Wine and Macaroons All Darn Day

Last month, we embarked on an overnight hike between two small towns: Lloa, located at the mouth of active Pichincha volcano, to Mindo, a popular destination for Quiteno tourists located in tropical cloud forest and have about 40 kilometers and 1500m above sea level between them.

I don’t want to talk about money because that means I need to calculate how much I spent each month and that means I would feel bad about myself…. but! I think it’s necessary to talk about this for both you and me. To give you the general idea, I’ll just write down what I bought everyday. (sacrificing my privacy for you guys!) Btw, I am with a host family, which means I don’t need to worry about buying foods (except that I had snacks almost everyday.)

Here goes the September spending:

Since week one, I’ve been keeping a list of things I want to do in Santiago. The rate of adding items exceeds the rate of checking them off, and so the list keeps growing. I check one item off, and three grow in its place. Basically, my bucket list is a bit like the hydra in Hercules, only more agreable. An extended example:

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!