Here comes the stress. Until next Saturday morning, I will be completely occupied by final exams, projects, papers, and labs. In more ways than one I feel like a week is not enough time. Not enough time to finish my schoolwork, not enough time to say goodbye to Spain. There is still so much that I would like to do before I leave, so much that I have not yet seen in the very city I have been living in for nearly four months.

I certainly can’t believe my first semester is almost over, but the appearance of Christmas lights throughout Siena, not to mention all the Christmas trees, are practically shouting that Christmas is just around the corner and, with it, my departure.

I’ve been lucky. In the recent few weeks, I’ve had a million opportunities to take advantage of, and I am, it seems, ending this semester very busily and in a very fun way.

In the last several weeks I have traumatically lost my scarf twice.  Both instances, however, had happy results:

Vienna Kunsthistoriches Museum.  Enthralled in art, dazzled by Breugel and Velázquez, unawares I dropped my scarf in the second floor portrait wing and didn’t realize it was missing until I had gotten all the way to Vermeer!  Luckily, the lost and found is an actual thing in Austria.

The internship seminar is the last module of the program. Each of us chose an internship based on our interest and major. Some of us got the chance to work together and others worked separately. My internship was at Asociación Obras del Espíritu Santo located in Barrio Cristo Rey. I worked in the school program of the organization with children ages 7-12 who were at social risk. Asociación Obras del Espíritu Santo is a non-profit organization that was founded by a priest. The organization offers many services to its community.

For three hours we talked about the International Monetary Fund, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s movies, Charles Aznavour’s hit song Je Suis un Mort Vivant, Joan Baez’s and Bob Dylan’s activism, John Kenneth Galbraith’s economic theories, Bayern Munich’s season, Andrea Bocelli’s Time to Say Goodbye, the global reach of the Siemens engineering company, Jacques Brel’s easily translatable lyrics and Susan Boyle’s incredible audition on Britain’s Got Talent (yes, this was all in one conversation).

As a queer Latino studying abroad, I was able to catch a glimpse of the LGBTQ community in Costa Rica. Though the Catholic religion has had a major influence, there are other factors that have complicated the progress of the LGBTQ movement in Costa Rica. First, on a global scale, the LGBTQ movement has been a recent social phenomenon. Second, many of the political movements that have occurred in Latin America have targeted dictatorship governments as well as political corruption.

I spent Halloween in Paris with friends. As a lot of us had been before, we didn’t feel the need to re-visit all the monuments, which afforded us more time to explore side streets and neighborhoods. Our apartment was right next to Rue Mouffetard, in the Latin Quarter, where I ate the best meals of my life thus far… also where I blew all my hard-earned #cashdollars (oops #casheuros) because nothing in the city of lights is cheap. But it was worth every cent.