My name is Noelle McGee, and I am a rising junior who is traveling to Scotland to study abroad. My home school is Northwestern University, and I’m originally from Chicago, which is where I grew up for all my life. I’m leaving my Mom back home with my pets (three dogs, four cats, two turtles), my family on my Mom’s side also in Chicago, and my younger and only sister who just started university in California. I’m leaving all of my friends back on campus as well; the support groups I had were on in Chicago and at my home university.
I’ve never travelled outside of the county before, and I can count on my fingers the number of states I’ve visited before in my current 20 years of life; however, I made the bold decision to study abroad for an entire year at the University of Edinburgh. My goals for my time here is to learn how to adjust to a new culture and overall country that has a significantly small Black population, adjusting to my American conceptions and using them here, interpreting accents, and also growing individually and discovering myself. I care a lot about my identities of being a Black woman, and these identities, along with being American and being from Chicago,
will be the lenses that I use as I navigate a new environment, and this blog will be a way to track the changes that happen in this time in my life.
