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.

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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. 

Hello, my name is Christella, I was born in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. I am a Vocal Music major at Berea College and will be in Paris this semester as I continue to study music. 

I spent the past weekend on my college campus saying goodbye to my friends. They started school Aug 21 but I don't leave the country until Sep 1. While on campus, I saw so many new faces, faces I wouldn't get a chance to meet until January. 

The beginning of classes has gotten everyone to start settling into life here abroad in Sydney. While often many students travel around Australia when they come to study abroad, many who are living on a budget (like myself), find more local means of traveling around. I have a trip planned to Byron Bay for the mid-semester break, which I am excited to write about when I experience it later. For now, however, I have been taking a liking to adventuring around the suburbs surrounding Sydney.

Hi everyone, my name is Sallie and I will be studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain for the next three and a half months! I only have one more full day left until my departure, so I have been frantically running errands, making lists, and throwing really unnecessary things into suitcases. During this exciting time, I have been painting to calm my nerves and ease all the anxieties that come along with moving to a country I’ve never been to before (and it’s a great way to procrastinate packing).

Bulky, olive and brutish, frays schism and cleave at every corner. Hard plastic worn smooth. Metal neatly pinched together. It waits, patient and tranquil, unrelenting and demanding, prepared to be prepared. 

In two days I will be heading to Rome for the semester. This whole endeavor has always felt so distant and far away. The closer it gets to departure the more I find myself trying to comprehend the reality of it all. The past few weeks I have found myself subconsciously looking a little closer at the things I drive by every single day in Hillsborough, New Jersey.

I’m standing at my apartment windows, watching Amsterdam light up all the way to the horizon. Excited Dutch chatter floats up from the courtyard; from further out comes the click-whoosh of bicycle wheels and the clang of tram bells. After dark, everything hums with energy -  the planes circling Schiphol like fireflies, the turrets and treetops claiming space from the skyscrapers. Everyone seems so alive.