It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Amsterdam for almost seven weeks! At this point, I can walk around my neighborhood without a map, have a good grip on which local cafes are my favorites, and have fallen into some semblance of a day-to-day routine. Between visits to museums, meeting friends around the city, a roundtrip to the airport for a quick trip to London, and a weekend of volunteering across town, I’ve blown through almost enough transit fare to justify getting a monthly pass.

Welcome back! It has been quite some time, which is to be expected because it can take some time to settle into a new country. If you missed the last post, here’s a quick update: My name is Madison, I am originally from the Boston area, and I am studying Health Practice & Policy while I’m in London for the fall semester.

It has been over a month now in Ecuador, and it has become quite obvious the different social groups all international students fall into. At the university, you will meet other foreign students from various countries, immersion programs, and at different Spanish speaking skills. However, the goals you have for your study abroad experience will heavily influence your niche. Personally, making friends while studying abroad was something I was quite hesitant about from the beginning.

A few weeks have passed since my previous update, and I’m adjusting nicely to the rhythm of life in Rabat!

My weekdays begin at 7:00am when I wake up to have breakfast with my host mom, Mama Hnia, and Emily, my roommate. After breakfast, we meet up with a couple other students in the program and the four of us set out on our thirty-minute walk to the IES Abroad Center where our classes are held.

I've been in Rome for four weeks and the city still feels very large and unknown to me. I've intentionally and unintentionally found myself standing in front of the things that people from all over come to see: the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Vatican, and the Spanish Steps. The Trevi Fountain was so much bigger and even more beautiful than I expected it to be. What has left the biggest impression on me so far, however, has been the people here and their warm disposition.

Not by desire but by necessity, I have ascended to near mythical status as a hunter of mosquitos. The past few days have been a nightmarish torment of pestering, buzzing and biting. I tried first to ignore the problem, swatting half-heartedly when the miscreants floated through my line of sight. However, as their numbers and appetites increased, a change needed to be made. For too long I had abided by the doctrine of appeasement, reaping the consequences on my scarlet, Braille skin. It was time for war. 

My second half of the mid-semester break began with landing on a small airstrip surrounded by snow-capped mountains and glittering blue lakes. For a week, I'd be traveling around the South Island of New Zealand with some of my friends from Auckland.

“How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagining that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed.

A note on the sketches: sorry for the white balance on the scans. Life is imperfect and fleeting.