As my time in Barcelona comes to a close, I've started thinking about my experience abroad this semester. Barcelona has been my home since the first week of January. Over these past four months, I have formed friendships with waiters, storekeepers, roadside vendors, and Spanish students. I've discovered incredible restaurants, parks, markets, and bars. I have become a professional in navigating the city's transportation system and main squares.

Residence hall or host family? It was my biggest question before coming to Salamanca. It seems to me that living with a host family helps you integrate into the Spanish culture more easily but on the other hand, choosing to live in a residence hall might give you more freedom. I was assigned to live in Colegio Cuenca-a student residence hall close to the Facultad de derecho and Facultad de economía. So far I have enjoyed living in a residence hall.

Okay so here it is! Now due to some unforseen (read: studying for finals) circumstances all of us here (read: me) have narrowed down the Reindeer photos to the 16 best photos from the Cairngorm Reindeer center near Inverness. This was one of the best days of my life. Granted I'm an animal lover, but there seemed to be a general consensus among the group that this was one of the coolest experiences ever.

With the sakura come and gone, the Japanese students have returned to campus. For some strange reason, I cannot really remember the campus being so crowded in comparison to last semester.

4-11-15                                                 

Istanbul: The Sunken Palace

Fish underground. They were like ghosts, like small glaciers moving across the bottom. A gray shadow. A phantom. The imagination projected below the feet of the people walking above, as if it were seeping into the street, dripping, and then falling as fish into the Basilica Cistern below. Yerebatan Sarayı, the Sunken Palace.

So Part 2... 

New Zealand is renown for having 9 Great Walks, which require several days, kilometers, dedication, and blood blisters to get through.  I am proud to say I have completed my first of these, and am 1/3 of my way through getting to my goal of walking 3 of them (truthfully there’s 5 I hope to complete but my status as a full-time student makes this goal rather difficult to achieve). 

You have no idea how desperately I wish I could take credit for figuring out that Slovenia has the word "love" in it, but unfortunately the tourist department in Slovenia is too on top of things for me to be the first. The souvenir shops in the city carried many objects, most of which revolving around dragons (which I'll discuss in more detail in a minute). However, the souvenir shop at the tourist information center was filled with keychains and mugs which said "I Feel sLOVEnia".