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Every time I travel with my family it’s a different kind of a leap into the unknown. I never research anything about the destination, the accommodations or the places we are going to visit. My plan is always to go with no expectations and let myself be surprised with the smallest things. What I could never know is that the biggest leap into the unknown I would ever take was in the trip I had most prepared myself for. I knew every place we were going to visit, all the countries we were going to pass, all the touristic spots… I knew most of it by heart. I just didn’t know how I would feel about being “alone” through all that. January of 2016. I had just turned 18 three months ago. Just got out of High School and had no clue of what I wanted to do in College, or even if I was going to be accepted in any of them. But one thing was very clear for me maybe since forever: I always wanted to live abroad or at least make an exchange trip. So, after a lot of preparation and decisions that was really going to happen and I could not believe it. I had watched all of the videos on YouTube about exchange trips, what to do, what not to do, what to bring, what not to bring. But, thinking about it now, none of them could have made me feel truly prepared for that experience. I was going to spend three weeks in that trip, not much and too little for all of my expectations. Two weeks in Oxford, England, living with a host family and studying English in a local course, and the last one on a tour passing through France, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. I was going with a group of others Brazilian teenagers and teachers that I have never seen before, my so called “alone”. At least that was the most alone I have ever been in my eighteen years of life. And I couldn’t be more excited, I was feeling like I was on the top of the world and nothing could ever take me down from there. The truth about this trip is that it was as amazing, incredible and awesome as I saw on YouTube videos. But the other truth is that was also really hard and a combination of emotions that I had never felt before, or after. I had never been so far from home. Or from anyone that can be home for me. I had never felt so lonely. I had never missed anyone like I was missing, apparently, everyone I have ever known. I was scared. I had no one to do stupid little things that I had always been too shy or accommodated to do by myself. Like asking for information when I was lost (and that happened a lot). Or just having someone to talk about the awesome things I had done that day. Or just someone that speaks the same language as you. The things we take for granted every single day. On the other hand, in that trip I did and saw things I never thought I would. I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, I saw a man making clogs, I took a bus trip from Oxford to London (3 times!), and I realized I couldn’t take that for granted too. That was a one-time life experience I had been waiting forever and I was crying more than I ever did, and it was not even tears of joy. In the end I discovered that I could enjoy my own company, I could do things by myself, I could handle the fact that no one I knew before was there with me, and that I could know the people that were there to the point that they became my family for that time. I came to understand that maybe living abroad is not in my planning anymore for numerous reasons, and that’s not a problem. There’s always a trip that we can prepare to take, by ourselves, with strangers or with our loved ones.