I am officially done with my first week in Siena! It’s been challenging at times, but it’s also been wonderful.
When I last left you, I was sitting at JFK waiting for my flight to Rome. I’m happy to report that the flight went very well, and flying with Alitalia made it sink in that I was going to Italy. When I made it to Rome, I bought a new SIM card for my phone with an Italian number, and then I took another plane to Florence.
Is Italy even real? It sounds crazy, but I've actually had to ask myself this question multiple times during my first week here. Ah, Roma, I love you! Leaving the fleeting familiarity of Paris was daunting, I won't lie. Leaving a place where I knew the language and going into a completely foreign city was surely something I thought was going to take an adjustment period, but as soon as we walked through the narrow Roman streets that first night, I felt at ease.
The end, it seems, is in sight.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”
After a busy morning of orientation, the group headed to the Langa township. Here we learned about the history of Langa, visited the local art center, looked around the hostels, cautiously tried a bite of Smileys (otherwise known as sheep heads), dined at the Mzansi family restaurant, and fell in love with the kids running around giving us high-fives.
“Creo que te vas a encontrar con hispanos,” my mother says to me as I lay in bed reading, making a pointed decision to not pack.
Hello everyone! It has been about two weeks since the summer program began and this weekend IES Abroad took us on our field trip to the old capital of Japan, Kyoto! First of all I want to thank IES Abroad for this opportunity, because they planned a lot for us to do in such a short period of time. Because of this, I was able to see all that I wanted to in Kyoto plus more!
I've had many small successes since arriving in Berlin. I can take public transportation around the city like a pro. I can order a chai latte from a coffee shop in German. I finished an entire jar of Nutella ("50 g gratis!") in less than a week.
Recently, I took a trip to Howth for a hike with IES Abroad which was absolutely stunning and a great way to explore nature outside the city of Dublin without traveling too far away. As we rode the DART, I noticed the names of the stops, first listed in English, then listed in Gaelic. This was a subtle reminder that I was in Ireland.
