“Alyssa, where is your hat?” Jacque, my flatmate, reprimanded me.

“I just sick of having something on my head,” I touched the orange paper crown under the rim of my plate.

On November 28^th I finished my last final exam. On November 29^th I was in Punta Arenas, 240 miles from the Southernmost point of land on the planet (outside of Antarctica), a mere 2,000 miles from the South Pole.

This past week has been a mess of anxiety, potato pancakes, and snow. Lots of snow. Did I mention snow? When I decided to go abroad in the Fall semester, I was most giddy about leaving the November grey snow of Saratoga Springs, New York for a magical land in ‘southern’ Germany where the weather is nice and the sun always shines. Well, that’s partially true—Freiburg is the sunniest city in all of Germany, but man is it snowy AND it’s ten degrees colder here than upstate New York. Thanks a lot climate change.

Just a quick update here as I prepare for my final final tomorrow. I hate to admit it, but I’m actually having sort of a hard time with exams this week. Apparently, no matter where you are, the end of the semester is always stressful. There are always final exams and final papers and final projects to finish before it all ends. So much finality.

Three weeks ago (I’m terribly behind on my blog) was my birthday–a day which normally makes me feel badly that time moves so quickly and I just can’t keep up.

Looking back on the past year, however, gave me an odd feeling of pride. In this year I’ve lived in a foreign country: learning Spanish, making friends, understanding a foreign culture, keeping up with studies, etc. etc. At the same time, I got this terrible feeling in my stomach–a feeling of reality: I won’t be in Ecuador forever, and one day Quito will no longer be my home.

During week one we could only find a crew of small high school kids on a dusty blacktop struggling to get the ball into the same area code as the netless hoops. Week two offered a small full court that (sketchily) doubled as a throughway for fruit-laden pick up trucks. In the third week we discovered the jackpot, though it was impossible to realize from the beginning just how perfect Parque Araucano was.

The second to last weekend of our program we went to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar. These are twin cities (really they are one big connected city) but they’re still very different. We went to Valparaiso first, the city known for the colorful homes covering the hills surrounding the bay. These homes ranged from large compound-like houses to tiny favela-like shacks mixed together and packed in all over the hills. There must have been hundreds of square miles of these house-hills.

What started out as a cheap flight find on Ryan Air ended up being one of the best trips while abroad. Oporto is very interesting city in the sense that it still remains decrepit in many areas but is thriving in modern and contemporary art / design in small pockets of the city. This juxtaposition is what makes the city what it is. One minute you can be in some high ceiling low lighting bar reminiscent of something in Soho New York and next door, the bar is falling apart and is filled with old local men chain smoking cigarettes without a lick of english in the place.