The first person you meet is Joe. 

You’re in tattered sweats and four layers of clothes that wouldn’t fit in your suitcase. He’s very tall and chiseled and British-looking with a sign that has your study abroad program’s name on it and it doesn’t even matter if he’s possibly a kidnapper or a trafficker or a wizard there to remind you it’s the platform in between 9 and 10, it’s just good to be on the ground. 

In London.

Which has so many people to offer you, it’s overwhelming.

There are the rich girls who knew they would be studying abroad since their junior year of high school. For them, it was less a matter if they would go abroad and more a question of which Burberry coats they should pack. Their weekends consist of day trips to Paris and drinking chardonnay and eating cheese as they talk about boys in the kitchen. They’re nice (and clueless and gorgeous and funny); the makings of every girl you’ve tried to be since moving to college.

On your solo trips to masjids and cafes, you’ll wonder why all the teens are skipping class and why so many dads don’t seem to mind all the talking their toddlers do on the train. It becomes a game, almost, painting a picture of all the strangers you meet.

You find yourself enamored and consumed by different points of views. In England, you’ll sooner learn about a person’s opinion on Syrian refugees, hear bits about gas prices and protests and globalization before you even know their name. Politics over coffee, on the way to class, at 2 AM on a bench outside of an office you find yourself skating in front of.

You’ll meet someone who falls in love with you (even though it wasn’t your intention to have a one-sided whirlwind romance). He’ll be from Portugal or Spain and much too invested in how you spent your weekend. It turns out it’s true what they say about attraction– it’s subjective and for once you find yourself being the pretty girl on campus and sort of liking the hidden glances and stuttering and being asked when the next time you’re free is.

You get used to people wanting to hang out with you. The French skater boys compliment your ollie. The Muslims girls from India tug your arm and pour milk in your tea. Every Jummah (congregational prayer) is spent rubbing elbows with older professors. Strangers tuck their knees in and smile as you pass them on the tube.

You meet a girl who’s like you; a reflection, a sort-of best friend who understands you in a way you never thought someone would. Who wants to not just see the world, but live in it. Who’s running away and towards something out of reach that, like you, she can’t quite name. You take pictures of each other when the other isn’t looking. The calzone the size of your head and shawarma and ice cream and vegetable soup and homemade chicken and rice become more conversation than meal. You thought you’d be braving London alone, but it turns out Allah had in mind to give you a special friend.

And then you meet yourself. 

In a puddle in the rain. In the reflection of a window of a train going nowhere interesting. You catch a glimpse of her in your diary, in the audios you send your friends, in the articles you never write and the poems you never share. 

And as you’ve somehow managed to pack up your room and upend your new life in London, you realize as the plane leaves the ground and the lights of the cabin dim, you’ve become an entirely different you, and that you’ll get to meet her over and over wherever in the world you shall go.

Serenity Anderson is a student at Chapman University and a Featured Blogger. She is studying with ISA in London, England.