IES classes are over, although I’ll be taking my Humboldt classes for another month. This past week was a rush of exams, final projects, and research papers.

The transition from exam week to a calendar with a lot more blanks in it is always weird for me. Last week I was operating at Maximum Efficiency, or as close as I could manage to be in a universe where Facebook is still a thing. Now I’m down to a handful of short-term homework assignments and a room that, okay, really does need to be cleaned.

Hey! Hi! Hello!

Hey everyone! In this vlog, we left the hotel that we stayed at for the first night. We made our way over to the National Olympic Memorial Youth Center where we got assigned our dorm rooms, which will be our home for the next handful of weeks! After that, I unpacked my bags and called it a day!

After weeks of planning, booking buses and Spanish conversations with way too many AirBnB hosts, six of my friends and I finally had the chance to make it out to Barcelona this past weekend. As I’m sure you’ll be able to tell, the trip was filled with adventures (and mishaps, admittedly), and a visit to the city really helped me understand how diverse this country really is.

June 23^rd was not any ordinary morning. The night before London received massive amounts of rain, shutting down train lines and causing severe delays, making the morning commute a disaster all over the city. Queues circled around the tube stations, angry Londoner, after angry Londoner just trying to make it to work on time. Except this morning it wasn’t just work they were racing to; many were going to the nearest polling station, to vote in the biggest referendum in modern history: to stay or leave the European Union.

English: I’ve been living in Barcelona for a month…?!?!?! Not sure how the first half of my time here is already over – in some ways it feels like I’ve been here forever and in others it feels like I’m just getting started. One of my goals when I left for Barcelona was to truly live in the moment – I know that sounds cliché, but this past school year I constantly felt like I was running out of my time. Being half way done with college really hit me and realizing how fast time really does go by was a huge reality check.

If you had the opportunity to do anything for three days in China, what would you do?

I should remind you, as I was reminded myself, that these seven weeks are far from an easy, breezy, luxurious vacation to South America for the summer. Part of me took for granted that I had the freedom to do as I pleased, when I pleased, and just because I pleased. This week, however, the class work has successfully inundated me. There is a paper due tomorrow as well as a test in my public health class, then a 10 minute presentation due the following day.