The WIR Team has become exactly what it says to be—a Team. At the end of our emails we sign them with the WalkInsideRome initials. At first when I heard the team refer to it as signing WIR at the end, I thought, “Why would a professional company sign a letter with we’re”? In more ways than one the WE’RE would have sufficed. The people I intern with are a close knit of people that are not only tolerant, but mentors to everyone who is willing to learn.

When you’re a college student, you quickly get used to people asking you what you study.  It’s a good “get to know you” question, an easy way to begin a conversation.  This being said, upon entering into college, I expected “What’s your major?” and “What do you study in school?” to be hurled at me left and right.  What I didn’t expect was the plethora of judgment that met my answer.

Study abroad is over…

(Warning: lengthy post ahead; scroll to bottom for a TL;DR – too long didn’t read) My first week here in Sydney has been such a jam packed week full of awesome events and outings planned by the IES Abroad team to get us acquainted with Sydney. After a long morning of hauling suitcases to our apartments and getting settled, the entire IES Abroad family enjoyed a lovely dinner boat cruise in the Harbour (notice my spelling of harbour but that’s for another post). The boat cruise was beautiful and the views and sights were breathtaking.

Here’s a little video I threw together yesterday (during my 7 hour layover in Miami) to say bye to home and hello to study abroad! You get a sense of what my hometown in Colorado is like, as well as what I packed for this four month adventure.

Being back in the States is so strange.  My semester was everything I hoped it would be and more.  I’m really going to miss New Zealand with its beautiful mountains, breathtaking coastlines, and multitudes of sheep everywhere you go.  It think though, that I’m going to miss the people I met there more than anything else.  I made some amazing friends while abroad, and the funny thing is that against my expectations, many of them weren’t Kiwis, but they weren’t all from the States either.

This past weekend we took a trip to Minas Gerais. It was a sweet, quaint little trip. I absolutely loved it! It was a beautiful place, and it was nice to get out and see other places in Brazil.

We flew into the city of Belo Horizonte on Friday. There we visited the Inhotim Park. It was incredible!! It was so huge!! We had a delicious lunch at a restaurant at the park and then split up on our own to explore. I saw all kinds of imported exotic plants, as well as some indigenous plants, such as the Pau-Brasil.