Sweden: Amano Bayarsaikhan (Final Reflections)

Program: DIS – Study Abroad in Scandinavia, Spring

As the summer fast approaches and the city of Stockholm gets used to the long warm days, my time here also nears its end. What a semester it was. It was not what I first envisioned when I first decided to study abroad.

I came expecting a recreation of the Swedish books I grew up reading, a time full of adventure and excitement. What I got instead was loneliness before belonging, confusion before clarity, and a version of myself I hadn’t planned to meet.

The friendships I found here were not the ones I went looking for. They came through the backdoor, completely unexpected, but welcome nonetheless. The older student I never thought I’d get close to. Random Danish chess players I met at a tournament. A girl who accidentally bought an extra ticket at a museum. These people, many of whom I had no reason to ever encounter, became the scaffolding of my days here.

And somewhere in all of it, in the discomfort and the beauty and the long stretches of solitude, I grew quieter in the best way. I learned to sit with uncertainty. I stopped performing and started paying attention.

Stockholm was not the semester I imagined. It was harder, stranger, and more honest than that. I leave having unlearned a few things I thought were fixed about myself, and I think that might be the most valuable thing a place has ever given me.