Moving somewhere new can be a daunting and scary task. This is especially true when you move to a new country that has a different culture from your own and speaks a completely different language that you do not understand. To be honest, this process felt much harder than I had initially anticipated when I heard that I was moving to Slovenia for the year. I was lost in the excitement and anticipation of the adventure that the program would undoubtably bring to me, so I failed to recognize that integrating into a completely unfamiliar community I is no easy thing to do, especially when you’re right out of school and used to looking for help from your parents. Moving here was difficult for me at first, but it also provided an opportunity for me to grow in areas in which I didn’t necessarily realize I was lacking skills, and I've become a more independent person.
When I first arrived in Ljubljana and moved into my apartment, I knew only one other person in the entire city, a fellow Fulbright researcher from the U.S. working at the university. The hardest part of integrating into the community was pushing myself out of my comfort zone to introduce myself to neighbors and other researchers at work in order to expand my personal community of friends and co-workers.
