With Valentine’s Day approaching it’s time to talk about love and finding your match. And I’m here to talk about finding my perfect study abroad match, Paris, a.k.a ‘The City of Love.’

“Traveling- it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller." -Ibn Buttata 

Class is fun when the world (Paris) is your classroom. What I mean by this, is a lot of classes I’m taking have mini field trips around Paris during class time. These field trips include museums, different parts of Paris, or historical buildings.

“Esos ya no tenemos, los vamos a recibir mañana.” I had been able to get most of my books at the librería near school but the three I needed for my Prado class still hadn’t arrived. I would have to pay Librería Visor another visit.

“Entonces probablemente vuelvo mañana para comprarlos.”

Being out and about in Spain has really made it evident how much I don’t know about the world. There are so many cultural differences, nuances and common knowledge that come with growing up in a different part of the world. Whether it’s how many people smoke on the street or the fact that there are hardly any skyscrapers in the Madrid. Or that most college students live with their parents and hardly any live on their college campus.

My first adventure outside of Spain was to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was awesome to explore the culture and get back to my Dutch roots. We flew in to the Amsterdam Schiphol airport from Barcelona which was about a 2.5 hour direct flight. It was about $150 for a roundtrip international ticket which is still hard for me to wrap my head around...I can't even fly from Albany to DC with that! Regardless, the budget airline wasn't too bad and the entire journey was relatively quick and easy.