After living in Shanghai for almost a month, I feel fully adjusted. Although it was definitely a challenge at first, the culture shock wasn’t as intense as I expected. Since Shanghai is a thriving international metropolis, it’s easier than I thought it would be to get around with English, some useful Chinese phrases, a dictionary app, and a lot of pointing.

So much happens here, it’s really hard to keep up while I’m living it, let alone documenting it. This is the problem of this blog and why, and I apologize for this, you are finding out a week late about my excursion to Venice.

The trip was a little spontaneous; we planned it, got the train tickets and reserved the hostel on

If you’ve ever searched “fun things to do in Japan,” chances are that you’ve come across a mention of going to a Japanese arcade. That’s actually a pretty good suggestion most of the time, because there’s an incredible amount of options offered at Japanese arcades to spend just a little bit of money and have a lot of fun comparatively. However, there’s an evil, one thousand-million-billion-trillion percent sinister money eating machine lurking nearby that will humble you yet keep you coming back to play again.

The last weekend of September, I participated in the IES Abroad overnight field trip to Texel, an island off the coast of the mainland. As soon as we got off the ferry, we rented bikes and rode along the coast of the island. It was a beautiful day! We biked to a small town where we ate fresh seafood and took a ride on a shrimping boat. It was interesting to see how the fisherman catch the shrimp, and we got to taste test on the boat.

San Telmo is known for its feria (street fair) held on Sundays. Here’s a video I made of my first visit there. Beyond selling trinkets, clothes, antiques, art, and souvenirs, there is food and entertainment! Delicious food, people to take pictures with, street performers, and musicians are all things to look forward to. It goes on for blocks and blocks, and it’s quite the sight even if you don’t end up buying anything.

13.02 Uhr

I finally understand the dichotomy of blogging. I started a blog because I expected my life to become quite a bit more exciting, but now that my life is so, I find it’s hard to create the time to blog. Seeing how I have rejected my blog for far too long, I vow to sit at my desk now and explore exactly what has happened in the last week… or two.

This past Sunday we took a trip out to Stellenbosch to visit some of their 200 wine estates. We started off at Fairview in Paarl, a larger commercial vineyard that also produces cheese (we got to meet some of the goats, too!). Here we learned the 5 S of wine tasting: sight, smell, swirl, sip and savor. Our guide explained how much you can learn about the wine-making process from looking at, smelling and tasting the wine. We also got to try a bunch of wines paired with some interesting cheeses.

IES Abroad organized quite the field trip a few Fridays ago. We were treated not only to an informational session about the foreign service, but also to a tour of the Ambassador’s residence. And lucky for us, the ambassador’s residence here in Buenos Aires is a historical mansion built in the neoclassical style. First came the informational session, where I realized how comforting it is to know our country has our back.