Lectures are my raison d’être here in Oxford. Fingers crossed that my tutors, past, present or future, never come across this post, but sometimes I feel the weekly tutorials and all the hard work they entail are the dues I need to pay in order to earn the privilege of access to some of the most brilliant minds in the world, fifty minutes at a time.
Typically planning a trip takes lots of time, money, details… etc. (At least that’s the way I have always known trip planning). For our first free weekend in Ecuador, we decided to take a weekend trip to Mindo, Ecuador: A cloud forest about 2 and 1/2 hours from Quito. At first, I tried to plan this trip as I have always known trip planning: you know, researching what to do, calling a hostel ahead of time, make sure everyone knows what is going on.
This weekend, I had the chance to get to know France a bit more. Curtsey of IES Paris French Studies, my classmates and I got to travel to the South of France for a three day trip to Nimes, Domaine, Aigue Mortes, and Avignon. I've never traveled to the south of France before so I found this journey to be very entertaining. We left for Nimes on Thursday morning bright and early before the sun (or even the pigeons for that matter) decided to appear. I love trains.
If you wish to fully experience a new country, food is easily one of the best ways to get a good taste of the culture. Pardon the pun, but it’s a necessity. So while living in Barcelona, I’ve made sure to take advantage of every opportunity to try new dishes, tapas, and of course, desserts. To give you a better taste of Barcelona’s food culture (I’m now done with the puns, I promise), I’m going to walk you through a typical day of eating. One paragraph for each meal… Perfect. Let’s do it.
This first week has been amazing! After our first language class on Thusday, Chloe, Allie and I decided to wander around Siena and try to find some of the Contrade. The 17 Contrade are the different districts of Siena and each of them have their own symbol and a fountain repesenting their district.
It was around the time that the plane finally dipped below the cloud cover and I could see the first bits of actual “Austrian Ground” that I felt the first nerves start tingling in my stomach. Though I had been preparing to go to Vienna since September, up to that point I had only (minus the small worries about packing and plane-transfers) thought about how exciting it was that I was actually going to Vienna. It wasn’t until that moment that the thought popped into my head: What if I hate it?
Illuminations (イルミネーション) are light displays that pop up all over Japan during the winter/holiday season. Nabana Village (なばなの里) is a large garden and hot spring (温泉) that has a very famous light display in the winter.
IES Barcelona spring classes have now begun, but the last two weeks have felt like a dream — a two-week-long “vacation orientation”. I’ve experienced more in the past two weeks than I could possibly recall in a single blog post, so I’ve decided to organize this post into three sections: Homestay life, night life, and food.