Hi there! My name is Maria, and for the next three months, I’ll be living in the magical capital of Scotland: Edinburgh. Edinburgh is full of bumpy, cobbled streets and old, stone buildings. With castles scattered throughout the city, Edinburgh looks like it came straight out of a fairytale! My hometown is Oak Brook, Illinois, and as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s very different from Edinburgh. Oak Brook is probably best known for its huge shopping center and for being home of the old McDonald’s headquarters. While I loved growing up in Oak Brook, I always wanted to see what life was like on the other side of the world.
Believe it or not, I’m now on my third study abroad program— and it never gets old! The first time I studied abroad was the summer after my junior year in high school. I applied to a program in Tokyo to improve the Japanese language skills that I had developed as a kid. When I was younger, my parents wanted to enroll me in a Korean preschool because my mom had immigrated from Korea when she was little. My parents couldn’t find any Korean schools in the area, but they did find a Japanese immersion school with a fantastic teacher. So, in pre-school and kindergarten, I learned the Japanese alphabets and all about Japanese culture.
