This Trip Was Fantastic. Here's Why.

Sitting in school, I've got a sticker on my laptop. Well, I've got a lot of stickers. But the most prominent one reads like this. "Global Works: Travel With Purpose". Most of the time, it goes unnoticed by everyone but me. I go about my day without anyone taking the time to notice those stickers I've collected. Every once and a while, however, someone notices. Maybe it's just a passing comment. But more often, it's a question of "what's that one for?", or "where'd you get that?", and this big white and orange sticker, right in the dead center of the case, just below the apple logo, is a pretty easy target to ask about.
Hidden within that sticker are incredible memories. Ones that, if nobody had ever asked, might have existed nowhere but within my own mind. I remember long bus rides full of music and conversation, hiking through the alps of southern France, working with the most genuine and kind french people I've ever met, meeting my incredibly generous host family, and relaxing in Paris. I remember learning that french isn't just wrote grammar, repetitive sentences, and ask and answer projects in a classroom. It's an expressive, emotional, and entertaining language that millions of people around the world all use and share.
Getting back to school the next year, I surprised even my fluent french teacher with terms, phrases, and accent tips that I'd learned over my three weeks abroad. I met people over that summer that I still keep in touch with and that live all over the United States, in Qatar, and, obviously, in France. And I have that sticker on my laptop as a touchstone to it all, which is what I tell any curious victim that happens to stumble upon said sticker before I close my laptop and explain how much I enjoyed going on this trip with Global Works.