Harvey Scholar Travel- Kimmy in Nepal and Hungary

Kimmy- Nepal and Hungary

      I have had two amazing opportunities to travel thanks to the Harvey scholarship. After my freshman year, I traveled to Nepal with the Invictus Initiative for a humanitarian trip. We were working on a trail building project to build an alternate trail to Mount Everest in order to bring money to villages that are off of the main trail. I absolutely loved Nepal! We spent a little time in Kathmandu before heading to the mountains. Below is a picture of Kathmandu near the hotel where we were staying.

               From Kathmandu we flew into Lukla, a small town in the mountains. After that, we spent a couple of days hiking to Namche, which is another large village on the way to Mount Everest. Although hiking all day long in the Himalayas was absolutely exhausting, I loved every minute of it. The Himalayas are absolutely breath taking and I hope to go back some day. From Namche, we made our way to the area where we planned to start the trail building. We camped there and worked on the trail for a week before heading back to Kathmandu. I really enjoyed our week of camping because many of the locals worked on the trail with us and I got to know them very well. The Sherpa’s are such a peaceful and happy culture; it was wonderful getting to know them.

           

          I also had the opportunity to spend a semester studying in Budapest, Hungary and it was by far the best semester I’ve had. I really enjoyed this trip because I was there for 4 months, so I felt like I really became immersed into European culture. At first, it was so hard to get used to living in such an unfamiliar place. Where do you buy things when there isn’t a Target? I was also terrible at using public transportation and navigating myself by maps, so life in Europe was not easy at first. But I left as a pro! Studying abroad in Europe is a really fun experience because Europe has a program called ERASMUS that allows Europeans to study abroad. There were about 300 exchange students at my school, so I got to know so many different cultures. School in Europe is more relaxed than at Mines, so I had a lot of time to explore Budapest with all of my new friends. Below is a picture of Budapest.

               I was able to do a ton of traveling while I was abroad. I visited 10 countries and of course it was amazing. I can’t even decide which country was my favorite. It was really fun to live such an adventurous for 4 months. I spent most of my weekends in other countries, eating delicious food, and seeing unreal sights. Europe is an amazing place to visit because there is beautiful architecture and castles everywhere. Below is a picture of Slovenia. Our exchange program planned a trip there and we even got to go rafting!

               Another one of my favorite trips was to Croatia. A group of my friends and I rented a couple of cars and road tripped down there. Road tripping was so fun! Croatia was beautiful and I was able to see so much of it by driving through it. The pictures below are of Croatia. I highly recommend spending a semester abroad! Europe is a great place to spend your semester because traveling there is cheap and easy, so you can visit so many places.