From the mountainous landscapes of Cape Town, South Africa to the cobblestone streets of Prague, Czechia, University of Missouri students Kiraly Vega and Gabbie Roseman broadened their horizons through their study abroad opportunities. Vega and Roseman said these  experiences contributed to the people they are today and changed their lives.

Kiraly Vega

Stepping out into the streets of Cape Town, South Africa at 3 a.m. after her flight arrived, Kiraly Vega was exhilarated for her study abroad trip.

Vega, a first-year student, studied abroad over this past winter break with the Kinder Institute of Constitutional Democracy. As an engineering major who wants to focus her studies on clean energy, this was not the traditional route that aligned with her major. However, to Vega, political science and engineering go hand in hand.

“Within engineering and within all STEM fields, if you don’t have a strong grasp on what’s actually happening in the world and what happened in history, then you can’t solve for real-world problems,” Vega said.

Vega’s excitement grew rapidly before her plane even touched down. On the flight, she was seated next to a man from South Africa, and they struck up a conversation. His love of traveling within his home country made Vega more eager to see it. Among many other aspects of her trip, it was hearing people’s stories that made a large impact on Vega.

However, this wasn’t the only interaction that made an impact on her. While shopping at a local market, Vega met Sway, a man from Angola living in South Africa with a dream to visit Portugal.

“I just could feel that he was just as excited as me about traveling, but his circumstances were so different, like being born in Angola, working in a small market, he would likely never have the amount of money needed to go visit Portugal,” Vega said.

During a visit to Robben Island, where political prisoners were kept during Apartheid, Vega’s tour guide was a former political prisoner who shared his own experience on the island, which broadened Vega’s perspective. She also met a 90-year-old tour guide from District Six, a formerly segregated neighborhood, who told her own story of growing up in that community, which Vega could tell was emotional.

While abroad, Vega noticed the stark class differences in the country, a remaining effect of Apartheid.

“We would see like Cape Town with these really nice houses, and we would see sustainable housing that had clean energy and water pumps straight to the house and overlooking the sea,” Vega said. “Then you could just drive a few miles down, and you would get to a township where people were living in shacks in the backyard of other people.”

It was clear to Vega throughout her trip that studying abroad for political science, instead of the traditional route of sticking to her major, was the right choice.

“I went in knowing a lot about humanities, a lot about economics, a lot about inequalities within the world,” Vega said. “But going and …seeing it firsthand, is incomparable.”

Gabbie Roseman

Landlocked amidst European countries, the Czech Republic, now known as Czechia, is where MU sophomore Gabbie Roseman’s heart resides. According to Roseman, Prague’s red roofs and cobblestone streets could not leave her heart if they tried, and she is infatuated with the city.

Roseman said she intended to study abroad before she even applied to college. She knew that wherever she ended up for college, she would not be stagnant there. When she saw the opportunity to complete a four-week internship program in Czechia and fulfill course credits for her accounting major during her first year of college, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Initially, Roseman had doubts about being too young and not knowing anyone on the trip but decided to pursue the opportunity anyway. She said that going to the information sessions in the weeks leading up to the trip cleared up even the smallest of doubts.

Throughout a typical week, when Roseman and her peers finished their classwork, they would take buses and trains into the city. It was then that she interacted with Czech natives and learned that the heart of that city was its people. She felt their sense of pride in spending quality time with people and witnessed natives sitting in restaurants, just talking, for hours.

From Thursday nights to Monday mornings, her time was filled with exploration. Roseman and her new friends took trains, planes and buses to wherever they could. The first week, it was a four-hour train ride to Vienna and Budapest. The second weekend, it was a brief plane ride to Rome, a trip decided the day before. The last week, it was a bus ride to Bled, Slovenia.

“We had no idea we were going to go there,” Roseman said. “You get there, you’re completely immersed in the culture, you’re learning about everything.”

Czechia will be seeing more of Roseman in the summer of 2025, this time as a Trulaske Study Abroad Student Manager. Undoubtedly, this is only the beginning of her travels.