It is a beautifully clear day with a thin sheet of snow, the kind that deceives me into believing that it would be warm outside. I am sitting in Albany, NY airport, waiting for my flight to Newark, NJ and then Amsterdam.  I am reflecting on the moments that led up to my goodbyes and begin my hellos.

Take a walk around Barcelona and you’ll find photos of paella outside open-doored restaurants. But the traditional rice dish has its roots in Valencia, a town three hours by train to the south. Inspired by tidbits of information I’d read and photos I’d seen on the internet, I decided Valencia was worth a visit, if only to taste the very best paella in the world.

Before going abroad, I explained Siena to people as “What you think of when you think of Italy;”the quintessential Italian city.

“Do you think you blend in?” a friend of mine asked excitedly. “If people don’t hear you talk, if you’re just walking along, do you think you look Irish?”

I’m starting to notice how hard my roommates and I try to avoid sticking out as American tourists. Irish girls wear mostly neutral colors? We packed mostly neutral colors. Locals scoff at Temple Bar? Guess I need to not go there, ever. It took three days of walking around Trinity’s gorgeous campus before we finally summoned the nerve to snap a few of the photos we desperately wanted.

If the “honeymoon phase” of adaptation to a new environment is real, this is it. From the moment our group met the IES Staff met our group in the Barajas airport, I was absolutely thrilled to be in Spain. Even the airport coffee seemed like an exciting treat (and while novelty was definitely a factor here, my soy cappuccino really was better than just about anything I’ve found in US airports).

Internship experiences are often practical, pragmatic, and relevant to students’ personal and professional futures. Cultural intelligence is gained and honed in an actual Italian environment and interacting with adults in their offices is invaluable to students’ understanding of the real world. An international internship will look stellar on a résumé.

All of this remains true for my internship during my usual weekly work grind.

Two weeks of work have gone by, and not one day of work has been spent without one of three essentials of Italian daily living: gelato, panino, and caffé. After about six days of working at the office, I can tell that no Italian could possibly survive a day without these valuable food groups. While my time working has not been characterized by food or drink, observing small nuances and intricacies like this are helping me to understand the Italian work environment.

Flipping back through the pages of my memory to the first European chapter, the quantity of noteworthy images makes it appear that I have been here for years. So much has happened, the scenery has changed so many times and my heart has overflown with an inordinate amount of emotions in the relatively short amount of time that has passed. This semester has been composed of the material of dreams. I will be telling these stories to my grandchildren one day, and with the same breadth admonishing them of the importance of travel.

Participating in an internship abroad is a very proactive way to make a study abroad experience more fulfilled. It can be difficult in such a new environment to occupy your time in a way that’s useful and insightful while still being fun. In many cases, an internship is all of these things. I spent my fall semester in Rome working at a shop called LeArtigiane. Like anything else, the experience was not perfect and I certainly ran into some frustrations.

The 206 countries that cover the face of this Earth are different. This simple fact that I have both been told to expect and have learned firsthand through my travels across Europe seems obvious, but is nonetheless a fact that garners validation through experience. Ironically, it is these very differences that transform an oddly colored spot on the map into a conglomeration of people, ideas, cities, natural beauty, and everything else that defines our lands into homes with distinct personalities; a flavor or a trademark of their own.