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The first three and a half days in Salamanca made me wonder why I'd ever been excited to study abroad. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, and always a little confused. There were too many faces, places, and names to remember—and why did all the Spanish men seem to have the same haircut from behind? Orientation was leaving me even more disoriented, and I felt like something was wrong; studying abroad was supposed to be fun!
In the 7th grade, I wrote about social inequalities in one essay contest and was thus authoritatively labeled as “being too extreme” a
My first post! Where to begin? I’ll be arriving in Cape Town in just a couple days, and it goes without saying that the time I have left in the U.S. is being spent trying to think of every last thing I might need to prepare, pack, or plan for my semester abroad.
In less than a week I will be boarding the flight to head to my fourth new home in the past six months. Sure, it won’t be a permanent home, since I’ll only be in Rabat for a semester, but then again at this point in my life I don’t really seem to have a single permanent home anymore. This past summer was my last one in the Philadelphia area, my family’s home for the past ten years and where I have returned to for holidays since I started university in Washington DC.
Success! The plane has docked and the people have filed out, we've been bused to the airport terminal and I've been taxied to the apartment. With relative ease I've arrived in Shanghai and am now officially studying abroad. After having arrived and gotten somewhat more comfortable in what is undoubtedly still a very new environment to me, I think I can perhaps offer some tips for some of the more immediate, arrival-related minutia of studying abroad.
With my third week in Dublin finished, I am nearly a quarter of the way through my time in Ireland… and the feeling of panic is setting in. Where should I travel? When should my family visit? What do I still need to see in Ireland?
I've been in Paris for a little more than a week and it's... indescribable. The magic of the city isn’t just an American fantasy but a real, almost tangible thing. This is most likely due to the fact that I have only seen Paris as a tourist so far, taking pictures of every mildly interesting building I see and not yet understanding the lay of the land. But there are perks to being a tourist: not caring how silly you look taking selfies with national monuments and having some beautiful pictures that will forever remind you of your study abroad.
Bonjour! I've been in France for a little over two weeks now, and while the first one felt like it crawled by with all the orientation events, this past week has gone by in the blink of an eye. We started courses on Monday, and I can already tell it's going to a be a little while before I'm able to understand everything being said, let alone start to critically analyze texts. However, I'm enjoying listening and taking notes as much as I can.
