Each morning when I wake up in my French apartment, I feel a tiny flicker of panic. Where am I? What am I doing? How could I possibly have packed up and left my entire life behind in the States? Each morning, I make myself a cup of chocolate-pear tea (weird, I know, but I’m making my way through the entire tea section of Carrefour), look out the window at my new city, and reacquaint myself with my new life. Each morning, it gets a little easier.

Happy New Year, Hawkeyes! We're excited to announce our Study Abroad Bloggers for the spring 2017 semester. These unique individuals were selected from a competitive pool of writers to tell the story of their destination and represent the voice of University of Iowa students while abroad. Throughout the semester, these students will share their experiences through writing and photography to be published weekly here on International Accents. 

Emotional maturity is listed as a pre-req for my Rwanda-based program and, considering I’ll be studying the aftermath of a genocide that took 800,000 victims in 100 days, it isn’t hard to see why.

After disappearing from my weekly blog for two months (sorry, UI International Programs!!), I wanted to leave some final thoughts on my time in Bolivia.

How will doctors treat me if I fall sick in China?” “How will my medical bills be handled?” “How will I communicate vital information such as allergies to the medical staff if I have an emergency?” These are questions that many foreign students, including me, often forget to consider upon their arrival to China.

I want to preface this post by saying that my host family here is fanfreakingtastic. I love them as if I were related to them, and I feel like an actual part of their family: an older sister, a cousin, a niece, a granddaughter. My host sister, Rosario (who would like everyone to know she’ll be six very soon), apparently threw her school psychologist for a loop when she started telling people she had an older sister from the United States. I’ve known Amparo, the two-year-old, for practically a quarter of her life. I will cry when I leave them, and I know my host mom will be right there with me. My mamita and tía (grandmother and aunt) have asked me when I’m coming back to Chile, and I haven’t even left yet.

Although both the Chinese government and public are increasingly aware of China’s high prevalence of depression, burnout, and milder mental health concerns, the topic is not commonly discussed on local campuses. Chinese students often do not divulge their mental health status to close friends and family, and from what I have observed, the newly-arrived international students who are eager to integrate, do not either. 

I’m so happy to be writing this because it’s about one of the highest of highlights from my experiences thus far: my first festival in Japan. More specifically, what happened during my first festival in Japan.

When you are in a foreign country, you walk around with wide eyes, comparing this and that between your host country and your home country, you realize the flaws of your host country and your home country, you defend your host and home country from the ridiculous stereotypes…  This election has been a roller coaster from the get go, and walking around the streets of Santiago on November 9th gave me that sort of nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Having been in Nagoya for a little less than 2 months now, it’s safe to say I’ve gotten into the swing of things. Of course it’s taken a few weeks and a lot of mistakes, but I was expecting that.

Through violent storms, rigid oaks can undergo uprooting while flexible bamboos bend to survive. When moving to China, a student needs to imitate the bamboo by adopting the physical and psychological agility of Chinese pedestrians in crowded streets.

Hello everyone! Greetings from mystical Ireland—a land steeped in tradition and natural wonders, with Subway restaurants around every corner.