Hi everyone! Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Hope you all are doing well and enjoying yourselves this time of year. Ever since I got back, everything flowed very well back with my family that it doesn’t feel like I even left! Even though I’ve had new and different experiences, it’s nice to come back to the comfort of my own home. People have been trying to make plans and catch up and all I want to do is curl up and sleep. I think after taking such a big trip, it’s exhausting to tell the same story.

Recently, I’ve found that self-care hasn’t been on top of my priority list. I think since my time in Barcelona was ending, I said yes to opportunities to have adventures and travel more often. Saying no is extremely powerful. Saying no can be a form of self-care because often times we get into the mindset that we have to do everything and be there for everyone but that’s it’s not worth it if you’re not saving some you for YOU. The month of November is when I got sick for about two weeks. I still said yes to many outings.

Hi everyone! It’s been a while, so I thought I’d catch up with you all. I’m back at home now! We made it! But before I share how it feels being back from studying abroad, I want to go over a few things that I learned while I was abroad.

Pack Light

Since coming home, I have heard the same question over and over:

How was studying abroad? 

On the plane ride home, I actually made bullet points to answer the impending question. This letter is for family, friends and anyone else who wants to know how my study abroad was. So here it is:

Dear Everyone,

How do I even begin to describe the city that, for four months, I have come to call home? Modern Madrid is a metropolitan city, with a fairly diverse population and it has influences from both older era and the evolving new one. LGBT rights are firmly defended, and one of the barrios, Cheuca, is a largely LGBT community, but influences are widespread throughout Madrid. There are growing immigrant populations, and several barrios such as Lavapiés and La Latina are including a more diverse range of gastronomy within Madrid.

It’s a very tough realization when you return home from an amazing trip and realize that no one cares as much about it as you do. You will have friends and family members who ask a few questions and are interested in your photos, but no one will ever share the same level of enthusiasm that you have. This can be tough, and it is just one of the struggles that you will encounter.

Hey everyone!

My time in Freiburg, Germany has come to an end but now I have a lot of free time to reflect and think about my abroad experience. Even though I'm back at home, I'll still be posting a little on my blog. This post is dedicated to the six apps that saved my life while I was abroad and will probably continue saving me in America too. 

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Okay, so I kind of stalled writing my last blog post because of the fact that I don't want to admit that my time in Germany has come to an end. But, now is the time where I reflect on how it feels to be home after a whirlwind experience on the other side of the world. 

While my physical body may be back in California, my head and my heart are still back in Tokyo. (Especially my head, jet lag has made it extremely difficult to re-adjust to a normal sleep schedule on Pacific time).

While there is still so much more I want to see and do in Japan, I am happy with the choices I made and the things I did while I was studying abroad this past term. I may not have done all the things I put on my original bucket list (let’s be real, it was definitely a little ambitious), but I have no regrets looking back.

After being back home for a little more than week it almost feels as though I never left. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with my cats and made some plans with friends I haven’t seen in a while. Everything is more or less like I remember it. I’ve heard that integrating back into your home country can be hard, but personally I’m not feeling much of a culture shock. This is probably in part due the structure of this particular program.