Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas was yesterday and it was full of family, food and presents. My grandparents are spending a few days in Florida with my family and both my siblings were here to celebrate as well. It is nice to cherish the moments we do have to spend together while we are still young. We celebrated this year with Christmas eve pjs, an excessive amount of sweets and our newest Christmas tradition, Thrifty Santa.

Thrifty Santa comes before Christmas and each person receives a present that was purchased at a goodwill, salvation army, or gotten for free. The more revolting the gift, the better. A lot of people don't understand how funny it is but if you don't believe me, I dare you to go out and buy thrifty Santa gifts next year. Go wrap them in some trash bags and have a gift exchange. It won't put you our by much money and laughs are guaranteed. Think of it as a white elephant exchange, but no good gifts allowed.

In other news, I will be headed to Costa Rica in three days and will be spending several days in a portion of the country that is very remote. So remote that it is almost impossible to get there by land. My family will be going by boat and I think it will be an adventure. The place we are staying at is surrounded by natural landscape and I believe that there will be lots of good photography opportunities. Photos to come soon! I doubt there will be wifi where we will be staying so photos may come after the trip.

Until later,
Happy New Years!

Finals Behind Me, Travels Ahead

Esta marcado! Its official! I will be going to Brazil for 11 days before my semester in Argentina begins. With finals in the rearview mirror, all I can see ahead of me is the adventures in store for me as Christmas and the new year come around. Costa Rica, Brazil and Argentina are all on the agenda for the next couple of months.

To celebrate the end of my first semester of nursing classes I got to spend a few days with one of my friends who loves Brazil just as much as I do. She came home with me for several days after finals and we got to pack as much fun into our time together as possible. The downside of traveling so much is having to say goodbye to friends like this one.

Beach Day at New Smyrna

Boat tour of Winter Park, FL

A Second Exchange

It seems crazy to think that I left for my exchange to Brazil almost two and a half years ago. It seems even crazier to think of all the things that I learned and experienced during my time. The craziest thing of all is that my love for Brazil has not dwindled, despite being stateside for a year and a half now. 

It is difficult to put into words what an exchange does for someone and how it effects their life. One of my friends recently interviewed me for the Samford Crimson (my university's newspaper) and after an hour long interview she repeatedly let me know how challenging it was to limit my experience in Brazil to a word count and create a concise article that did the time justice. I think she did a great job! 

After three semesters of college, a summer chemistry, some extra work on the side and my parent's blessing, I have decided to take advantage of the opportunity to go on a Second Exchange. Yes, you read that right. It is just about every exchange student's dream to be able to re-live their exchange experience but many never have the opportunity to do so. While I may not be "re-living" the experience, I will be spending a semester in Argentina studying at Universidad Blas Pascal (UBP). It will be a different experience in many ways. I believe it will be easier is some ways, knowing that I have a little language background and having had experienced culture adaptation once before. In other ways it has the potential to be much more difficult. The stakes are higher and the language matters more. I will be taking classes in Spanish and I will not have the safety net of Rotary as I did previously.