America: home of the free and land of the iced coffee

8 countries, 14 flights, 3 currencies, uncountable hours on trains and at airports, an entire bank account's worth of money, and an explosive amount of new memories--it has been an absolutely fantastic semester abroad.

The majority of the last 2 weeks spent in London was taken up by exams--after all of those weekends traveling or wreaking havoc around the city, I was reminded that I actually am a student here, and that requires some studying.

Of course, it at first left me with a sour taste in my mouth--here I am in the greatest city of the world, for only a few more days, and I'm studying the endocrine system rather than perusing the Christmas markets. But then, I decided to look back at what I've done these past 3 months and I (grudgingly) realized that all of this fun can't just come with absolutely no work.

This semester, I laid on the beaches in Portugal, took a night cruise down the Danube river in Budapest, visited an English vineyard, hiked through the rolling green hills of Ireland, shared a bottle of champagne with my boyfriend on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower, went on a culinary tapas tour of Barcelona, whizzed around Pisa on a bike for a day, fed carrots to wild deer in the Scottish Highlands, ate so many fresh bagels from the oldest bagel shop in London, street food from some of the best markets in the city, all with people that mean so much to me--friends from college, Greg, friends from Malden, friends I met here while abroad. And this is only a small bit of all of the wonderful experiences I've had these past 3 months.

It's been a wild ride in Londontown and the 7 other countries I've been lucky enough to visit throughout this semester. So, thank you Northeastern for giving me the opportunity to live out this dream life for a while, and a special thank you to my parents for giving me the means to do it and being supportive of my desire to travel. And thanks to all and any readers that stuck along to hear out my entire story!

I'm back in the USA, and I'm actually very excited--back to the land where a biscuit is not a cookie, 'pants' do not mean 'underwear', and most importantly, where coffee actually tastes good (sorry, London, you can't get everything right I suppose).