, the Oxford Spires, the English countryside, all while sharing milk and cookies. I recounted how I spent Easter Sunday in an Anglican church at Oxford, relishing in one of the most authentic celebrations of Christ’s resurrection I’ve encountered.
Biola University positions itself as a global center. Students fail to realize that the chance to study abroad is central to Biola’s mission and easily accessible. For the same cost as regular tuition and room and board, students can study anywhere from Africa to South America, China to Russia. The only additional cost is living expenses and airfare across the world. You step well beyond the Biola bubble into the global world; it is filled with adventure.
I personally loved my time abroad. Over 14 weeks, I grew spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. I went to Evensong and heard Psalms sung every night and spent time in corporate and silent prayer. I struggled with displacement and learning to adapt to a different culture. I spent hours in libraries, writing papers. Daunting? Yes. Challenging? Absolutely. But it was the most rewarding semester of my undergraduate career.
The greatest part of all was the best cookie in the world from a little place called Ben’s Cookies. They had a triple chocolate chip cookie, warm from the oven. The cookie looked like a scone and made me feel like it was a spring day after the rain has kept you inside. On cold days, I would get a warm cookie before the mile walk back through the city to where I lived at the top of the unnerving Headington Hill.
I studied abroad to step outside of Biola and experience something new and exciting; I found just that in England. I grew as a whole person, but little did I know that the real experiences of studying abroad are finding those little places – the Ben’s Cookies of the world – that really do have the best cookies I’ll ever eat.
