Wow, I still can’t believe I’ll be interning in Rome for two months. It is a dream come true.

I know through my last blog post I described how nervous, anxious and scared I was, but honestly, all of that went out the window the minute I got on my flight to Rome. I don’t know if it was the fact that it was really happening or if I was too overwhelmed to feel anything; regardless, I have successfully got over my fear and have been able to adapt to Rome.

Let’s talk about my first few days…

And so I have returned home. It almost feels a little surreal to suddenly be thrown back into the normal life I’ve always known. There are no more bakeries on the corner, no more tram outside my door, no more French to hear every single day. I can say that I do miss it. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I took and I am guaranteed never to have another experience like it again. None of us who were involved will ever experience something like that exactly the same, even the professors.

I am sure that some other IES Abroad blogger one day had this headline for their post "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?" Well, it is true! I miss Barcelona more than I thought I would, waaaay more! But it's not only the vibrant city that today I consider one of my homes that I miss, what I truly miss is the whole experience that I lived during the Spring semester of 2017. Of course, Barcelona is where most of the experience took place, and it was the place that I called home for four months.

Whew.

Today, it all just seemed way too much. Too much brokenness, too much darkness, too much hopelessness, too many people living in it.

In Barcelona, directions are never in terms of north or south; instead, they’re in terms of las montañas (the mountains) or el mar (the sea). From most places in the city you can see the sweep of the Collserola Mountains in the distance, and the Mediterranean is just in the opposite direction. Since I want to take advantage of everything Barcelona has to offer, I’ve spent the last week exploring both las montañas and el mar.

The doors swung close, pinching my backpack between them, and I hoped that the bus driver had noticed. He did, he reopened the doors, and I forced one more step forward into the mass of people standing in front of me. Considering that my morning bus to work arrives every 8 minutes, and that there are multiple buses that share similar routes, I would have thought that the bus (much like the metro) would not be packed with commuters during so many hours of every weekday.

After I finish class, I often head to Kanda University’s Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) on campus. SALC is a space for students to improve their foreign language skills. The newly-constructed building is very popular. Every day, students pack every corner of the center to hang out, take snaps, or study. The building also has several classrooms, used primarily for English courses. Professors often send their students out of these classrooms to interview international students on the SALC’s second floor, where only English is allowed.