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The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow Ambar Khawaja.

My three months in Nepal were a blur, with some of the most amazing and difficult experiences of my life juxtaposed next to one another. I experienced physically and mentally draining periods like I never had before, one of which occurred my last night there.

I cried on my flight out of Nepal, at the airport during my layover, and once I had reached my new apartment in Vietnam. I felt an overwhelming sense of being lost and had no direction in life, like I was floating and watching my actions go by like a movie. I turned into the person I never wanted to be. I thought to myself that I did not come to Vietnam to barely hang on to my sanity by a thread. I thought for the first time about going home.

There is a […]

The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow Ambar Khawaja.

Traveling means a different thing to each person who experiences it. When I was preparing to come to Morocco, I had no idea what it would mean to me. I listened to stories of other people’s travels overseas with wide eyes, peppering them with questions with the intent to satisfy what I believed I had not yet experienced.

I spent hours scrolling through my social media, seeing beautiful, vibrant images of adventures and locations in different countries. These images fed into the preconceived notion I had of traveling and living abroad, which I have now learned is highly misrepresentative of one’s true experience. Life here is not constantly the “picture perfect” snapshot you imagine when moving to a foreign country; Instead, it resembles life in general, with its ups and downs, but with tremendous space to grow.

There are many […]