Well, folks, it's been a full week since I landed in Dublin, and it's safe to say that I am pleasantly overwhelmed.

So much has happened in the past seven days. As I sat here in the basement of a coffee shop to write this blog post, I'm not even sure where to start. This week has been filled with so many introductions, surprises, learning, and adventures, I find it almost impossible to summarize, but I’ll do my best.

It’s only been a week since we left the U.S. and it already feels as if a month has gone by! The days have been full of activity and even though I’m still tired, I feel like my body is finally adjusting. Before I begin, I must mention that my roommate, Lindsay, and I just got pulled into an impromptu dance session with a group of women (whom we don’t know) downstairs. It was so much fun!

“Ohla! Ohla! Estás aquí?” slam thud thud “OHLA!”

I pop an eye open, face glued to the mattress. “Sí! Sí! Estoy aquí!” I’m still recovering from a rather unsettling dream involving the slow mastication of my feeble body in the web of a million spiders, but I manage to roll over and glance out of my new room onto the patio— sun berating hot red tile, florescent chairs glistening vibrantly, me wearing one sock and a ragged tank top. “Uno momento por favor!”

This past Sunday afternoon, I met up with two friends, Brad and Sally, to play some pick-up ultimate frisbee at Gleisdreieck Park. We have been playing a lot together in our first few weeks in Berlin, testing out practices with different teams and getting to know the frisbee culture in Germany.

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.