During our time in Beijing, it was inevitable that we were going to come across different types of medicine from our own at some point. And not just the kind where the language on the perscription is different. The kind where the methods for curing illnesses and staying well are different than the home remedies that you grew up with, where you're not really sure just what it's doing but you kind of cross your fingers and hope that it works.
Though I’m by no means fluent but rather just barely conversational in Italian, I can count on my survival knowledge of the language in most situations. Before departing for Monaco, I didn’t even muse over the potential struggle of visiting a French-speaking country without the pre-departure preparation of my travel-savvy parents with whom I normally travel. Even if I had pondered this, I would have undoubtedly been confident that my 7 years of French could at the very least get me through a weekend, right? WRONG.
I never thought such a place in the world existed before I made a visit to the Cinque Terre. It was like being inside a post card; it didn’t seem real. While the rest of the students ventured off to Milano for the weekend, I decided to take a solo trip to experience the beautiful Italian Rivera!
Today is the 14th of July, and the beginning of our last week in Freiburg! It’s been a very short summer. Since my last update, we’ve finished the last leg of Turkey, and made it back safely to Germany. It’s good to be back, but Turkey was a lot of fun.
This past weekend I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Oslo, Norway with three of my friends on the program. We arrived at our Airbnb on Thursday night to the mother of the owner of the apartment who let us in and showed us around. Known to us as our Oslo Grandmother, she was the sweetest little lady, even buying us fruit and juice before we got there and letting us know how worried she was when we arrived later than planned (it took us a while to figure out the public transportation system).
I landed in London late on Thursday evening, with two full days to see as much of the city as I possibly could. I stayed with my friend Jessie, who offered to show me around her favorite parts of the city on Friday. We took to the streets that morning ready for a full day of walking out in beautiful sunshine, which, as I understand it, was extremely lucky and unusual weather for the area.
Finally the phase of disbelief is over. The “am I really in South Africa?” phrase can be heard as a distant echo of the past. Frequent trips to neighborhood coffee shops and pick’n pay (it’s a typical Wal-Mart equivalent) are becoming the norm. You could even confuse us for, dare I say it, “locals” of the city.