Draped over the rising hillsides in central Tuscany,  Volterra is a stone-clad town topped with gorgeous medieval towers, and littered with winding alleyways where swinging washing lines give way to blooming hanging baskets of rose flowers.

The moment you get off the Loreto station and walk up to Via Padova, you enter the world of secret Milan. Multiculturalism is evident everywhere: from the South American restaurants, Chinese supermarkets, to the many money transfer service shops in every corner.

For the final field trip of the program we split into three different groups each traveling to different cities. I was able to visit Budapest, Athens and Bucharest. This post is all about ATHENS! 

(photo 1) Greece greeted us with warm weather and our best hotel room yet. We even had a balcony and a view of the a colorful little street adorned with flowers and pink paint. 

I think Thanksgiving is around the time that homesickness really starts to hit. It started a little earlier for me when Siena began putting up lights in the streets in early November.

          Last Thursday, I stood in a kitchen with two paper bowls of chopped celery, diced carrots, and sliced onion. On a cutting board on the other side of the room, much more messily cut, were the chunks that had resulted from the chopping of two red apples and three cloves of garlic. On the stove, three-quarters of a cup of butter sizzled in a frying pan, and an enormous glass bowl full of stale bread crumbs was sitting on the kitchen table.

So I am lucky enough to have some of the coolest grandparents around. They support me in everything I do and like to come on adventures with me. So far we have gone California, London, and Barcelona together and now we can add the beautiful country of Chile to the list. We were only together here for about 4 days but we sure did fit in a lot of wonderful things.

Before coming to Japan, I really never went to convenience stores in America. American convenience stores were always a bit gross to me and I stopped trusting in the quality of processed and commercialized products from them years ago. If I needed something, there would be a market or speciality store of sorts where I could get my fix of whatever. Upon arriving, my world was rocked.

As the years have passed in my life, I have grown to see that God has a mysterious way of working things out in my life. During my first couple of weeks studying abroad in Shanghai, I had this almost impossible plan to explore Southeast Asia during my 3 months in Asia.. Because of re-entry issues, I soon realized that this almost impossible plan became truly impossible.

The title of this post translates to "eat and drink, that life is short." Which means, life is short so eat what you want! It's okay to indulge in something enjoy, you're only here (abroad) for a limited amount of time, so why not have a chocolate covered pastry with your coffee or another serving of patatas bravas? ;)