For the past week and a half I have felt so strange, like the world I am now inhabiting isn’t real. Or maybe it’s Morocco that isn’t real, and I’ve just woken up from a dream. The first few days back in the States, I kept looking at my phone, adding four hours to the time, and imagining what was happening in Rabat and what my host family was doing at that time. 3pm here – almost time to break the fast in Morocco. Getting ready for bed at 11pm – my host family must be getting up for suhoor before sunrise.

It’s hard to believe but my year in Granada has finally come to an end. I am writing this on the plane, about an hour out from the Newark, NJ airport. Just 24 hours ago, I spent my last night in Granada at the Mirador San Nicolas, eating take-away kebab with a friend, and gazing out at the Alhambra one last time. Admiring that magnificent monstrosity of red brick, glittering against the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains, I felt in that moment as if there was nowhere else I'd rather be.

Want to study abroad ? Thinking about the IES Abroad EU program, but not sure if it’s for you? Maybe you’ve seen brochures from your school or found images online about study abroad programs, but you haven’t seen anyone who looks like you in them. Maybe you are worried about how being an LGBTQ+ student will affect your experience abroad. I think this is a feeling that a lot of minority students face, when considering study abroad.

Whenever I share photos or talk about the experiences I’ve had in the Galapagos, I typically try to be as positive as possible, but sometimes this can cause me to overlook some of the less glamorous aspects. This is not to say that my time there wasn’t amazing and I wasn't constantly surrounded by unparalleled beauty, but in reality some of the less glamorous aspects came with the most important lessons.

From my experiences this year abroad, I’ve become critical of the way study abroad is portrayed. It seems full of fluff, an experience that is too good to be true. In fact, my high expectations for Amsterdam lead me to be dismayed at points. I’d expected challenges in Ecuador, yet Europe seemed like a different story. An adventure full of happiness and fun 24/7. It hasn’t been, just as life isn’t a continual stream of positivity. My below post is an attempt to expose this unfair standard we hold to those who study abroad.

My childhood neighborhood harbors some of my fondest memories. From sledding in the woods behind my neighbor’s house, barely avoiding shrubs and the impending icy pond at the bottom, to creating neighborhood wide games of tag, capture the flag and manhunt. I was part of something bigger than myself, even if it was only a collection of a few houses in a small suburb of New Hampshire.

In my experience, students have the expectation that studying abroad in one country in Europe easily enables opportunities to travel to other nearby countries. I for one, thought that I would be able to go around Spain with another friend studying in Madrid, visit a family friend in Germany, and other high school classmates in England. Yet, of all of these expectations, I only really managed to make it over to Madrid—and this was largely because my flight to the U.S. was flying out of the airport there.

Hello, everyone, my name is Rachael Haugh and I will be one of the many correspondents for the trip to Dublin, Ireland this summer! I was born and raised in the beautifully green and always misty Portland Oregon where the summers are moderate and hipsters are everywhere. After finals week I came back to Portland and find myself now sitting in my room wondering how I will tackle the massive task of fitting everything in my packing list into a checked bag (which I will be living out of for two months).

Are you searching for advice on packing for an extended stay abroad while your clothes await your careful choices? Have you heard other students regretting their overstuffed suitcases and don't want to repeat their mistakes? In this article I'm going to explain my method for making sure I don't pack too many clothes (and that I don't pack too few!).