My experience abroad was everything I could have asked for. I’ve missed Prague dearly since I left, and it’s crazy to think it’s been a year since I was there. If you’re even considering applying, I’m here to tell you that you should. Prague is a beautiful city, and the program was not only well planned but also full of amazing opportunities to learn and grow.
While I’ve been fortunate enough to travel abroad with my family, going on this OCS program was my first time leaving the country for an extended period of time without my parents. This made me really nervous. How would I know how to get from point A to point B? What would I do for meals? How would I communicate with the locals? Though daunting at first, the answers to these questions quickly became clear.
One of my favorite things about Prague was the transportation system. There were tons of above-ground trams and underground trains that would take you all over the city and were easy to use. We were given transit passes that lasted the duration of the program and allowed us to travel to other parts of the Czech Republic, too. And of course, Apple or Google Maps can tell you exactly how to get from one place to another. I found that having to figure out how to get places on my own gave me a much better geographical sense of the cities I was in compared to when I would travel with my parents and could just follow them around.
Another great part of the program was that we got to stay in apartments. As someone with allergies, I loved having a kitchen that I could cook in. Getting groceries was really easy, as there was a grocery store walking distance from the apartments. Plus, prices in Prague are much lower than in the US. Another great feature of our living situation was that some of the apartments had Czech roommates who were great resources for advice on all things Prague.
As for the language barrier, well, there wasn’t really one. Almost everyone I encountered, at least in urban areas, spoke English. I also took the Czech language elective course, which was a lot of fun. While we only learned very basic Czech (it’s a really difficult and complicated language), this enabled me to have minor interactions with locals, such as when checking out at a store. Though I was scared of speaking in an unfamiliar language and messing up, each time I did was easier than the last.
One of my favorite aspects of this OCS is that we got firsthand experience with what we were learning about in the classroom. With Ken’s Cross-Cultural Psychopathology course, we would go to clinics to learn more about the topics we were discussing. We got to hear from patients about their experience, and also from clinicians about mental health treatment in the Czech Republic. For our history course, which was taught by a Czech professor, we would go on excursions throughout the city to see where the events we were learning about in class happened. I know that the Art and Architecture course would walk around to look at buildings, and for my last Czech class, we went to a café to practice ordering in Czech.
Outside of academics, I got to experience Czech and Eastern European culture. We were given a cultural budget to use at places like museums. There were also often sports games that we could go to, and we attended the ballet and opera. Additionally, we would go on trips (around and outside of the Czech Republic) as a group about every other weekend. I found this to be the perfect amount of travel, as it gave me enough time to experience living in Prague, while also getting to see new places. The best part was that everything was planned for us! My favorite trip was to Slovakia, where we went hiking in the Tatra mountains—the views were amazing!
Had I not gone on this program, I would have missed out on so many wonderful experiences, culturally, intellectually, and socially. There was so much that we learned that one can’t learn in the US. Not everything was easy, and sometimes I was homesick, but being challenged and pushed outside of my comfort zone allowed me to grow, and I’m eternally grateful for that.