I made the first mistake of my semester abroad when I thought the trip would make me feel more adult. Seven hours later, I made my second big mistake: I got lost in Charles de Gaulle Airport.

At first, as I watched flight attendants negotiate drink carts down the aisles with my passport firmly in my hand, I felt extremely grown-up. My confidence even survived overhearing a small French boy rattle off sentence after sentence with a fluency of which I could only dream of having.

It’s well known that children learn second languages far more easily than adults do. But I would soon find out that the same logic applies to the larger experience of traveling abroad: We all had to go back to kindergarten.

My reeducation began with a 10-day travel seminar with about 30 other Syracuse University students. Before settling in with our host families in Strasbourg, France, we were to travel as a group through Paris. We also visited Ypres in Belgium, Amsterdam, and Cologne, Germany.

Although Paris was just as chic as it looks in the movies, it made me feel less like Audrey Hepburn in “Sabrina” and more like a kid on her first day of school. The simplest tasks become infinitely more complicated in new places.

The same went for my time in Amsterdam. Every American preschooler is taught to look both ways before crossing the street, but that method doesn’t work in Amsterdam. In the land of tens of thousands of bikes, Amsterdam’s traffic is a whirlwind of cars, trams, blond children on bicycles, women walking lap dogs and speeding adult cyclists with no intention of slowing down for you.

We quickly had to develop a new method to safely cross the street. My method: I learned to look both ways, sprint to the median, wait for a few Lance Armstrongs and a cable car to pass, say a Hail Mary and dash for the sidewalk.

I also spent a lot of time in another elementary school staple: the bus. Like the cool kids in fifth grade, everyone vied for seats at the back, and, like the less cool kids, we all fell into deep, jet-lagged sleep as soon as the wheels began to turn. Between catching up on the sleep we weren’t getting and catching up on the assigned reading we weren’t doing, everyone quickly learned to embrace the long hours on the bus.

Many of us also had to relearn how to use our inside voices. Americans, it seems, talk a bit more loudly than Western Europeans. During one group dinner, the thirty of us easily outdid all other patrons on both floors of the restaurant in terms of decibels.

Though stricter scientific testing may be needed to verify this theory, I’m inclined to believe that the Paris metro is far quieter than the fourth floor of E.S. Bird Library.

Luckily, relearning to use your inside voice is simple enough: If you think you’re talking normally, cut the volume by half.

Mastering inside voices is key to one last element of being a kid again: field trips. Visiting new cities in a group of 30 meant doing many guided tours of museums, parks and monuments. I’d forgotten how nice it is to have everything explained to you as you explore anew.

The benefit of reflecting on “the beginning” is being able to take pride in the progress you’ve made. I had a successful conversation in French just a day after accidently buying bouillon cubes instead of cheddar cheese, and on our last day in Amsterdam, I had only one near collision with a Dutch cyclist.

While foreign surroundings may force you to relearn a few basic elements of life, it also allows you to grow as a person and see how far you’ve come. Here’s to hoping that I make it out of kindergarten before I start college classes next week.

Maggie Cregan is a sophomore history and magazine journalism major. From Cleveland to Syracuse to Strasbourg, she enjoys rocking out and getting hopelessly lost. If you want to talk to her about this column, or are Keith Richards, reach her at mmcregan@syr.edu and follow her on Twitter at @MaggieCregan_SU.

Published on January 13, 2014 at 11:27 pm