Featured Image: High Street, Galway City Day 47 in Ireland. I have seen every corner of this island, I am fluent in Gaelic, and the blood that courses through my veins is now a vibrant, emerald green. Maybe not all of that is entirely true… It’s actually day 48. After a month and a half of living in the Emerald Isle, I am thoroughly settled in and I have had a handful of interesting experiences. I got lost in the country…
Featured Image: Me in Normandy, looking very American and not giving a shit I never really thought about the influence Americans, or more accurately English speakers, have on the rest of the world. Of course I know that our culture has seeped in practically everywhere, from talks about Trump to watching Game of Thrones; however, I never realized just how large a role it plays. For example, in France people tend to say “stop” in English with a French accent…
Featured Photo: Me in the ruins of an old house-like structure along the coast of Cornwall I am a list-maker. I make lists for all sorts of things. Recently I’ve started a new one: things-Maria-should-probably-have-known-a-long-time-ago-but-didn’t-until-she-lived-in-the-UK-for-six-months. I kind of want to believe these gaps in my knowledge are an American thing but I have a sneaking suspicion they may be a me thing. At any rate, I can either teach you something new or just teach you the limits of my…
Featured Image: Nyhavn, København, Danmark I didn’t really take time to consider that I was going to be studying in Scandinavia during the winter prior to departure. Sure, this is a “Spring Semester,” but that’s not realistic. Spring doesn’t really happen here. The Sun also doesn’t happen here. Okay, that one’s a lie; the Sun makes a brief appearance every day, but I’m rarely outside to see it. Though our days are getting longer, the sun rises while I’m in…
Featured Image: The Louvre at night When I first decided to go to Paris for my study abroad experience, I already knew all the stereotypes of French people: that they hated Americans, were rude, and carried around baguettes with them all the time. Surprisingly, the third stereotype turned out to be more true in my experience than the other two. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve seen someone casually carrying four full and uncovered baguettes under his arm on the…
Featured image: Integrating seamlessly into French society by posing for tourist pictures. You’d be hard-pressed to find a French class in the U.S. that doesn’t mention terroir, the French culinary principle that says that food and wine from different places absorb unique qualities of the land, the terre, in which their ingredients grow. This concept seemed particularly relevant to the study abroad experience, a grand experiment in déracinage, uprooting—in leaving one land, gaining another and trying to make a fruitful…
Featured image: View of the river taken from the Tate Modern I’ll let you in on a little secret. While seemingly everyone else was head over heels in love with the prospect of studying in a new city, I… wasn’t. I felt guilty, like I didn’t deserve to go abroad if I wasn’t positively over the moon about the privilege of embarking on this fantastical journey. It had nothing to do with where I was going—because I’d known for years…
Featured Image: Clifden, Ireland is not just a one-horse town. By my count, there are at least seven equines. To some degree, Clifden is a unique setting in which to study abroad: not a large metropolitan university in a place like Madrid or Paris, but a remote yet lively village surrounded by the rolling coasts and vast pastures outside the city of Galway. It’s the type of place where you might see a dog casually strolling down the street without a…
Featured Image: On a walk along the Jurassic Coast in northern Devon with Exeter’s Outdoors Society As the vast majority of Vassar students studying abroad last term are settling back in at Vassar, I’ve returned to the eccentricities of life in southwest England. Coming back to a place that is both still foreign and also home produced a mix bag of emotions—it was harder than I imagined watching my friends reunite in the comfortable familiarity of Vassar’s bubble as I…