Our entire program flew to the state of Minas Gerais for a relaxing four day weekend in Ouro Preto and Tiradentes. First we went to the incredible Inhotim Garden, which is a marvelous combination of modern art and Brazilian flora. We spent a few hours there, but to get the full experience they suggest you spend three days! I guess I’ll have to come back in the future.

On with the surreal Paris weekend, part two! Day two, and we did it all over again. To Notre Dame in the morning, which was a really powerful experience because it was Palm Sunday and the service was an incredibly elaborate production, as you might imagine from one of the most famous cathedrals in the world. We ate breakfast at a café nearby, at which a cat named Lilly curled up in my lap as I drank my coffee. What is life!

PARIS. That is all.

No, but really, this weekend felt nearly like an out-of-body experience, like I was just witnessing another person walking around Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame…

There is a slogan that can be seen throughout Barcelona, graffitied on city walls and in the words of its proud people: “Catalunya is not Spain.” After my weekend in Andalucía, the southern region of Spain, I can now understand why.

In the past two months, Catalan culture has formed a special place in my heart, but Barcelona and its neighbors are not the same Spain I romanticized before coming abroad. I found the heart of authentically Spanish Spain in Granada and Sevilla.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are deeply opinionated about how rice should be cooked, and those who are not.  Those who measure out every grain, with a perfect ratio of rice to water, and set a timer for twenty minutes just when it begins to simmer, and those who throw caution and measuring cups to the wind and hope for the best.  It all depends on how your parents cooked rice, and it so happens that my childhood lessons in grain preparation placed me quite early on into the former category of intensely finicky and