As a long-term, intense introvert with social anxiety, past orientations have proven to be difficult for me. In fact, I hated high school orientation so much I’ve essentially blocked it from memory and after day one of college orientation, I decided I would not be returning for day two. I don’t regret this decision. It actually allowed me my first step toward bonding with my first roommate as she had decided to skip day two activities as well.

I’m sitting here reflecting and realizing how quickly time has gone by...it has been one month since I’ve arrived in Berlin. In that one month, I have learned how to order in German, how to dance bachata and salsa surprisingly, where to find tortillas in Berlin, to not jaywalk in front of children (but also not to jaywalk in general!), and how to navigate Berlin’s transportation system. I have yet to try to weinerschnitzel, but it’s on my to-do list.

This video features just a few short clips of the many moments I’ve had in my first month in Spain. My first month in Spain was getting lost in the dusk-lit, winding streets of the Albayzin, figuring out the layout of the local Mercadona supermarket, and memorizing the window fronts of every store I pass by on the way to class. It was trying sweet tea and sweeter pastries in teterías, figuring out where the vegetarian tapas bars were in Granada, and learning how to make Tortilla de Patatas.

When my friends and I first heard of #beastfromtheeast, the massive coldfront hailing from Siberia, we laughed. Most of us are American East Coasters and Midwesterners: anything less than a foot of snow doesn’t really scare us. That’s what snowplows, salt trucks, and shovels are for. We didn’t realize, however, that the whole country was about to shut down.

Studying abroad is exhausting, no matter where you’re studying, no matter what you’re studying, no matter where you’re from, how much you’ve traveled in the past, or how much sleep you get.  When you agree to study abroad, you agree to juggle so many different things at once: exploring an exciting new home, meeting lots of new people, taking interesting new classes with new professors in a new school environment, and traveling to other new places, as well as staying connected to family and friends.  Just typing all of that was exhausting!

Not everyone goes to the Opera in Vienna.

Not everyone spends two hours at Cafe Central.

Certainly not everyone goes to Budapest for a weekend.

Who can afford these opportunities? Who is aware of how the systems to participate work?

Besides being interested in North Africa, I chose to study in Morocco because I figured it would be a place where I could work on Arabic while also putting my French to use. What I did not expect was the complicated and somewhat overwhelming reality of being caught between multiple languages.