All articles by aflamio

It’s so crazy to think about. When you leave home, you know not much will change when you come back. Your mom will still be there to make your favorite foods, your siblings will still be there to annoy you. Your boss will still hire you back, you and your friends will still be going
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Croatia

Prague is great and all– don’t get me wrong. But these last three months being landlocked has not been the easiest for me. Not having access to fresh fish and not being near the ocean is not what I’m used to and not what I prefer. (I know if this is my biggest complaint then
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Hidden Treasures of the World

This probably sounds really stupid but if you asked me where Prague is two years ago I would not have been able to tell you. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to tell you where quite a few places I visited were. Maybe I am just ignorant, or maybe they were too busy teaching us
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Poland

  After feeling regret for not going to Kraków with my program, I decided to go on my own. And right now, as I am on the two-hour train ride back from Auschwitz, I can’t seem to wrap it all around my head. In school you learn about all these atrocities to humankind: you see
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Bringing Out Your Inner Tourist

All my life one of my biggest fears has been looking like a tourist. In Manhattan I refused to carry around a backpack; I wouldn’t even let myself wear flip-flops on the beach. For years I did not want any stranger thinking I was in a new place for the first time not knowing exactly
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Spring Time in Prague!

Finally! Spring has arrived here in Prague. The sun is out, and I no longer have to spend 10 minutes in the morning bundling up. My friend told me that Easter is the time of year the Czechs welcome spring and push out winter. No matter what the temperature is, it is time to bring
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Falling in Lourve With Paris

In my 12th grade government class my teacher took the liberty to tell us all about people from other countries, since we knew nothing about them. For the French, he said they all sit outside a cafe with their cigarettes and croissants, talking about their hatred for Americans. And that is the exact picture I
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The Studying Abroad of Being Abroad

A major concern for many people of studying abroad is that going abroad will put them behind on their academic track. People always use the excuse that they will not go abroad because they cannot take any classes that would pertain to their major, and considering I took 18 credits last semester and a summer
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Finding a Second Home

Forget what you’ve heard before: Prague is most definitely the most magical place on Earth. We just passed the one-month point of being in this city and besides the lack of decent peanut butter and sushi; I could not be more content. I’ve been doing a lot of exploring with my new friends, and there
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Seeing the World and What Not

The first part of the newspaper I ever read was the travel section of the New York Times. I would read of all these places other people saw and experiences other people had, and I knew I wanted to do it all too. That being said, I was very excited to start weekend trips during
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Overcoming (or at least trying to) a language barrier

My dad always tells me, “If you’re lost or don’t know what you’re doing, act like you know what you’re doing until you figure it out.” But even pretending to have a clue is impossible in a foreign country that speaks a language that makes just as much sense to me as physics does (aka,
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The Time for Adventure Has Come

Today is my sixth day in the Czech Republic, and it is so weird to not be going home. We are not just here for a short visit– we are here to stay. We are not just cramming all of Prague into a weekend; we are actually learning how to adjust to an entirely new
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Preparing for the Unknown

The other day my friend said to me: “I can’t believe you won’t be here next semester; I remember two years ago when you told me you were thinking of studying abroad and now you’re really going.” Ever since I was young I would daydream about what it would be like to live in a
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