I’m not too sure what I expected LGBTQ life to be like in the first country that has legalized same sex marriage. Maybe that rainbow confetti would get thrown at me upon my first step into the Netherlands, or that a crowd of happy queers decked out in rainbow attire would be present everyway I looked. I was ultimately just searching for a place to call home within the heteronormative (the assumption that straight is the “normal” version of being) world I so often felt I had to hide in.

"Sawadika!” One Moroccan man pressed the palms of his hands together, bowed a little bit, and greeted me in the old medina with “hello” in Thai.

You may be tempted to think that those two photos were taken in Shanghai and, perhaps somewhere in Europe, respectively(if you didn't see the Chinese ads or flags, of course). But in reality, these two places are both in Shanghai, and are not separated by continents, but by a river. In fact, I took these two photos while standing in the exact same place.

When I decided to study abroad, my goal was to improve my Spanish language skills. I have definitely achieved that goal, and in some ways even exceeded the expectations I had for myself, but I’ve also learned a lot of other things that I didn’t expect.

There is so much I haven’t written about, crucial parts of my time in Vienna. Grocery shopping several times a week, walking through the park in Margareten to go to the train station, biking for free because Vienna public services are amazing, and of course, classes.

Before coming to China I was excited to meet new people on my program, and I was also excited to make local Chinese friends. I was looking forward to attending courses at a local university, expanding my comfort zone, and forcing myself to practice my Chinese. Of course, I have Chinese friends at Lafayette, but my excitement about making Chinese friends in China was focused on immersing myself deeper into my abroad program and getting to know the ins and outs of the city from locals.

Last week before my Literature and Place class, our instructor asked us what we were going to miss about London, and it really started sinking in that I’m leaving in less than two weeks. There are a million and one things about London that I’m going to miss once I’ve returned home, but what tops this list is, undoubtedly, theatre.

After traveling for 12 days in a country I've never been to nor speak the language of, I learned through trial and error which apps are necessary and which ones just take up space. For me, this is the ultimate list of the apps I cannot travel without-- they are all free, eco-friendly, and do not require data. Hopefully this list helps your next trip run as smoothly as possible!