Me, walking into a room wearing sunglasses and a sports jacket: Hey, thanks for having me here today, Jacques.

Also me, already sitting in an armchair wearing a turtleneck, with pen and notebook in hand: Of course, Jacques! You know we always love to have you on the show.

Me, sitting down in an opposite-facing armchair in front of a low burning fireplace: Always a pleasure.

We have arrived in Rome! Our apartment was about a five-minute walk to Vatican city and centrally located. Our first week started off by taking a guided tour of the biggest sites in the city such as the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, and the Trevi fountain. We all threw a coin into the fountain to make a wish that we would come back to Rome. We got to meet our student companion, who showed us around her city and showed us a little bit of the night life. We danced the night away right into our first week of classes!

Though I am a bit delayed in the uploading/posting process, I promise I am going to take you all through a lot more interesting places. The next stop on my Italian summer landed me in Florence/Pisa for an incredible weekend. The art in Florence alone made the trip worthwhile. Pieces you never thought you'd see in person hanging in front of you is jaw-dropping. Florence has incredible landscapes and equally exquisite architecture! Then we spent the next day in Pisa. This was the highlight of my trip up to that point. I loved Pisa.

Thinking back on my time abroad, I am so glad I was able to participate in my program. I have not mentioned this before in any of my blog posts, but I actually was not super interested in going abroad. Weird, I know. I was super excited about the idea of my program when I first found it on the IES Abroad website, super excited when I applied, but the second I got in I no longer wanted to go. The idea of packing up and moving across the world, even for just six weeks, did not appeal to me anymore.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been working on a research project on refugees in Berlin and the need for redesigned urban infrastructure to accommodate forcibly displaced people and families. Germany has the highest immigration rate, both total and per capita, in all of Europe. With this in mind, my laptop has been filled with tabs upon tabs of journals and articles from the World Economic Forum and City Lab. Of course, as I’m in Berlin, I’m also using the city itself as a way to learn more deeply about how refugees are settling in.

Some might say that buying two plane tickets and booking a hostel three days before a flight are irresponsible and rash decisions. I, a study abroad student in Berlin, call it spontaneity and “I am only a college student studying abroad in Europe once.” Last weekend I woke up at 5:45 a.m., got dressed, and took the U7 route on the U-Bahn to Shönefeld airport, the uglier and more frustrating of the two relatively mediocre Berlin airports. I landed in Madrid at noon after a three-hour flight and headed straight to my hostel.

I’ve managed to survive just over one month living abroad, and the countdown to leave has begun. Along with the seven other people I’ve lived with, we’ve managed to form quite the positive experience here in Dublin. At first it was a test of adaptation and a game of who would dare to figure out the rules nearly everywhere we went. For example, the first morning we arrived it was decided we all desperately needed to visit the grocery store across the street from our housing named Lidl.

A girl.

A gun.

Her gun.

First the Great Wall, and now more mountains! This past weekend, I embarked on a trip to Yellow Mountain, a UNESCO World Heritage site. This mountain is regarded as the loveliest mountain of China, and I can confirm. Even when we were two hours away from the mountain, I could feel its presence. There was a calming atmosphere surrounding the area. The smaller mountains along the way broke up low-looming clouds and fog, preparing us for the grand display. Humble towns emerged from the valleys as we weaved our way along the landscape.