There have been many times over the past two weeks where I have sat down to write one last post, but each time it has gotten more difficult. I’ve been asked countless times upon arriving home, “How was your trip?”, “How was Germany?”, “What was your favorite part?”. My immediate reaction is to correct the person asking me how my “trip” was, because it wasn’t a “trip”, it was much more than that. I was immersed into the German culture, challenged to speak the language and learn the ways of my German peers.

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I’m sitting here organizing the new music that Madison shared with me before departing yesterday morning for France… soon she’ll be stateside, and I hope for her safe travels!

After my fall semester in Nagoya ended, I returned to California to spend the holidays with my friends and family. At first, I really did not want to come back to the USA. Instead, I wanted to spend the holidays in Japan and experience them from a different point of view. But after two short weeks spent at home, I’m glad I did go home. My parents picked me up from the airport and it didn’t feel like I hadn’t seen them for the past four months.

After 27 hours of air travel with 3 lay-overs, I arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport disoriented and a little confused. Being sleep-deprived, I’d lost track of time and space – I still thought I was in Paris Charles de Gaulle, where I spent my last few days in France. Hearing English and Christmas music added to my confusion because I was still used to hearing foreign murmurings and only catching a few words I understood.

Funny that the title is “Wrapping things up” because I definitely did not wrap anything up literally because I was too cheap and poor to buy presents for everyone. Thanks France for being expensive.

I’ve been home for about two weeks now and it’s is unbelievable to think that my time abroad has already come and gone. I honestly had the most amazing time and am so grateful for the opportunities that I was given. While I was abroad I got to see Cambridge, Stratford-Upon-Avon, London, Oxford, Copenhagen, Dublin, the Cliffs of Moher, and Paris. I met the most amazing people, both in my program, and at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.

December sixth has come and gone and, as crazy as it feels, our time at Oxford has ended. Crazy because it’s over and crazy because it even happened in the first place. I can’t tell if I will miss it like crazy when I get home or if I won’t–simply for the fact that won’t be able to believe that it all happened. I spend three months running around England, studying with amazing students and tutors, buying hummus wraps and coffee at Pret a Manger. No, that doesn’t happen.

I work for my school’s newspaper, The Bowdoin Orient. Before arriving in Europe, all us editors-at-large (plus the EIC from last year, currently in Sicily) planned to meet up somewhere. We originally wanted to go to Berlin (too many timing conflicts), then Vienna (flights too expensive for most of us), before deciding on Lisbon for Thanksgiving. Our friends had told us it was their favorite trip while abroad last year, and it’s up there for me as well.

The second I got off of the train in Paris I could tell that we weren’t in England anymore. Sure Paris and London are international cities, just like NYC or any other big American city, which means that there are certain universal similarities between them which may not reflect the culture of the country they are in. And I admit that I spent only one full day in Paris, and have seen no more of France than what I saw during that day.