As I write this blog post on the nine-hour flight back home, I’m once again grateful for my experiences traveling abroad, but more importantly, I’m grateful for the people I got to spend this past week with and the memories we share together.

Before this trip, I only knew one other student who would be traveling with me to London for the first time. By the end of this week, I’ve made so many new friends and had so many fun times and laughs with my fellow media students.

But we began the trip on a sad note. The terrorist attacks in Brussels, which happened exactly one year after I arrived in that same airport for my Belgium trip, really shook me up. As I explored the city for the first full day with my new friends, I couldn’t help but think about all the lives lost and the people affected for such senseless reasons. It made me appreciate that I live in a world where people come together in unity after such horrible events, and that together we can overcome these things.

As the week went on, I realized the importance of enjoying the experience of traveling, not just running around from place to place, making sure you hit all the sights, and not stopping to enjoy the atmosphere and the people around you. Several times this week I had to almost pinch myself and tell myself I was in London, a city I’d seen in movies and had only dreamed of visiting.

But more importantly, I was visiting such a great city and getting to see it with such great people. I laughed so much on this trip; it was a good break from the crazy stress of college to be able to see new things and enjoy new friends.

Some of my favorite memories from the trip included:

Our first tube ride and a selfie to commemorate it

Making a pit stop at King’s Cross station to take a picture that every Harry Potter fan needs

Faking British accents while we visited Buckingham Palace

Getting scared by a bunch of pigeons in Oxford

Exploring the fun shops in the Covered Market in Oxford

Crossing Abbey Road (check out my friend Michelle’s blog for confirmation of how excited I was)

And all of the ridiculous inside jokes we made within the span of a week.

I had an incredible time and I am so grateful that I became so close with the group of girls traveling with me. I’m so glad we’ll have these amazing memories to cherish for the rest of our lives.