I am tired.  After a truly excruciating week of exams (one test had over 225 new characters), Michael and I headed to WuDaoKou last night to ring in the new year, albeit without plans or 150 RMB tickets to Nova, Beijing’s biggest New Year’s Eve party.  Before we knew it, we found ourselves in a bar surrounded by friends!  In a blur of colors, lights, drinks, and taxis, we were waltzing down the red carpet leading into Nova, housed in a giant, disused industrial gas tank.  Beijing nights…  Happy New [...]

Oh dear. My life has rocked for the past week and a half, and I think it would take me a few hours to write about everything, so I’ll do my best to highlight the most exciting parts. First, FRANCE! My first time flying with Easyjet went surprisingly well. My bag was the appropriate size and I found a seat quickly and easily (they don’t assign seats), and when I arrived at the Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport I found Emilie, her mom, and her dog Velcro waiting for me! I was welcomed [...]

I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year! I spent my Christmas in Santa Cruz with my host family and extended host family. Here they open presents and do Christmas at midnight, 12a on the 25th. It was pretty cool to be part of another culture’s Christmas, but I definitely missed home a ton!  I am finally back in Cochabamba now though finishing my last 2 weeks abroad. The trip back here was awful, 11 hour bus ride in the sweltering heat, although [...]

I love Wednesdays for two reasons. 1) Stylist magazine comes out and is FREE and 2) I have a 5 hour break in-between classes to spend exploring London. Today during my break, I went to my favorite “escape”, Covent Garden. I didn’t realize until this afternoon how much I do in London on a regular basis. I’m always on the go, and it was nice to just stay in one place for a few hours; especially one of my favorite spots in London. I had some Christmas shopping to do, so I [...]

Christmas was spent at izakaya, pestering John Lennon apparent look-alikes to stop writing their reports, going karaoke to sing songs like Burnin’ Christmas, eating French Toast and then eating Chinese food ala A Christmas Story. It snowed occasionally. Though it was a strange Christmas, it was a good one. If you can’t be with your family, you can at least make one! The snow from Christmas has turned into ugly rain. I’m going to leave this unpleasant weather soon. Tonight I’m hopping a night bus and going to Tokyo! I [...]

Welcome to late December in Japan, where it doesn’t snow for more than 5 minutes and there is a 40 foot strip of Christmas lights on campus. That’s about it. You can go to bars and see Christmas trees tucked into the corner, and you can hear obnoxious MIDI renditions of Christmas music playing at the supermarket, but nothing more. Christmas in Japan is a commercial holiday. It’s a lot like Valentine’s day actually—it’s a couples holiday. When it hit December, suddenly all the Japanese people who would normally show [...]

It’s December… already! I have no idea where the time went, but I’m leaving Norway at the end of this month. It’s a surreal feeling. Home is within sight now. I had to move out of my apartment this week. That meant packing. To my surprise all of my things fit in the 2 bags I brought them over in! Yeah! Now I’m staying on the couch in the living room. Super snazy. There is absolutely no sound barrier between the room and the kitchen. So when somones cooking at [...]

The Christmas market is now open in Strada Maggiore. It’s a little market overflowing with tinsel, ornaments, twinkle lights, pine cones, manger scenes, and every other imaginable Christmas decoration available. It also has handmade scarves, hats, purses, jewelry, and other goods plus lots of candied nuts, chocolate, and tradition Italian sweets such as panettone, torrone, and breads. The little market under the porticoes is crowded with Italians shopping for the holidays and brings a little Christmas joy to Bologna now that all the snow has melted. N