Two. Days. Two days!! That's all I have left before I leave for Spain! I have been anticipating studying abroad for YEARS and the time is almost here! I honestly don't quite know what to expect. I am so excited, nervous, and rushing to make sure everything is ready for departure that I can barely sleep. Between packing the last few essentials, making sure everything at home will run smoothly when I'm gone, wondering how I will navigate the FOUR different airports I will end up in before arriving in Salamanca (yes, I have two layovers...

It doesn’t feel real. 

That is now my go-to response when people ask me if I’m excited to study abroad. And it’s true, it doesn’t feel real. It still feels like a someday; a distant dream that is yet to be realized far off in the future. But someday is now less than two weeks away(!) I’m going to Amsterdam. It’s really happening!!

Despite the fact that I hate math, I seem to process things in numbers. At my home college, I have a poster in my room that I use to count down the days until our next break. While I didn’t bring that poster to Ireland, I’ve found myself using the same tactic in order to cope with the drastic change that moving and orientation brought. I put every little thing into numbers.

I’ve been preparing to go abroad to Berlin for almost a year now in so many ways. From applying picking a program, internally to my college, to applying externally to my program it’s been and endless stream of choices and steps. More recently, decisions that I will be making when I am actually abroad have been much more present in my thoughts, primarily thoughts about my impact on the environment while traveling.

I’m writing this in frozen, blustery Minnesota, where the snow is piled so high that when the streets are plowed, the mailboxes poke out of snow piles like gopher heads. I don’t think I’ve truly felt warm in months, except for the other day when I got too close to the fireplace and lightly broiled my back. 

There I am riding my bike through Vondelpark. There’s a slight breeze that ruffles my auburn-brown hair while I glide past the trees surrounding the paved path. As I look around, I see tulips in an array of colors, small ponds with the occasional ripple, and people filling open spots with their bikes parked next to them. Some are laughing with friends, some are reading, some are simply laying back; taking in the beautiful spring day. Some of the conversations I overhear I can understand.

When I was little, my mom would play the song 'I Will' by The Beatles as I danced around the kitchen trying to sing the words. 

"This is your song Lex," she would say, "I played this for you when you were in my belly hoping you would hear it, because I knew I loved you before I even met you."

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my blog! My name is Grace and I am a Carnegie Mellon student in Pittsburgh, PA. I study Global Studies with minors in both art and gender studies. I grew up in the California bay area with my three younger siblings, parents, and dog. This semester, I’m studying abroad in Granada, Spain through IES Abroad. 

After A While Crocodile...

I flipped through the pages of my planner today to find that I only had to flip twice to see “Cape Town!” written down only two Saturdays from now. After it was an arrow that was drawn across that days after it, pointing into the oblivion that is the five months that will follow that flight without a return. So, in two weeks, I’ll take a plane to South Africa, where I will submerge myself in a culture I have yet not explored. “Are you ready?” They ask. Not in the slightest. 

In my seat, I am wondering why anyone would ever pay for a first-class ticket. I can’t imagine the flight being any less painful. Would my brain feel less crushed if I sat twenty feet ahead of where I am now? I find myself relatively unfazed by such trivialities though. The journey ahead, roughly three weeks of camping in Patagonia and two weeks in Montevideo, is surreal. Dali couldn’t have had more unbelievable dreams. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of Patagonia’s existence until three months ago.