So, I am fully aware that I literally just blogged about some things I’ve been enjoying lately in Siena. But the subject matter of this post deserves a little extra attention. Why’s that? It’s about a chocolate festival. apparently these things actually do exist, so now all of my dreams have come true (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little..but still, pretty exciting).

This past weekend, I left Spain and hopped on a plane to Marrakech, Morocco. In just two hours, I was on a new continent, about to be immersed in a fascinating culture completely different from my own.

Wanting to learn more about the country, I decided to travel with Morocco Exchange, a program that encourages discussion and exchange of ideas between Moroccan students and students studying in Europe.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that for once, I’m not traveling on the weekends. It’s amazing how easy it’s been settle into a place so far away from my “real” home. Every time I step off the bus after getting back from a trip, I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief because I’m finally back in Siena

There are three things in particular that I’ve loved taking advantage of recently:

This year for spring break, instead of going back home to Pennsylvania and working at my local grocery store I got to travel the world. Over the course of a week, I was lucky enough to visit both Spain and France. In this blog post I will be writing about the first half of my trip in Barcelona, Spain.

One of the perks of going in the Spring semester in Japan is getting two week-long breaks: one during the university entrance exams and one during the Spring, which took place last week. I did some travelling to Osaka on my own, and went on an IES-sponsored field trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima after.

IES has a few really cool trips that it offers over the course of the semester, and one of the first was the ski trip last weekend. We went to Radstadt, a place in the Austrian Alps, where we spent two full days skiing. As someone who grew up skiing in New England, I can safely say that the Alps are in a league of their own. Every time we turned a corner there was a new beautiful view.

While we were there the weather was amazing and it was actually pretty warm, which was wonderful.

A couple weeks ago, a friend came to visit and while we were going around do the touristy things, I realized that it was actually the first time I had really seen a lot of the big Vienna sights.

While he was here, we saw the Belvedere, Schönbrunn Palace, ice skating at the Rathaus, and a variety of museums that I hadn’t thought to go to since I had been living here.

Just spent a lovely week exploring Germany! I went with 7 other IES students, and I was able to hang out with some people I don’t usually hang out with, which was really cool. On the trip, we went to Weimar and Dresden. In between cities, we saw the historic Wartburg Castle where Martin Luther translated the Bible and we also visited the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was a really moving experience to say the least. I took tons of pictures of the castle, but I didn’t feel right taking photos of Buchenwald.