Tschüs, Germany!

With two short weeks left in my program, I can’t help but feel great sadness to be leaving a place I’ve really started to call home – knowing that this experience will never be able to recreate itself. Although I traveled extensively during my study abroad experience, some of my favorite moments have been those that …

Travels around the EU!

Since my last post we’ve have traveled to Luxembourg, Paris, and Brussels, gone to the Swiss Alps, Lucerne, little towns in northern France, castle ruins in southern Germany, Munich, Strasbourg, studied the inner workings of the EU by visiting the institutions, conversed over problems in the Middle East and the way immigrants are integrated (or …

Berlin & Prague

IES EU sets apart 21 days during our time abroad to travel as a program to different cities around the EU with the purpose of comprehending the current status and the inner workings of this intricate nation-state partnership. They break the time down into 3 separate segments and in September I had the chance to …

Cheers to new adventures!

There is something so comforting about living in a foreign country where you don’t speak the same language. Don’t get me wrong, it can get extremely frustrating wanting so desperately to engage in conversations with those that you meet that both ends end up talking so much louder than normal in hopes of the other …

22 and Fall Break!

This past weekend has been fantastic! My host parents planned a surprise birthday party for me with the help of Elena (my Romanian language professor), Jill, and my other colleagues. It was my very first surprise party, and it was definitely a success. I had no idea that my host parents even knew it was …

It is a Bittersweet Symphony this life.

Well, this is probably the last time I will be writing about how fun my studying abroad experience was unless I will write about how it feel to be in USA (which I will not do). It has been a really great semester and right now I am in London which is my last stop …

The End is not near, it is here.

So, it is almost the end. I have two days before I leave Freiburg and with that I will leave a totally new part of my life not knowing when I will get back to it. It sounds very sad but when I think of all that I have done in the past four months, …

How far I have come.

What comes to anyone’s mind when they hear Germany? Beer, football, sausages, etc. As much as I would be one of the people who tries to see through stereotypes, this past weekend was probably the most German experience I have had so far. Obviously that is considering the stereotype experiences. I and almost ten other …

Grazzie and Gracias

I know it has been a while since I posted anything but I have a good reason for it. In the past ten days I was on a study trip to probably few of the biggest and finest cities in Europe; Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona. Even though it was a “study trip” we had a …

Real Holland

It was that time of the year and my facebook newsfeed was overwhelmed with nothing but pictures from Spring Break. While rest of Hope College was on Spring Break, I had four papers and a mid-term to worry about soon after which I had my Spring Break. One of the best things about being in …