Two weeks have passed, and every day I fall more in love with Ecuador. When I first hopped off the airplane my mind was filled with nervous excitement, fear of losing my luggage, and a cautious sense of serenity. But, within a few minutes I found my luggage, was greeted by my incredible host mother, and made my way to my new home in Cumbayá, Ecuador.

Last night, my roommates and I were each studying quietly in our rooms when we heard a knock on our apartment door. At first, I assumed that perhaps one of us had been out, doing laundry maybe, and needed to be let in. I finished up a sentence of German homework before getting up, but by the time I did, one of my roommates, I’ll call her by her middle name Faye for anonymity, had already answered the door. It was an older Austrian woman who lived in the apartment building with us. 

“Do you understand German?” the woman asked. 

I’ve barely been in Amsterdam for two weeks, but I’ve already run into what will surely be one of the most transformative experiences I’ll have this semester. It wasn’t at one of the five museums I’ve visited, on my day trip to Delft, on campus during my first week of classes, or on any of the 25 euros’ worth of public transit rides I’ve taken: it was on a bike in the city center on a Thursday night. This seemingly-normal situation was my first time getting “lost” in my new home.

There are an aboriginal people in Australia who greet each other by asking what direction they are going. This means that in order to have a conversation one must first state whether they are headed northeast or due west. Unlike those of us who speak English and are only vaguely orientated at any given time, these people have a constant sense of their orientation in the world.

One of the things that I was the most worried about before beginning this semester was – and this might sound kind of silly – just the logistics of actually getting there! The airport, the terminals, the shuttles, the language barrier, flight delays, complications with connecting flights, transportation to the IES Abroad Center, locating & purchasing a SIM card and navigating the process of making my phone functional (especially this one). There are a lot of things to think about before setting off.

In exactly 2 hours I will be headed to LAX, and in 7 hours I will be headed off to Paris, France! Leave it up to me to be typing something last minute! I wanted to write my predeparture post just before I left, because it is finally starting to sink in that I'll be studying abroad for a whole year. I will be studying in Paris for my Fall semester through IES Abroad and then I will be studying in Tokyo for my Spring 2020 semester through a partnered university.

Bags are packed. Paperwork is printed. Do I feel ready yet? Not one bit.

Sorry for the clickbait, but I still have not found the cure to the pre-departure jitters. If there is one, I haven’t been able to find it through my hours of research. Believe me, I tried. It might feel impossible to prepare for almost four months abroad, but if I can do it, so can you.

It’s almost time to go back to Shanghai! In today’s post I wanted to talk about things NOT to do while you’re there – consider this a list of everything you wanted to know about Shanghai that probably no one has told you….

…..or they have told you, but you ignored them a million times like I did. Perhaps this is more of a reminder list for myself.

*****

Today, as I am writing this, I left China two months ago and have twenty days until I return. This summer has felt so lethargic, yet so quick. Moving back to American suburbia after being in one of the world’s biggest cities makes it feel as if it were all a distant dream, an imaginary place greater than I could ever conceive of. Shanghai—a place I dare not yet call home, but a place that enthralled me and left me with the desire to return.

In this essay I will explain how J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become a structural crutch within the allegorical storytelling of contemporary bloggers.