I'm now home in Denver, Colorado and while I'm happy to be back with my dog and parents, I have been feeling pretty senti about the past four months. I've been thinking a lot about everything I got to do while abroad, and I've compiled a list of the top ten.

Ciao! Last weekend, we had the opportunity to visit Pompei and the Amalfi Coast. This trip was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We all keep talking about it and how incredible it was and laugh about all the memories we made during it! We started off the weekend taking a bus to Pompei and going on a tour of the ruins. Pictures do not do these places justice! Then we got on a bus in 100 degree heat without A/C to get to our wine tasting/lunch just at the bottom of Mount Vesuvius.

Before leaving Chile, I took a final trip to yet another of its dramatic ecosystems – the Atacama Desert. At a base level of 7,900 feet and less than one millimeter of rain per year, it is known as one of the highest, driest places on earth, and certainly did not disappoint in either respect!

One of the first things I noticed upon arriving in Freiburg is how many bicycles there are. As soon as you walk out of the Hauptbahhof (main train station) there are bikes EVERYWHERE. Right next to the Hauptbahnhof is a parking garage for bikes with parking spaces for 1,000 bikes, plus other parking all around. People were speeding by on bicycles right alongside the cars, and even small children had were trailing behind their parents on small bikes with streamers and bright colors.

Richmond is currently 90 degrees and probably the most beautiful I have seen it in the four years I’ve lived here. Blue skies, thousands of trees, and puffy white clouds straight out of movies bring me some peace as I sulk in a melting pot of nerves, excitement, gratitude, and thirty tabs on German history. I’m originally from Brazil, and even though I’ve lived in the United States since I was ten months old, going to Europe, Germany at that, for my college study abroad was not necessarily something I was expecting to do.

“Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” —Wilma Rudolph

Studying abroad is an investment in your education and your future that you won’t likely regret. While traveling always involves expected (and unexpected) expenses, there are also always ways to enjoy wherever you’re studying without maxing out your budget.

Having lived in Paris for over a month now, I’ve compiled a list of my top 6 favorite activities in the city you don’t need to bring your wallet for.

Traveling abroad in itself is often a completely uprooting experience—it shows us perspectives far outside of our own. Though traveling to another country and working there are on quite different levels. Here are five things I’ve learned in my internship in Paris:

This past week my study abroad program had the opportunity to spend five days traveling around Morocco with Morocco Exchange. I loved our time in Morocco and felt like every one of us learned a lot and grew as people because of the experience. I really hope to go back in the future and explore some of these places for a longer period of time, because I definitely wasn’t ready to leave! In this post I want to give you a short introduction to our experiences in each city we visited.

The moment I set foot on campus and saw the study abroad table at the campus activities fair, I knew I wanted to spend a semester of my college time abroad. I marched straight to my study abroad office to learn about where I could go and what I could study. After talking to my friends and family for months about it, I decided where to go. While they thought I’d be just across the Atlantic Ocean in Europe or down in South America, in fact, I’d chosen Auckland—almost all the way across the globe.