Tomorrow afternoon we flight back to Quito. Mariana and I had our last run this morning and stopped to enjoy the views at the top of the hill one last time. It is a beautiful, final day here on the Galapagos. Time to head to the beach!

During spring semester in Japan there is this wonderful week called Golden Week that is kind of the equivalent of spring break in the US. You get the entire week off of classes (and many people get lots of days off from work as well) so it is the perfect time to travel and explore parts of Japan that are typically too far away for a weekend trip.

I think in today’s society people have this concept that there is one “right way” to live. For each age there are the appropriate and expected behaviors. In your college years you are expected to party all of the time and pull all-nighters, after graduation the next logical step is to get a job, eventually settle down, have a career, start a family etc., etc.  I don’t know if other people feel this way, but at least these are the general stereotypes and sequence of events that I feel like society has laid out for us.

For my entire life I have wanted to travel to England. From using a British accent on regular occasions to incorporating English vernacular into my own, I have been reading, viewing, and learning, about England my entire life. From Pride and Prejudice to Agatha Christie novels to Harry Potter to name a few, I have been surrounded by fictional characters my entire life who called England their home.

AUSTRALIAN SLANG OF THE WEEK: “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” (US) = “WHAT DO YOU RECKON?” (AUS)

I cannot believe that I have just completed the first half of my time here in Sydney. It’s hard to comprehend that in two months, I have seen so much and yet still feel that I have so much more to discover.

So IES was able to visit Bahia, and honestly it was one of the best experiences of my Brazilian life and general-Ramelcy life! The city is just so different from Rio in a refreshing unique way. It has a much slower pace, but the people are so warm and welcoming. Their pride in their Blackness and their ancestral and cultural history is so genuine, you can’t help but want to learn more and want to feel that way even about your own history.

Before coming to Brasil (that’s the Brazilian spelling; you learn something new every day!), I thought a lot about what my experience would be like as an AfroLatina in a different Latinx space. I wondered about racism and colorism, and even what prejudices might exist against natural hair. I was trying to mentally prepare for anything, and I think that is real and necessary to admit when thinking about traveling as a natural Black Latina.