Stories

Walker Guerra, an Accounting and Information Systems major, has taken Italian at SCU and studied abroad in Milan. While traveling he took many photos and shared his thoughts on the winning photo:

“I felt that this image depicted my experience abroad quite perfectly. When I landed in Milan in September it was not only my first time in Italy but my first time in Europe. Just hours after landing I found myself planted in front of the 350+ foot high Duomo di Milano. The structure itself was daunting, let alone the idea that I was going to be spending over three months in such a foreign place. The spires of the Duomo topped with statues felt so distant, almost entirely out of reach.

One of my final nights in Milan, my family came to visit and we climbed the Duomo together. The picture is taken from the rooftop where we were level with the spires that had felt so distant just a few months earlier. It felt like the perfect parallel for my overall experience abroad, having embedded myself into a community so thoroughly that it truly felt like home by the time I had to say goodbye.”