I’ve been in Italy for a little over a month now and I want to say that this has been the best and also toughest semester of my life. Going abroad isn’t and will not be easy. There will be things that you will miss and if you are going to a country that doesn’t speak English, the language barrier will always be in the back of your mind. As someone who identifies as a person of color, it has been particularly challenging in some regards, but I have tried my best to willingly open my eyes and ears to the experiences of others.

I've spent the last couple weeks here exploring the different regions of Santiago, and understanding the geographical and cultural distinctions of Chile in general. Navigating a foreign country that speaks a foreign language is challenging, but nonetheless intriguing. I have become more aware of my own cultural and linguistic gaps than ever before. Moreover, the sense of internal displacement starts to kick in. In short, I must be prepared to constantly adapt to the unfamiliar this semester. 

1. Language

In high school, I was very into geography. I loved those quizzes where you matched countries with their locations and their flags. I knew that it wasn’t possible to go to all of these places in a lifetime. Europe was in reach and the US, maybe. And I’ve been to Southeast Asia, so count that in, too. But so many places weren’t even close and I couldn’t dare dreaming.

I think that the large breaks that come along when studying abroad or even back home bring with them, oddly, some amount of pressure. Suddenly you have all this time on your hands, and you feel like you got to make the most of it with travel, especially when you're in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime experience like study abroad. And while the desire to relax and stay in can be tempting and sometimes a break well spent, I find that this pressure to travel is healthy.

Somehow, four weeks in mainland Ecuador flew by, and we've finally arrived in the Galapagos islands. When looking forward to something for so long, sometimes the real thing can end up being a bit of a let down. This is not the case for the Galapagos. We steped of the plane only a 100 ft away from the beach, to experience first hand the most famous archipelago in the world. Within our first hours on the islands, we were already surrounded by the wildlife that makes this place so famous.

As a senior preparing to spend my last college semester abroad, I’m feeling a little bit of anxiety, some excitement, and a whole lot of nostalgia. I spent the previous semester abroad as well, in Dublin, so I said a final goodbye to my home university in Tulsa, Oklahoma many months ago. But as my final semester draws closer and my abroad plans grow more concrete with every passing day, the fact that I will never be returning to the University of Tulsa as a student grows more poignant.

Bonjour à tous! It is a beautiful day in Nantes aujourd'hui, and the sun is finally out after what feels like a month and a half of rain. It is hard to be indoors studying for midterms when there is such a beautiful blue sky right out the giant french doors, but I've been walking the thirty minutes to school every morning which keeps me from getting too restless. It's bizarre to think we've been here almost two months already, and to have MIDTERMS to study for- I feel like I've just started with all of my classes, but we're almost halfway done!