The Garden Route extends along the south-eastern coast of South Africa. Our journey started at home in Rondebosch and went all the way to the Wilderness. This was a three day trip of exploration and excitement!

With only 9 days left in Dublin, I’m starting to take special notice of the things I’m going to miss. For simplicity’s sake, here’s a quick list:

So this is it! After about 6 months of preparation, it is finally time for me to leave for Auckland, New Zealand! Throughout the process it has seemed like something that has been so far off, so arriving on my date of departure is quite surreal. It feels like something you can never be fully prepared for. As is common, I’m sure, there are mixed emotions. Excitement, fear (the good kind), but also anxiety and doubt. I’m just ready to arrive and move into my apartment and learn about my classes (here on out, papers).

On Sunday we ended our island hopping tour and headed back to Quito for our last two days in Ecuador. Sitting with my roommates in our apartment, we couldn’t believe that we had already arrived at the final days of our trip.

Friday night: Dinner at the Huimin Jie, or the Hui ethnic minority section of the city. The Hui are ethnically Chinese, but religiously Muslim, so they have a lot of Middle Eastern food with an Asian twist. I had a rou jia mo, which is very similar to a sandwich, with either lamb or beef (since the Hui don’t eat pork), but the bread was harder than I imagined it would be. 

Okay, I have put off writing this blog for far too long. A few weeks ago, we went to Xi’an on a mobile learning trip for a long weekend. This is a brief description of how the weekend carried out.

Thursday afternoon: we packed up after we finished our first test and head out to Beijing West train station. We were to take an overnight train to Xi’an. This was my first time on an overnight train outside of the U.S., and I didn’t really know what to expect.

I’ve been home for almost a week now and I see how my trip to Paris has changed me.  I see it in my language skills and my reinvigorated love of French.  I see it in my thought processes as I question things I once considered normal.  I see it in my ideas for the future, which may not have changed in a major way, but are different nonetheless.

So this past week was the start of Ramadan. To be honest when I signed up onto the program I had no idea that Ramadan fell right in place so that it ends the day we leave Morocco. So, naturally when I found out it was the time of Ramadan, I was a little scared. I’ve never fasted for that long and I was kind of scared that I was going to be asked to join in. Knowing myself, I knew that if I did I’d probably faint at some point during the day.