If you haven’t been to Victoria Falls, do yourself a favor and book a ticket right now.

While you're at it, consider Kruger National Park and hitting four additional Southern African countries in one week - a feat my friends and I embarked on for our mid-semester break. I promise you won’t regret it.

Before coming abroad, it never crossed my mind that there might be some times that I missed home. I get to explore a foreign country, how could I possibly get homesick? With everyone else heading back to school and reuniting, I’m definitely having some FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ve visited Paris before, so I thought it would be familiar, but it is a different experience now that I’m living here everyday. I’m constantly thinking and processing words in French, which can be exhausting.

In the blink of an eye, more than a month has passed since I left for Buenos Aires. So much has happened since then that it would take hours to tell every story. An already lengthy 36-hours of travel turned into a 65-hour ordeal after an overbooked flight stranded me in Panama City for the night.

Over the past week, I had the oportunity to go on the World Heritage Tour. This field trip is put on by IES Abroad during the first week break. In this week we visted Hallstadt, Salzburg, Český Krumlov and Prague. There is so much to talk about and so many photos to share. However, in this post I will talk about my favorite part of the trip: visting the Salt Mine in Hallstadt. 

Within my first hour of being in Morocco, I became attuned to the way that men dominate public space. Whether you’re walking through the medina or driving past the busy city center, women are conspicuously absent from sidewalks and doorways. There are cafes that are filled entirely with men who sit facing the street and watch as people walk by. Many feminists have discussed the “male gaze” as a theoretical tool, but here it can feel literal. On my walk to school I (and other women) are watched and assessed by dozens of men.

It always helps to process thoughts and ideas when you can take a second to reflect on what’s happened. Personally, taking some time to myself to process things helps keep things in order, and also gives me break from the busy day-to-day. After my first week in France, I have learned that that will be more important than ever. I figured since you chose to read past post one (shoutout to my four loyal readers) that I’d share some of my thoughts on my first week in Nice.

Last saturday, I saw a waterfall that changed my outlook on life. It’s called El pailón del diablo, and it was, I suppose, a pretty standard example of a waterfall. It wasn’t the biggest or most powerful I’d ever seen (although my benchmark there is Niagara Falls, so I’m probably a little biased), and it wasn’t in a pure landscape, untouched by human hands: I was feeling the spray of the falls from behind a very clearly man-made stone guardrail, surrounded by tourists.

After our first week of traveling with the European Union program, I am at a loss of where to begin in this blog.  It is quite difficult to reduce this full week of new sights, thoughts, and relationships into one blog post, but I will try my best.  

(Technically, I wrote this last weekend but I was slow to get it posted. I'll post again within the next week, so we're all caught up!)