The covid pandemic hit during the end of my freshman year where we were quickly rushed home. The following two semesters of my sophomore year were completely virtual, causing me to lose a full school year of being on campus. Studying abroad was always a dream of mine since high school, I love to travel and under normal circumstances I would’ve loved to have done a full semester abroad with my original plan being in Granada, Spain. The fall of my junior year was the first semester I was on campus since two years ago. I was creating so many new friendships and I was finally able to experience Umass. I was having such a fun semester that I decided to search for programs in the summer rather than the spring semester where I stumbled across the Study in Portugal Network.