Summer Brings Change

I’ll include my winter posts soon, so please be looking out for those, but I would like to begin with everything that has happened thus far this month. For the first time in a while, I was able to travel to Osaka after school. While Kyoto is a lovely and quiet...

Goodbye 2017!

It’s been unbelievably fun here in Japan ever since I arrived in September. At first it was a little difficult to adjust to everything, and I’m still sad that fruit is so expensive to buy… But thanks to everyone living here at Utano International...

Autumn Foliage Viewing

As the season has changed from summer to fall, there are a lot more tourists in Kyoto. According to my Japanese teacher, they come to visit many of the temples and shrines that Kyoto has to offer. But also to see the ‘紅葉’, or Autumn leaves. At first I was...

The First Month

After the first week of coming to Japan, everything became a whir of trying to orientate myself here. There was a lot of paperwork we had to do for both the university and for Japan, not to mention I had to buy more groceries and the store near the bottom of the hill!...
Transportation in Japan

Transportation in Japan

In America, we usually drive around cars to get from place to place. The same is true for Japan for some people. Except, driving in Japan is extremely expensive. Japanese law mandates people to go to driving school first before they receive their license, which ends...

A Not so Difficult Decision

Since I left Germany after a two week vacation in high school, my goal has always been to go back, but I did not know how. The opportunity presented itself with the Two Steps Ahead program at UA. The expectations were lofty: become a fluent German speaker inside of...
Life Across the Pond

Life Across the Pond

Once I stepped off the plane at London Gatwick, I felt as if I was in the middle of dream. Everything was different. The people talked funny and the signs I had to follow were different than the ones in America. Flash forward almost an entire month and I still feel as...

First Week in Australia

Lemonade is actually sprite. Thongs are flip flops.  Toasties are sandwiches.  And everyone screams “Yeeew!” when they’re excited.  Tim Tams are delicious and Aussie guys will make any girl swoon! This first week in Australia was nothing less than...

Sad Seoul

안녕 Sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of Seoul and finally realizing that in exactly a month, I will be back in Alabama, is filling me with nothing but sadness. It seems impossible that four months have already passed of my study abroad experience, and it is now...