A typical day on San Cristóbal island starts with the sun breaking through my window. Every day, it’s a competition between dawn and the rooster: who wakes me first? I get up, stretch, and walk over to the kitchen for breakfast.
Hey everyone! Just a little update on my time here studying in Rome: I love it. I am so grateful every day for the opportunities that I get to experience every day here in Italy. With my study abroad program in Rome, we get every Friday off. This is amazing for many reasons, but for one in particular: traveling! I have been to three places so far on weekend trips and wanted to share with you my experience with them.
Note - I do criticize IES Abroad in this blog post, but these opinions are my own and based solely on my own experience at IES Abroad Milan.
This is not the kind of post I though that I would be making during my time abroad, but as we all know, life is full of the unexpected.
Things happen, the rest of the world doesn't pause while you are having the best time traveling. This means that while you are thousands of miles away from home, something tragic could happen, like a death in the family.
One of my biggest concerns studying abroad was staying in contact with friends back home. As an orientation leader at Brandeis, I often tell my ‘grouplets’ to expect a certain level of friendship turnover during their first year. Everyone is looking for some sort of connection when you first arrive at college, but early friends may not mesh well together long-term. This is typical for everyone, but with the pandemic my experience of friendship turnover lasted until my junior year.
As much as I love Dublin and Ireland, I was extremely excited for the chance to travel all around Europe. This past week was our midterm break (hard to believe we’re halfway done), so a couple of my roommates and I were determined to make the most of our week off. While it was a lot of fun, there is definitely a lot to be learned from traveling to different countries.
Most recorded history frames the Galápagos Islands as a pristine, untouched wilderness. Finches flitting into conewells of prickly pear nectar. Woody roots tangling over lava rock. According to legend, Darwin’s was the first foot trod onto the sand. Post-Darwin, the record gives a slow, incoherent hum. During my pre-departure research before I embarked on this program, every time I googled “Galápagos people,” the results pages were barren: only a few opinion articles on why all the land belongs solely to wildlife.
Upon entering the Netherlands, I was connected with the lovely Mieka of Salt and Stone Knits through a global knitting brand that I had previously worked for. Mieka is absolutely effervescent and extremely welcoming. It wasn’t until I was here for over a month that I realized just how cultivated, comprehensive, and completely amazing this list was. She even put in details like where to find Target and Walmart-esque stores or her favorite local plant shops.
I never stressed about school until I got to college. My school, Kenyon, is full of incredibly smart, dedicated students, and the pressure to succeed in classes is hard to escape. In the past year or so, weighed down by COVID-19 restrictions altering my college experience, I began to think more about what my priorities would be not only in college, but throughout my life.
Someone I know once advised my younger friends that if they wanted to study abroad, they needed to start saving last week. It’s expensive here — really expensive. I’m not referencing the groceries and the public transportation. Honestly, that’s cheaper than your nearby Kroger and nightly Ubers. I’m talking about the weekly weekend trips, big and small. So, what do you do? You buy the world’s cheapest flights possible at the earliest and latest times possible — booked weeks in advance, too.
