Browsed by
Month: November 2013

Gwen Frenzel | Rabat, Morocco | Post 3

Gwen Frenzel | Rabat, Morocco | Post 3

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Just as the weather in Morocco was becoming uncomfortably cool, it was time to leave the country and depart for Bolivia, where the weather is warm—and will only get warmer. Transitioning from an Islamic nation to a primarily Catholic one has been one of the most noticeable differences of my study-abroad program thus far. Religion has been a large cultural aspect in all of the nations that we have visited. In Vietnam, my host family brought me to numerous pagodas; in Morocco, calls for…

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Brooke Robinson | Edinburgh, Scotland | Post 3

Brooke Robinson | Edinburgh, Scotland | Post 3

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Here and now, in a different part of the world, there are always things that I promise to do, trips to slot in to my our busy schedule, and places that I vow I won’t miss. Being in Edinburgh, I sometimes think of the countless adventures that I haven’t had and the sights that I have not seen. There is simply too much to do—even simple things, like visiting every street and seeing every monument. With limited time in a new and fascinating…

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Rebecca Shubert | Clifden, Ireland | Post 3

Rebecca Shubert | Clifden, Ireland | Post 3

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Daylight savings, for me, has had the curious effect of compressing time. In the last few weeks, the hours of sunlight in Ireland have shrunk, so that I wake up to blueish-gray dawn, and leave the community school in the pinkish-purple of dusk. Time itself seems to be slipping away faster than usual, too; recently it occurred to me that I have less than four weeks left in Ireland, and this came as a genuine shock. When I relayed this…

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Colin Crilly | London, England | Post 3

Colin Crilly | London, England | Post 3

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I’m actually really starting to worry about how little time I have left here in London. It feels like only yesterday that I was frantically typing up my last blog post, talking about how “I haven’t even come close to finding everything that London has to offer, so I’m definitely glad to have two more months of exploration ahead of me” (Crilly, 2013). Now it’s suddenly mid-November and I’m having trouble reminding myself that I’ve actually experienced a lot during…

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Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 3

Lily Choi | Paris, France | Post 3

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My blog post this month unfortunately won’t focus on life in Paris. While French universities don’t have fall break like Vassar does in October, we had about two weeks off at the end of the month to celebrate La Touissant, or All Saint’s Day, which falls on November 1st. I had booked tickets in early September to go on a whirlwind trip to three different cities in ten days with two of my close friends from the program–a trip from…

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Heather Ingraham | Copenhagen, Denmark | Post 3

Heather Ingraham | Copenhagen, Denmark | Post 3

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When I visit a foreign country, I’m always pleasantly surprised when I find out that I will be there to take part in an exciting national event. I was lucky enough to be in Copenhagen to experience two such important cultural events celebrated in Denmark. The first was Culture Night (Kulturnatten), which took place on October 11th. The second was J-Day (J-Dag), which takes place on the first Friday of November, this year falling on November 1st. Culture Night is…

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Sabrina Sucato | Bologna, Italy | Post 3

Sabrina Sucato | Bologna, Italy | Post 3

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I honestly don’t know where the past three months have gone. Yesterday a friend told me that we have less than 50 days left in Italy. How did that happen? On the bright side, I do have about two months left of my stay in Bologna, and I definitely plan on making the most of them. Future excursions include sightseeing in Milan, spending the day in Ravenna, and maybe even returning to Rome. A lot of my friends in the…

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Kiran Chapman | Sao Paolo, Brazil & Cape Town, South Africa | Post 3

Kiran Chapman | Sao Paolo, Brazil & Cape Town, South Africa | Post 3

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During my program’s last week in Brazil, we had the week off of classes. It was wonderful to have the executive power to choose where to go; I settled on spending five days on an island named Ilhabela off the eastern coast of the country. I and twelve other students booked rooms at a hostel on the island right on the beach. With the moon still bright in the sky, my friend Alex and I left our house at 4:00 a.m. to catch the 6:00…

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Marie Solis | Madrid, Spain | Post 3

Marie Solis | Madrid, Spain | Post 3

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Time is escaping me, Vassarinos! Here we are at the beginning of November. In Madrid the leaves have finally changed, the temperature has cooled down, and everyone can calm down because my mom finally sent me a bag of pumpkin spice coffee. This post marks the halfway point of my abroad experience, further amplified by the spring housing applications and pre-registration reminders sitting in my inbox. However, these are realities I choose to ignore. Since I’ve last written, the most surprising thing about being in…

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Moorea Hall | Milan, Italy | Post 2

Moorea Hall | Milan, Italy | Post 2

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Film Festivals and City Hikes During my program’s third week in Bologna, a friend from Vassar studying abroad in England visited Italy, and a couple of us joined him in Milan for a film festival. With the satisfaction of being the first students in our program to travel outside of Bologna, our group of friends hopped on a bullet train on Friday after classes and arrived in Italy’s fashion capital within an hour. The train station in Milan was gorgeous and inspired in me nostalgia of Grand Central. As for our hostel, we somewhat expected…

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