When I signed up for a Galápagos botany class, I pictured leafy green things growing out of the ground, but apparently we accept all types of plants. On Friday we took a fieldtrip to Elecgalapagos, San Cristóbal’s power plant where electricity is produced for the island’s 7,000 inhabitants.
So as silly as this is about to sound, I have always had this bucket-list which was to go every where that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen went in their movies. This, combined with my love for Lizzie McGuire as a kid, placed Rome very high on this bucket-list. However, I wasn’t visiting Rome for an internship with some fashion industry or on a high school trip to be mistaken for an Italian pop star, but rather to spend some time with my Italian famiglia.
During our week in Taiwan we took a day trip out to Yilan County, which is on the Pacific side of the island. It was a great to see the more rural side of Taiwan that you can’t find in Taipei. We visited the brand new Yilan museum, ran around on the beach, hiked through a rainforest (sort of), and painted our wishes on lanterns that we set free to the sky. Hands down one of the coolest things I’ve ever done!
We took a week-long field trip to Taiwan, and it was unforgettable! Taipei is the hidden gem of Asia, if you ask me.
“London isn’t real England,” my host Peter told me at breakfast Sunday morning in the Ambleside Guesthouse dining room. “This here is real England.”
My program only last until this December, sadly. However I love autumn in Japan. Fall is the season for harvest, so since long before, every city will celebrate harvesting with various activities. This tradition lasts until now. Take notice of the dates written on some brochures, e.g. Nagoya Calender (which can be found in your school’s office for foreign students).
I do advice everyone studying abroad to make full use of every day, especially weekend, to get out of their room and experience the unknown world. For example, I made myself a rule of eating different food/snack every day in school. So until now, I’ve never bought the same snack or eat the same dish at the same restaurant.
Credit to my host Mom, who was so considerate to ask me what I want to experience and took so much trouble to really realize my dream. So here we go!
The next stop on our institutions trips was Paris. I have been to Paris before when I was younger, and wasn’t all that impressed. However, after watching Midnight in Paris I had a whole new view of Paris. We had two meetings while we were there, but luckily got tons of free time. I am so happy that I got to go back to Paris, and see somethings that I didn’t get to check off last time. I also can’t wait to make my way back to Paris, and continue the never ending bucket list of things to do in Paris!
After a few busy weeks of travel and homework, I am finally getting back to blogging! To start off, I’ll blog about our last trip and end with some recent photos from Freiburg! Our last trip was based on the EU Institutions and we got to attend various academic meetings which were really awesome.