So… classes really hit the ground running. I thought it would be a good idea to try to finish all of my exposés as soon as possible to free myself up to be less stressed later on in the semester. They would be done, out of the way, and I wouldn’t need to bother myself about them anymore. What I failed to consider, though, is that all the stress I was getting rid of for the end of the semester would be shifted to the beginning.

Seventeen weeks. That’s how long I have in this beautiful city. This is my fifth week living in Vienna, Austria and I can’t believe my journey is almost a third over! Last week was spent exploring Europe. I attended the week-long trip hosted by IES Abroad in addition to my own weekend excursion. I visited five different cities in three different countries! I got back from my trip on Sunday evening and started my regular-term courses on Monday! After having such a prolonged summer, getting back into the classroom feels right.

The French exposé is the French equivalent of the American "final presentation." It's the unnecessarily large and stressful project that every student dreads until the second it is over. The presentation is out loud, in front of the entire class and the professor and is supposed to last somewhere between 10 and 15 min. It requires a lot of preparation, a lot of research, and will make you feel like you're losing your mind. Hoping to avoid that, here are my helpful hint on how to survive your French exposés.

You know what they say: the first and last two weeks of your internship are the most important.

Okay fiiiine, I’ll admit that I don’t think anyone has actually said that. However, I do believe it to be true. Why? In the first two weeks, I meet practically everyone I will work with for the first time, and I get a sense of what the internship will look like going forward. The last two weeks allow me to finish on a good note and keep those relationship bridges alive and well.

One of the first trips I took whilst in Ireland was to Causey Farm, a quaint little Irish farm known for it's variety of animals, bread baking, and purely Celtic landscape. The IES Abroad students took a lovely bus ride in the countryside and before we knew it, we were in the midst of a perfect, traditionally cloudy day.

Upon coming abroad, I definitely expected to experience culture shock. Though some things have surprised me about German culture and I have noticed differences between American and German culture, I can say that I haven’t been hit with culture shock… at least not yet.

I absolutely loved my recent visit to Paris with two other IES Abroad students! We were able to see so much of Paris over the course of 5 days, and we were fortunate to have received a student discount for almost everything we did (the only exception was climbing the Eiffel Tower). As strange as it might sound, my favorite part of Paris has to be the ceilings. It seemed that no matter where we went, I found myself looking up and each time my eyes found a beautiful piece of art or noticed the detailed architecture of a building.