The following are some small comforts as I am in the process of saying “goodbye and good riddance” to Dublin:

• Only having to go to the grocery store once a week rather than three because the produce is so organic in Ireland that it doesn’t last as long.

• Realizing that you have an unanticipatedly large amount of money left over due to being unreasonably frugal for four months and making friends with people who are also free activity enthusiasts.

Is this paradise? After walking around the West Lake in Hangzhou, we went to one of the pagodas surrounding the lake around sunset. We climbed up to the fifth floor and could see all of the West Lake and the city of Hangzhou on the horizon. In Chinese, “上有天堂,下有蘇杭” (Shàng yǒu tiāntáng, xià yǒu sū hang) means there is heaven above and there is Suzhou and Hangzhou below, and from the top of the pagoda, I understood what the Chinese meant. I could have stayed up there forever in awe of the view.

As I sit here, about to sleep outside the Stresa train station in northern Italy, the phrase ‘one day, one room’ has never been so applicable. The term was coined by the producers of the TV show House; the meaning behind it is essentially that the story of our lives can be represented as a series of rooms. Each room builds on the previous ones you’ve been in but ultimately the only one you can affect is the one you’re in currently. You’re with who you’re with, doing whatever you’re doing right now so you might as well make the most of it.

This past Sunday, I ran my first half-marathon ever! Undertaking this race was about as random to me as it probably is to you and your understanding of the ‘typical study abroad experience’ because it probably doesn’t include running a 21-kilometer race I signed up for the race without giving it much thought, but knowing that I’d always wanted to run one and figuring why not start in Nice, France?!