Studying abroad is is the time to explore and live your best life, but it can be overwhelming when you're first starting off. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when considering how to begin your adventure. 

Do

1) Try all the food, and eat as local as possible

Italy is known for its incredible food and wine, and it’s the perfect time to try it all. If you’re generally a picky eater, now is the time to push yourself and sample everything offered to you.

I have spent the last 3 ½ months in the fashion capital of the world and the finance capital of Italy. My life was nothing like what I expected it to be, and that was the most fun part about it. Here are the 10 things that I’ll truly miss about the city.

1. The Food: This one is pretty self-explanatory. I had pasta for at least one meal a day and it seemed like every restaurant I went to made it better than the one before. I’ll especially miss three-hour dinners where everyone is simply in the moment, enjoying the company of each other.

Time has flown by and Spring Break has drawn near. Before coming to Argentina, I hadn’t thought much about what other countries I would like to travel to. Luckily, I had some great friends who had come prepared with ideas.

Before I knew it, we had decided. I was going to Santiago De Chile (The Capital City) and Valparaiso (a neighboring town).

After successfully completing Midterms, a couple of booked AirBnb’s, and a quick two hour flight later, I was in a new country with wonderful friends.

With a little less than a week left of my time in Berlin, I wanted to reflect on my indescribable experience here.

Waking up on Sunday morning felt so surreal. The fact that within a week, I would be waking up in the United States. This doesn't make any sense to me. How could it be that my time here has come to an end? It feels so soon. It feels as if I just unpacked yesterday. I know I can't turn back time nor slow it down, but can an exception be made? 

For fifteen days I have been back in the U.S., and for a handful of these days I have been pondering what I wanted to write about in my final blog post. To be completely honest, I have been at a loss when I begin to think about what I want to share with everyone about my experience. How do I put 5 months of experiences, thoughts, people and places into a single post, and do so eloquently?

最近どう

Reading my last post, if you've followed my semester at all you were likely wondering why I didn't include one specific person while listing off the people who made my semester special. That is because when looking through my photos of friends and thinking back on my time here, I found myself with both a plethora of pictures of and lot of things to say about Tommy. Unable to decide between these pictures, each of which holds a different flavor of Tommy, I thought it would be fitting to give him his own post.

Arriving in Buenos Aires, one of the things that I was most worried about was whether I'd be able to make any friends. I didn't know a single soul in the city I had decided to spend a year of my life and was now 6,000 miles away from everybody I cared about. I'm a pretty quiet person at first, especially in social situations where I don't know anybody, and adding language barriers on top of that made me wonder if I had overestimated myself in coming here.

Have you ever gone to a train station and took the first train to wherever it was going? My friend and I have. It was a Saturday morning when we came down to Placa Catalunya train station and hopped on a train that was going to a place called Blanes. We have never heard of it before. We decided that we would not ride till the terminal station but would randomly choose a stop to exit the train. It would have to be not earlier than 40 minutes.

Ah yes here comes the fun part. The studying in studying abroad of course. I personally don’t feel affected heavily or drowning in papers and stress. I made sure to take my art and English minor classes here. As a senior, there are not too many main core classes that I need here.