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From hard work to hard play, this blog post includes some of my favorite days so far in Ecuador! First off, me and a couple of wonderful girls spent a day of the celebrating the holiday called Carnaval in a small town called Guaranda where the festivities are real. We arrived late in the after coming back from a hike, so we missed the parade but still saw some of the extravagantly dressed members of different groups walking around in their colorful costumes.
“I love you too, you wonderful lady. I hope your last few weeks abroad are amazing and you come home feeling satisfied and not too sad.” Not too sad.
This is what my friend Elena said to me as she left Dublin this Sunday. She came to visit me for the weekend from Paris, where she’s been studying for the semester. She got to meet my friends and peers. She got to meet Darragh. She got to meet everyone important to me here.
It is now April, which means I have less than one month left in Nice. I have planned this month out very carefully by not planning anything. I have decided to be done with weekend trips; instead, I would like to enjoy my last month making sure I get the most out of the city I chose to study in.
Also, totally unrelated, traveling is expensive and guess who is starting to feel like she should maybe save some money? This girl.
For Easter break, I met up with my boyfriend, Chris, in Sydney, Australia. We hadn’t seen each other for seven weeks so we wanted to make the most out of the eleven days we had together. This was the first trip we had taken together and the longest trip I had planned without the help of my parents.
Sunday April 3rd, 2016 21:30
Alhamar, Granada
Hey everyone!
Not only is this year the year of the monkey according to the Chinese lunar calendar, it is also the China-US Year of Tourism. On Friday, March 25, they hosted a launch event at the Great Wall to commemorate the start of the year of joint-tourism. We, the IES Abroad students, were lucky enough to be some of the 1,000 Americans invited to hike the Great Wall on this special occasion.
When I was in the 7th grade, my parents took a trip to Italy and left my brother and me at home. Cruel, I know. Granted, it was their anniversary or something special like that and we got to spend a week with our grandma (no parents, no rules???), but ever since I saw the pictures and heard the stories, Italy was at the top of my travel list. Last week, that dream finally came true.
I went to Downton Abbey yesterday. Yes, the real one. It exists, and it’s called Highclere Castle. For those of you unfamiliar with the TV show, Downton Abbey is set in an aristocratic English country home, and it looks as beautiful in reality as it does onscreen.
