70International Harding University in Europe (HUE) is a popular international program. During the fall 2023 semester, thirty-nine students flew to Europe, beginning in Iceland, and traveled around Western Europe for three months. By November, the group had visited fourteen countries, consumed too many cappuccinos to count, navigated six metro systems, and wrote what seemed to be endless journal entries in their Moleskines. Students studying abroad document their time in these journals and are able to look back on their memories, experiences and obervations in the years following. Tradition holds that upon arrival students recieve their moleskine notebook. It it they record daily interactions, reactions and relfections on their experience. Some treat it as an assignment while others pour their hearts and souls into its pages. Photos courtesy of Caraline Rogers In London, I watched someone jump the automated turnstiles of the Underground before I walked down the street to peer at centuriesold Viking broadswords. In Rome, we walked on cobblestones taken from the walls of the crumbling Colosseum. In Athens, we fed upon a dozen courses of summer salads, bread, pork, feta, honey and olives, a combination which we learned originated in the Turkish empire a millennia ago. In places like Honfleur, Vík, Monterrosso, Corinth and many more, we observed and enjoyed an old kind of life: slow, quiet cafes, ancient but still habitable houses, the raking of olive trees for the harvest. This way of life runs like a cold, narrow current beneath the wide river of the sleek modern world, a world full of McDonald’s menus, car horns, and Google Maps. And our living these two worlds wasn’t forced upon us – for the most part, we were allowed to experience Europe in the ways we saw fit, whether it was taking an evening walk on the Champs d’Elysees strewn with autumn leaves, seeing MacBeth in London’s Globe Theater while planes roared overhead, or studying with friends during teatime at the Florence villa. Written by Clara Kernodle In short, HUE changed my life. HUE was the most challenging, yet rewarding three months of my entire life and it’s hard to summarize it all in just a few sentences. To experience traveling through 13 European countries while making 40 new friends is something I am grateful for each day. HUE changed the way in which I see the world and I also have a greater appreciation for God’s handiwork in the world and in His people. I learned so much throughout HUE that cannot be taught within a classroom. If you’re on the fence about going … go. Written by Ethan Gartrell A GLIMPSE INSIDE OF HUE Students who spent the semester abroad at Harding University Europe share their reflections on a once in a lifetime semester.
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