Jetset Linguist

Well, folks, it's almost there. There is one (1) week left before the big move. I am so incredibly excited for this next stage in my life, but I have to actually get there first. For that, I have to give a giant pre-shout-out to my mom for driving, packing, unpacking, and just generally helping me get settled in to my new apartment. We'll be leaving Pennsylvania bright and early next week, since I have to turn in my apartment keys by 8am, and drive up to the border. The next day, with fingers crossed for an easy customs stop, we'll drive to Montreal, unload all the stuff I already own, wait for the Ikea furniture I ordered to be delivered, and see how much of it we can assemble before we start to pull our hair out.  The trip won't be all business though. The day after all the moving, we get to explore my new home! I'm not quite sure what all we'll be doing/seeing (if you have any suggestions or recommendations, let me know!), but playing tourist is alway...

If you know me even a little bit, you probably know how terrible I am at making decisions. Honestly, I'm truly terrible at it, so you can imagine how difficult it's been for me to work through a decision that's going to (minimally) impact the next 3-4 years of my life: where to go to grad school. Now, part of the decision was made for me by admissions committees that decided to pass on my applications. A bit disappointing, of course, but at least this eliminated the choice of where I'd want to live. At the end of the entire process, I was left with offers from 2 universities, both in Montreal, Canada. Both schools have pro's and con's (and yes, I made a list), but in the end I had to listen to: what people said about the importance of the relationship with my future supervisor,  some incredibly quotable advice happiness and life,  and ultimately my gut. All that being said, I'm happy to share that come September, I will be attending Concordi...

As to be expected, I'm not always the greatest at writing these posts immediately. Especially when my November was a bit scattered and December is always a bit hectic as well. At least I'm finally getting around to writing down my trips to Montreal and New York City. My trip to Montreal was mostly business/school related. The main purpose was for me to go and visit labs at two universities that are on my list as potential places for me to go and do a lot of hard work for a few years, and hopefully get a fancy sheet of paper and a few more letters after my name out of it. The details of these visits are probably a bit boring for anyone who's not gone through this same process themselves, so I'll just say that I'm glad that I went and was able to meet the professors in person (Family members I'll be seeing over the holidays: Yes, I've submitted all my applications - four of them. No, I don't have a top choice. I'll pretty much go wherever accepts me ...

Last weekend I took my quickest trip to Europe ever. In less than 110 hours I made the round trip to Utrecht for my graduation. It was so great to be back in good ol' Nederland. It partly felt like I had never left, and partly like a million things were different. I arrived Saturday morning, and the afternoon was spent playing a bit of tour guide and window shopping. And also grocery shopping. I obviously had to stock up on all the Dutch goodies I missed. Now I have enough pepernoten, stroopwafels, speculaas, and hagelslag to last me until the end of this week. Nah, I'm kidding. Maybe the end of the month if I can exhibit any sort of self control. Maybe... That evening I got to meet up with some classmates for dinner. It's always nice to catch up with fat friends (this is a Dutch phrase, I promise, of course they're all rather fit from all that biking) in person instead of over WhatsApp. Unfortunately, I was sorely jetlagged and had to cut the evening short before pas...

Before I really dive into it, just be warned that this post will contain significantly fewer pictures than pretty much any other post I've done (actually none, you'll see why), so my apologies if that's your favorite part of this thing. So I've been in State College, PA for just over a month now (5 weeks and a day if you want to be exact), and I figured it was time to catch everyone up on the move, the job, the apartment, etc, so we might as well get started. The Move It was quite a long drive (in my opinion) down here from Michigan. My mom was kind enough to lug me and all my stuff here in her mini-van. We drove over the course of two days, spending the night in Ohio (GO BLUE) , and arriving to my apartment early afternoon. Being the absolute champs that we are, we managed to get all of my stuff unloaded from the car and up 4 flights of stairs before a torrential downpour. And me being me, I was sent into a flurry of unpacking and organizing, and would've gon...

Moving back to the US has had its ups and downs, but if anything is certain when I'm back home is that I will be busy. Between unpacking, purging my room, family events, and preparing for the new job, I've been so preoccupied that I kept putting off this recap of my trip to Croatia. So on this rainy day, I'm just going to relive the 5 days of sunshine if you don't mind. As with any good trip, the story really starts with the trek to the airport. This time around it was at 4:45 in the morning. Luckily, the only thing that wasn't ideal was the timing, but at least Laura (this trip's travel buddy) was able to convince her dad to drive us to the airport before the sun was even up. We tried to catch up on our sleep on the plane, but there's only so much you can do when you're squeezed in like sardines. But the early flight meant we landed with nearly a full day ahead of us. After finding our AirBnB and a scarfing down a very Dutch lunch of cheese sandwich...