I just finished all my IES midterms! (Here in Spain university courses normally don’t have midterms. Final exam determines 70-80% of your grade!!)

In this post, I want to talk about workload and classes. Before coming here, many folks who have studied abroad told me that study abroad is an opportunity to escape from choking amount of work on campus. So, my expectation when I came to Spain was that I would have lots of free time for traveling + night life etc. Well, I realized that it was one of the illusions of study abroad.

After almost 2 months In Milano I have been given the opportunity to work with three little girls ages 5, 9, and 11 on their english.  These are family friends of my host family and so I am going to be keeping their names private.  I have really found a home here in Milano with my friends, my host family, and other outside activities.  I was approached on being a tutor for these three young girls who are already fluent in Spanish and Italian, but their parents would love for them to learn English as well.

A few weeks ago we got to experience National Week here in China, and the whole country had a week-long holiday to celebrate! Traffic was absolutely horrible, but we braved the crowds to check out Hangzhou and Huangshan.  Hangzhou is a decently large city with a very pretty lake, and Huangshan is a famous mountain that is a popular, modern-day pilgrimage destination of sorts.  We had a great time exploring and hiking! Here are some of the sights:

I have spent the past two weekends exploring this country that is my new home. I realized that France has so much to offer outside or Paris. don’t get me wrong, Paris is amazing, but every part of France is so unique and worth visiting! My parents came to visit and whisked me off the the Loire Valley. I am really glad that my dad was driving and not me because there are no lanes in Paris and people just drive wherever they want and I seriously thought we were going to die while driving around the Arc de Triomphe.

Last weekend we took a short trip out to the nearby ancient water-town of Tongli.  It was very beautiful, and nice place to escape the hustle and bustle of  Shanghai!

Like many people, I came abroad to develop my independence. At school, I found that many of my thoughts, ideas and actions were influenced to much by my friends and other people. I wasn’t happy with this and thought going abroad would help me become the independent person I desired to be. Little did I know it would happen this way.

Hello! This is the second video of three regarding the trip I took to Prague, Krakow, and Budapest. Krakow was an amazing city and I am glad I got to visit!