My favorite season, without a doubt, is autumn.  I love the colors of the leaves, the crispness of the air, the clothes, the candles…the list goes on.  I particularly love the holidays we celebrate in the fall.  I’ve debated with myself for many years between Thanksgiving and Christmas, trying to decide which is better.  Ultimately, I realized I love them both too much to pick one over the other – kind of a cop-out, I know, but it’s pretty close to impossible for me to choose.

We call them our laundry people. They live in a building in front of ours, on the second floor. Every day I see them in their windows when I’m on my balcony. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they laugh, sometimes they don’t talk. They cook all together, they watch TV around 8 at night and play dominoes after dinner.

It’s a family of 3: a mom, a dad, and their son in his 30s. They own a Laundromat on the first floor of their building, right under their apartment. It's called "Lavandería" which translates into 'laundry' in English.

Back in High School, my orchestra put on this event called "Swinging in Vienna." It was a formal dance where the orchestra would play waltzes and the jazz band would play swing music. At this time, I had no idea why we named our dance after Vienna. It was not until looking into studying abroad here that I discovered that Vienna is known for having Balls! Ball season is in January and Feburary but there are a few that are held in December, which is lucky for those studying away in fall semester.

What's a better way to (almost) end your time studying abroad than to get the chance to go to Poland for five days? This trip was something I had been anticipating since the start of the program. To be honest, Poland was never a top country I had a desire to go to, so I was eager to see how I would like going there.  In summary, this trip was like going on a road trip with your family that never seemed to end. Somewhere along the way, we made it to Warsaw and then Wroclaw. 

ごきげんよう.

At my home institution, some know me as a writer or performer, mostly through slam poetry. I knew I wanted to continue it in some capacity while abroad and I actually found a slam team at the local college but unfortunately, they only spoke German. After that, I decided that the best way to keep writing was to do just that, keep writing, and confine my spoken words to a sheet of paper. This is the mini series of short poems that I have crafted this semsester along with photo accompaniment. Less is truly more. 

Hello all, here as promised, are my top travel life lessons learned while studying abroad in Madrid!

Ahh everyone’s favorite game! I did my own lil 21 questions of Australia featuring some of my amazing friends that I met at Sydney Uni this semester. This video was a blast to make, but more importantly(!!) it has helped me gather ideas in preparation for when my parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles, and all my other relatives ask me wellll over 21 questions about Australia over Christmas break. Thank you to everyone who let me interview them, and hopefully you’ll get a kick out of their candid responses!!

If you’re going to travel for fall break, I recommend checking out a new country. You will have more time to really get to know a place instead of dashing off for a quick weekend getaway. You could also travel in your host country, but I find it easier to save those trips for weekends since you can just hop on a train. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of value in exploring your host country — after all, you’re there for 3 months so you should be an expert on your country by the time your program ends.

Everywhere I travel, I have always purchased a snowglobe to remember my time. Last January, I did some traveling around Europe and brought home 4 snowglobes. After struggling to get all those home, I decided to tone it back a bit during my study abroad. So far I have only purchased one snowglobe and I could not be happier with the story behind it.