Julia is Traveling

  The last two (three?) weeks  I've been busy. The last time we really chatted was when I went to Belfast. My mom informed me that even though my last blog post was great, it didn't tell her what I have been up to, despite the fact that I talk to her at least two (three) times a day and give her a complete recounting of every single thing I do. So this blog post is dedicated to my mom and will recount my past two weeks in great detail.  As you all saw in my last post, I went on a hike. Every Wednesday I have class until 11, so I have been trying to plan small day trips for after class. I have a friend who goes to another college in Dublin, UCD, and we have been making plans together every Wednesday. We've been slowly working our way through her expansive list of coffee shops she wants to visit, but last week we strayed from our typically plans and went to a small beach town in Ireland called Bray. My friend Flo joined us and we hopped on the 155 bus ;) and took a quick on...

1/21-23 I get grossed out really easily. I think it’s because I’m a highly sensitive person (google it), but I’m super sensitive to smells and tastes. If a smell doesn’t fit into my standard of pleasant or clean, I quickly become uncomfortable and grossed out.  On the other hand, I’m not typically a germaphobe. I can walk barefoot pretty much anywhere, and I don’t mind not showering for days on end. I’m currently going on day 3 ;). But my mom is a different story. From very early on, she’s instilled in me that anywhere I sleep besides my bed   is probably dirty and that I must wear long sleeves and long pants tucked into my socks. She taught me that top sheets in hotels are probably not clean so don’t use them, carpets are not vacuumed so don’t walk barefoot, and everything needs to be wiped down, so wipe it down.   My sensitive senses mixed with my moms aggressive opinions on hotels mean I get a weird sense of uncomfortableness when staying in new places. Why does this m...

1/18-1/21 I have this problem with believing that what everyone posts on social media is true. A picture of you smiling on Instagram? You're obviously having a fantastic time. A caption saying that this is the best day of your life? Well, I am so beyond happy for you. This goes for study abroad too. Before leaving for Ireland, I was under the impression that people traveled every other day, never took classes, and booked flights with the snap of their fingers. Now that I'm on the other side of that, I can tell you that that is not completely accurate.  Monday afternoon I was sitting in my climate change class with severe jealousy at the snow that was falling back home. I am a snow addict. Winter is my favorite season and I could live in the snow year round. The fact that it was snowing all over the East Coast while it's 40 degrees and raining here made me angry. So in my 1pm class, I decided that I would travel to Switzerland for the snow.  By 9 pm that night I had it all p...

January 5th to Janaury 17th I am not a calm person. I don't relax easily, I can't go with the flow, and I definitely cannot 'see where life takes me.' Despite my urge to do things out of my comfort zone and experience a crazy life that they talk about in movies, doing new things has never been easy for me. If I don't know the exact outcome of something and how every minute of it will go, the anticipation and anxiety will almost kill me. Almost. I'll work myself up until I'm throwing up and crying and convinced that I won't be able to do it and I should just stay home. And that's just me trying to go to class.  The decision to go abroad had been one I made very early. It was kind of a no brainer; it was something I just knew I would always do. But it was a lot easier to say 'yeah, I'm going to study abroad,' then actually studying abroad.  I started to realize that this new adventure may be harder than I thought when I couldn't even ch...