Being abroad had its ups and downs for me. I am not somebody who loves to be away from home for an extended period of time. But, I also enjoyed seeing new cultures and experiencing a different lifestyle. I have a love hate relationship with traveling. For shorter trips, I love them. But for trips that are longer than a week I am not always a big fan of them. Although my trip to Europe was a long and tiring trip, I really enjoyed learning about a different culture. I would not say this trip changed me, but it helped me grow in ways I didn’t know I needed to grow.

Experiencing the Louvre Museum was my favorite part. There was so much to look at and learn from within this magical place. There was artwork everywhere, and so many items that were simply priceless.

Another part of the Louvre Museum was the walk way up to the museum. As you can see in the picture the greenery and all of the statues were so elegantly designed. There are few places in America that have this much detail into one place. It was like everything you saw had a story of its own.

Another place that shocked me was the Eiffel tower surroundings. The Eiffel tower itself is not what shocked me, yes it was beautiful and all, but it was what went on around it. There were tons of people around the Eiffel tower trying to make a living. I never knew that there were so many people selling little toys everywhere you looked. When I had heard about the Eiffel tower everyone said it is the most romantic place and everywhere you look is beautiful. This is not what I experienced. What I experienced was horrible smells, so many people trying to stop you constantly and gates blocking off some of the Eiffel tower. This changed my perspective as a whole for the stories of the Eiffel tower.

The Palace of Versailles was the last part of Europe that was so inspirational to me. It is rare you find anything in America that has kept such a historic building with so many incredible details. The amount of information I learned just from this tour was mind blowing. The blood, sweat and tears that was put into making one place was astonishing. The Palace of Versailles taught me the importance of little details. There were a lot of rooms or places where they could have gotten by without adding a certain detail, but if they would have left those details out the history of it would have never gotten told.

My name is Chaynee Kingsbury. I am from a small town in Colorado called Windsor. I am a psychology major, and just transferred from the University of Colorado Boulder to the University of Denver. I played soccer there and am continuing to do so at DU. I love my family, and have four younger siblings the youngest one being 7. An interesting fact about me is that all of the names in my family start with C, and all of our names are unusual. Chaynee (me), Carty and Cason (17 and twins), Creed (9), and Chaylis (7).