Long time no see! It's hard to believe that nearly a month has passed since I've been in France.  It's honestly been a blur, and every time we hit the weekend I can't believe that another week has passed.  Time is moving so quickly, which means I've been trying to take advantage of every single weekend. 

Just a few days after we arrived in Nantes, we were all on a bus to explore the Chateaus of the Loire. I had already seen two of them a few years ago on my last study abroad, but I was still just as excited to see them again.  

“How many days left until May 13th?” “114 days.” During the first night while I was in Madrid, I googled that question over and over, hoping for a different answer. Wishing for the number to go down. That first night was one of the loneliest nights I had felt in a while and the only thing that I could find solace in was seeing the end date. Amidst the travel planning, organizing of classes, and figuring out housing placements, I was not prepared for how lonely I would be during the first week.

Negative experiences truly do make interesting stories. If any of you read my predeperature post, you already know I have the worst track record when it comes to going out. I took my first Covid test Tuesday, January 24th before our program trip. It came back negative. Friday night, I went out to the IES Abroad Pub Mixer and had a great time, I don’t regret my decision to go. I woke up Saturday morning with a scratchy throat, probably from yelling all night, I assumed. Nothing a cup of tea and honey won’t fix–and it did. By the afternoon I felt good as new, if not better.

Language changes from town to town in many cases. Speakers of the same language don’t sound the same, whether its their accent, their word order, or the expressions they use. Nations with English as an official language include the Phillipines, Somalia, Hong Kong, and Ireland. There is a lot of potential among those for distinct influences and individual language expression. One of my biggest interests in the field of linguistics in regional dialects.

My first semester in Santiago, I filled two suitcases plus a big backpack. I don’t think I’ll be able to downsize all that much from this setup - it is almost four whole months - but there are definitely things I should’ve packed but didn’t and shouldn’t have packed but did. This post will be all about how I’m packing differently - and better - for my second semester.

It’s a common icebreaker question, but rarely anything more: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? Well, I’m fortunate enough to be able to spend an entire semester there.