As many of you know, I came back to the Netherlands a few weeks ago. It was almost as surprising to me as I’m sure it is to you. I really didn’t think it would be possible. I have a residence permit so of course I was allowed back to the country, but financially it didn’t seem possible.

Then my dad told me on May 2 that if I wanted to go back, I should just go back. He so very generously bought my ticket back with his Delta points and five days later I was on a plane to Amsterdam. (Really, shout out to my dad here. He’s the best)

My mom was a little worried about this, and to be honest there was a little doubt in my mind as well. The what if’s began to circle my mind. What if I get the virus on the plane? What if I unknowingly infect my friends when I see them? What if I’m part of the problem? I was also scared to be judged for my decision. My friends and family were in support of it, but it’s taken me awhile to just come out and say it in a post. That’s kind of why I’m just now writing this on May 27.

I’m not going to lie, the first week back was hard. Jet lag kicked my butt and without a class schedule or any reason to get up before noon, it was hard to be productive. It also took that week to get integrated again with my friends here. They had spent a month and a half together, learning how to live through this and getting closer than ever. So there were times in that week when I wasn’t invited to do things only to see them later on instagram stories. And it made me wonder why I came back if I wasn’t going to get invited to do things.

I also felt this incredible pressure not to waste my time here. I had two months on the clock and I just couldn’t waste a minute. This led to a lot of self inflicted stress and anxiety and it wasn’t healthy at all. It’s not fair to tell yourself that every second you’re not doing something is wasting time.

After that first week back, though, it felt like it was back to normal. I was seeing people every day, we started movie nights, meals together sometimes, going for bike rides. My best friend over here, Karen, and I are on the same page again and we hang out pretty much every day. Life is good here again. I wouldn’t trade this for the world.

I’ve thought multiple times in the past week, “Today was a perfect day.” One night, Karen, Jan, Griffin and I biked to the canal to have some drinks and chill. It was a perfect night.

Or yesterday. Karen and I decided to get up early and get everything done in the morning–breakfast, work out, assignments, etc. Then in the afternoon we tanned and relaxed. Later we bought a pizza and brought it to the park near us to meet up with some friends. It was another perfect day.

We started making reservations for restaurants when they open June 1. We already have several meals planned including a night in Amsterdam at a SkyLounge at sunset and I cannot wait.

Also little sidebar for those who read my sports articles: I have an incredibly exciting opportunity coming up. My “classes” this block is a newsroom to put together an online magazine. We all took positions and pitched feature stories and we were off. It’s a little different than it should be because of the coronavirus, but we are making the best of it. Anyway, I’m writing my story about how the coronavirus is impacting women’s professional football teams in the Netherlands. I emailed about every club and only got one response. They sent me a trainer’s number so I called just to feel it out. Turns out I had the head coach’s number (head coach in Dutch is hoofdtrainer). He was so nice and now I am going to one of their trainings in Rotterdam to take photos/video and interview players. I never thought this would happen but I’m so excited. More updates to come on that after June 3.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know the sunsets here have been brilliant as ever. Here’s the one from my first night back–I took it as a good sign 🙂

Until next time.

Well, the plan was to write a few sentences every day about my day. But it’s been 11 days and I’m just now sitting in front of my laptop.

Honestly for the first week there really wasn’t much to report. I spent most of the day laying in bed watching two season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in two days and then I downloaded TikTok, so you can imagine how it went from there.

The first few days of my quarantine, it was so nice outside it felt like spring in Michigan. And then in typical Michigan fashion, it got freezing cold for the next week. It’s supposed to warm up this weekend and I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I went on a few runs in the past days and it turns out that running is a hell of a lot harder when you spend the other 23 hours of the day not moving at all.

My body went from exploring new countries and averaging 9 miles a day walking around to this.

I didn’t really do any homework the first week in quarantine, either. If you’ve never taken online classes, let me just give you the gist of the experience: you have no external motivation to do anything so you push off every assignment until the last minute because even though you have the attitude that you no longer give two s–ts about the class, deep down you’re afraid of failure so at the last minute survival instincts kick in and you do the work anyway. This has been my worst school experience ever, so far. Yes, even worse than high school.

I probably wouldn’t have done half my assignments if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was partnered up or in a group and I’m not the type of person to screw over other people. I don’t need the credits from half these classes so I could care less if I passed those at this point. But I refuse to screw other people over, so here we are.

I think the reason I didn’t have the courage to write the first week of quarantine was because I wasn’t ready to look myself in the mirror and really accept what I was doing: distracting myself by consuming social media and stupid videos on TikTok and hours of Netflix so I didn’t have to think about how I felt.

So I didn’t have to think about how I was dealing with the trainwreck that is now my life. So I didn’t have to acknowledge the moments of sadness I felt whenever I thought about my grandpa. So I didn’t have to think about the fact that my current location is Michigan and not Utrecht. That I was spending all my time alone instead of with my friends in the Netherlands or going to class or traveling to a new country.

It wasn’t until this week, when a couple different people reached out to me and asked me real questions about how I was doing and how I was feeling that I found myself randomly spewing out my feelings when I wasn’t planning to. I realized I had been pretty much been just existing the past week. Going through the motions, making every effort to distract myself from feeling anything because I knew it would be too much.

But as Mrs. Steitz, one of my many second moms, told me, you have to feel all the feels. They don’t go away if you ignore them. You don’t feel better when you do. You’re allowed to feel how you do.

The other thing that was bothering me and that I was avoiding was the fact that I feel so utterly purposeless right now. I didn’t have a reason not to just simply exist and go through the motions. I scrolled through twitter and saw story after story covering the COVID-19 crisis and I barely read any of them because all it did was make me feel sad about not being a part of covering it.

I watched as my school paper, which I used to claim with such pride, posted a couple stories as the crisis unfolded. And I waited for more, wanting to be still proud of what used to be most of my life. And I was a little disappointed, but I can’t really blame them. A lot of the editors lack experience and that’ll come with time.

One of the editors asked me for advice on a story and I happily obliged, and I (still in the Netherlands at the time) updated her on my situation and other students abroad that I had heard about. She told me they were trying to get someone to cover it and no one was motivated to write about anything and that just killed me. Because if I had been Editor-in-Chief…let’s just say things would have been done differently. And that job was something I did not want and turned down the opportunity to take. I still stand by that decision, however it’s still frustrating to see other student newspapers kill it with coverage and be left waiting for my school to report the situation as stood at Ferris and fight for our students.

Back to what I was originally saying, though. It’s not as though I haven’t had an opportunity to write. I did. I pitched a story for the Western Herald because I knew their Editor-in-Chief and I was studying at HU with several WMU students. I had interviews. I had some pictures. And then the day after I started writing it, my grandpa died.

I barely had the motivation to get out of bed than weekend, let alone write. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to finish the story. I don’t know why. It’s a little irrelevant now. But even a week after I got the interviews I could have written it. Every time I sat down to write it, I just didn’t. I don’t know why. I just didn’t want to.

Now, Twitter just stresses me out. I see my peers that I was keeping up with in the fall continue to write stories, some even freelanced for the Detroit Free Press. And I just get this sinking feeling that I’m falling behind. I imagine in my head one day in the near future being in a job interview and being asked ‘So, what kind of coverage did you participate in during the COVID-19 crisis?’ and sitting there with the only answer being ‘nothing because I was mildly depressed and no longer felt a passion for reporting.’ What kind of B.S. answer is that? I don’t know, but I don’t know how to fix this, either.

Spring was supposed to be quiet for sports, at least at my school. All our teams that consistently made it to postseason and everyone was excited to hear about were in the fall or winter. I wasn’t worried about taking a break from reporting for a semester. I had written enough content about Football in the fall to put in my portfolio. And also because I was also going to have some kick ass international stories from the magazine my classmates and I were supposed to put together this semester.

Well, throw that in the garbage. It’s being transitioned to online and I have no idea how our program directors are going to make this anything of value, what with our 14-person class mostly at home across the world and the complete inability to travel. This isn’t a knock on them by any means, it’s just the truth. How are you supposed to salvage a magazine that was supposed to be filled with stories from different cities across Europe? I don’t know, but I guess we’ll see.

So what do I even have to show for the last four months of my life? Pretty much nothing, writing wise. Unless you call my blog anything. And that’s turned into me recording my dumpster fire of thoughts rather than stories of traveling across Europe.

I count my month and a half of memories in Utrecht as some of the best of my life and a complete dream. But that’s all it really is now. I have a few friends (who freakin’ love) I’ll keep in contact with, but not much else to really show for it. And that stresses me out. I have such big expectations and goals for myself that to not be moving towards those at least a little each semester scares the hell out of me.

This was a lot of word vomit and if you’ve made it this far you’re probably worried about me. Don’t be. I’m still holding it together and I’ve only ALMOST had one mental breakdown. I’ll be fine. I’ll find my place again, as will everyone else. But right now it’s hard. And I’m kind of done talking about it anymore so please don’t ask me about it ahahahahaha

thanks for reading

I’ve been avoiding this.

I’ve been avoiding writing anything about the events of the past week because that means trying to figure out all the complex feelings that I have about my situation. I also did not want to offend anyone who has been very supportive of me coming home so I gave myself a few days.

Thursday, my parents called me to inform me that The United States had declared all global travel at a Level 4, or a Do Not Travel order. All citizens abroad should come home or prepare to be abroad for an indefinite period of time. Flights were going to start disappearing and international travel was going to slow down to all but nothing.

The decision was made that I was going to go home. I say a decision was made because I don’t think anyone involved really felt they had a choice. Obviously there was a choice, but I didn’t feel like I could stay, even though I wanted to. I felt safe, I was planning on staying there until end of June anyway, so I was comfortable staying there. I didn’t want to leave behind my new way of life. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. I wanted to stay because yes, this experience had changed drastically, but it was still my study abroad experience. It didn’t scare me to stay. I wasn’t scared to live through COVID-19 in another country. I thought it would be interesting to document, honestly.

But, ultimately, it would have been selfish of me to stay. My family was worried. Me staying in the Netherlands through this pandemic scared them. And I understand that. Would I want my kid halfway across the world during a pandemic? Hell no. But that didn’t make it any easier for me to accept the fact that I had to come home.

The hardest pill to swallow for me was that this wasn’t about me anymore. It wasn’t about what I wanted, or whether I thought I was safe where I was. It was about my family and not worrying them sick about if I was OK or not. And those are valid factors to me.

It seems childish to say that that I wanted the situation to be about me, but this experience was completely self-driven. I had been planning it since my freshman year. I literally arranged my course load around this trip so all my credits would fit in four years and I would graduate on time. I took on a third job in the fall to save up money for the trip. I took time researching train passes and trying to plan out costs ahead of time. I dreamt of all the places I wanted to see. This was the first time I had really traveled in my whole life.

This whole experience got to be about me. For maybe the first time in my college career, I got to spend an entire semester having…fun? What’s that? I busted my you know what my entire college career to this point. Yes, obviously I hung out with friends and did fun stuff, but homework and writing for the paper consumed most of my free time. And I loved it, I did. I didn’t mind being busy, but I was looking forward to a semester of experiences of a lifetime and being jobless for the first time in six years. It was like I was going to live a dream.

To be honest, it also scared me shitless. There were days in the fall I was so stressed out with my work schedule I wondered if it was worth it. There were breakdowns about leaving my friends and family for five months. There was fear of knowing absolutely nothing of what to expect. I had little free time to research the city I was going to live in. I was basically jumping in the deep end blindfolded. And that excited me as much as it scared me.

So I pressed on and eventually, the time came to fly across the Atlantic to my new home.

Once I got there…it was everything I dreamed it would be. I had no specific expectations for my exchange semester, yet during my time there, it exceeded them all. I remember saying to my friend Karen that I felt like I was living in a dream and I couldn’t believe that it was my life. It became a home in the month and a half I was there. People tell you that you’ll make friends that last a lifetime on your exchange, and I did in the short time I was there. But there are so many more people I met that I wish I had time to know better. And now? I may never see them again besides on Instagram. My heart aches for the people I didn’t get to know better and the experience I won’t have.

Coming home has brought a lot of peace to my family, and I am glad for that. I am, really. I’m still working on that inner peace about it, though.

I am going to preface this next paragraph by saying I am grateful for the circle of support I have and I love all of you who have reached out to me since coming home.

Every time someone said the words “I’m so glad you’re home” to me, it made me want to scream. Every “you have your whole life to travel” made me want to cry. Because life is short and unpredictable. You don’t know that I have my whole life to travel. I know you’re glad I’m home, but I’m not. It’s taken me this whole week to become a little at peace with this situation. Every time someone said something like that, it was trivializing my experience and that hurt more than anything. No one seemed to understand the hurt I was going through or the fact that I basically just gave up my life as it was to come home.

I don’t hold anything against my family–please do not take that away from that. I could never be upset with them for how they feel, just as I hope they aren’t upset with me for how I feel. In the end, everything that is meant to be will be and I’ll always love my family in the end no matter what happens.

I’m not going to lie, I struggled a lot coming home. The possibility of going back shrinks every day. I’m in quarantine by myself. I watched two seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in two days just to distract myself from the hot mess that is now my life. But I know that pretty much everyone else is having a shit time, too. So this will be the only time you hear me complain. I only did it because I think it’s important to acknowledge the way you feel and express it somehow. Lucky for you–or not–my form of expression is writing. Even if it means being vulnerable and much more open than I am used to.

Hope everyone is healthy, safe and staying tf home.

Cheers.

Note: this was written Wednesday, March 18 a day after my parents and I decided I was going to stay in Utrecht. 24 hours later, I was booking a flight home. This has sat in my drafts for a week now, and I decided I might as well publish it.

Spoiler: I’m staying *insert wolf of wall street ‘I’m not leaving’ gif*

This past week might be one of the most confusing and frustrating situations I’ve ever been in. Mostly because my situation was constantly changing and everyone’s opinions shifted each day, including mine.

Every hour the last weekend, something was different and there were so many things to factor into my decision to leave the Netherlands or stay. Through many, many discussions and research and deliberating, I have decided to stay in the Netherlands for the time being and my parents are being very supportive of me. I am grateful to them for listening and choosing to support my decision even though this entire situation is incredibly stressful and the future is uncertain. It’s times like these that I hold onto knowing that God is in control and whatever comes to be, He has planned.

The spread of COVID-19 across the world has put many people into a panic. It is understandable to a level, given that we have seen the worst case scenario play out in Italy and China. It is truly awful what their reality became. But other countries have seen that play out and pretty much every one of them is taking every preventative measure possible.

In the Netherlands, by Thursday night (March 12), all universities were closing. Over the weekend, all schools, cafes, restaurants and fitness centers were closed until April 6. Scientists in Amsterdam believe they have found an antibody capable of fighting off COVID-19. My friends and I live in a building on our campus that is a 20-minute bus ride from the city center. All these factors have made me feel that the situation I am in is safe.

That, and my friends here are taking this seriously in regard to washing hands, keeping eating areas sanitized and things like that. The only times I leave my apartment is to go get groceries or to go on a bike ride or run in the paths that wind through the woods behind our building.

The most challenging part of transitioning to online classes will be this week. Monday we were still waiting to hear from our director and most of our professors to know how we were going to have class moving forward. That, plus the fact that adjusting to having absolutely no schedule has been new territory for someone like me. I’m used to having a schedule far too busy for my own good and constantly being on the run. To have pretty much zero obligations besides a few online class video chats…is equally as horrifying as it is freeing.

It’s not even that I have much free time–it’s the illusion of free time. There’s always an assignment I could be working on, or I could go for a jog, or I could clean, but there’s no schedule to stick to. The time management skills I thought I had are now completely nonexistent. I guess packing your schedule so full you don’t have free time isn’t the same as managing your time.

[That’s all I had written before I had to attend my 4.5 hour film lecture online. You can imagine why this never got finished or published that day.]

Note: this was written Friday night after my parents told me my grandpa, Gordon Almond Hall, only had a couple days to live. Later that night, he passed away and is no longer in pain. Thank you to everyone who has already reached out to me, it means more than you know.

I’m sitting here in my bed, having cried more in the last hour than I probably have in the last six months.

I just got off the phone with my parents, who told me my grandpa’s health took a turn for the worse in the last 24 hours and he may only have a few days. And with those words my heart shattered into a million pieces.

It’s a reality that I hoped and wished wouldn’t happen. The possibility that my last visit to the hospital before I left to study abroad would be the last time I saw my dear grandpa. The man who taught me to tie flies as a toddler, who always bribed us into letting him pull out our wiggly teeth.

I can barely type this right now and each word hurts to write. Deep down, when I said goodbye to my grandpa at the hospital five days before I left, I knew it was the last time. I brought my water color painting I had done in high school for him to brighten up his hospital room. It was a painting of the Au Sable river, where he used to take fishing trips, with a fisherman wading in the river. It was always inspired by him, so I figured he should be the one to have it, especially when he needed some cheering up. I just refused to believe that that was my final gift to him until now. When I walked out of his room I said, “I’ll see you when I get back grandpa.” It was a see you later, not goodbye.

It was an “I can’t wait to tell you about all the adventures I have in Europe” not an “I’ll miss you forever.”

He went home from the hospital shortly after I left, so I figured he would be getting better while I was gone. And at least then, even though I knew there was a distinct possibility that was my last time with my grandpa, I already knew I would pay to fly back for possibly a last goodbye and his funeral to celebrate the wonderful man I got to call grandpa for 21 years. I wouldn’t care that I would be taking fewer trips abroad, I would pay to come home and then go back.

Now, though? There’s absolutely no chance that happens. Direct flights from Amsterdam to Detroit are nearly three grand, before luggage. Cheaper flights include at least two layovers in other European countries. And then I would have to be quarantined for two weeks when I got home. It’s just not even feasible at this point. And that’s what hurts the most. That I can’t be there to hold my family, to hug my dad after he loses his dad. To share our favorite memories and celebrate everything about him.

Dad, I wish I could be there with you right now. It truly hurts me to be so far away from you right now when you need your family close. I wish nothing more than to give you a hug. I love you so much.

Grandpa, there’s so much I wish I could say and talk to you about. I’m sorry you’ll never get to see me walk down the aisle, that you’ll never meet your future great grandchildren. I’m sorry that I’ll never get to come over and tell you about Europe. I’m sorry that my see you later was actually goodbye.

But thank you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for always coming to my games, my birthday parties, my award ceremonies–whatever it was, you were there for it. Thank you for always having a dog so I could get my puppy fix at your house and for letting me watch Sponge Bob even though my mom hated it. Thank you for teaching me about fly fishing and letting me come on the “boys” fishing trip. Thank you for calling me every year on my birthday and singing to me in the way only you could. Thank you for being the kind of man who adopts three sibling to ensure they stay together. Thank you for caring about our family so deeply that we always had get togethers several times each year and an organized family vacation with all 26 of us. Those are memories I’ll never forget. You and Grandma made the family environment everyone deserves and I couldn’t be more grateful.

I’ll miss you today and every day the rest of my life. You were the best grandpa I could have asked for. Eventually, I will smile every time I think of you instead of shedding some tears. I can’t wait to tell my kids about you one day. The man all of us grandkids adored. You created so much laughter and fun for everyone and I’m so lucky to have known you for 21 years.

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Today is Thursday, 12 of March. 24 hours ago I was watching as events slowly began to get canceled and a few universities began to transition to online classes.

Now, I feel like I’m living inside a dystopian novel. My next thought after that was: damn Cora, why aren’t you writing about this?

I went to bed last night rather peacefully, having heard the last number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Netherlands at 273, nothing really to worry much about. I woke up to a 30-day travel ban to the US from Europe, now 600 confirmed cases in the Netherlands, and the NBA suspending its season. Over the course of today, nearly every sporting event in the next month has gone from no fans allowed to canceled or suspended until further notice.

Twitter is an absolute madhouse, with a new league suspending play every hour. The United States is losing its mind over the distinct possibility of March Madness getting canceled–I would be surprised if it didn’t at this point.

A couple hours ago I had a conversation with my advisor about what the international office is doing moving forward. Apparently the two options are: let the student decide whether to stay or go, or pull all students abroad out of the countries. Right now, I’m hoping for the first option. I would rather chop off a finger than get on a plane for 8 hours right now. But I guess we’ll see.

My university, along with every public university in Michigan, has announced all classes will be online for at least two weeks. Some universities have gone as far as the entire rest of the semester.

When COVID-19 first broke out in Wuhan, China, I would have never foreseen what has happened. I watched it slowly spread and read article after article–every one of them with an asian person in their photo, don’t even get me started–about new cases in other countries.

I’m not going to lie: at first, I didn’t see this as a serious thing. I really didn’t. It’s like the flu, right? Thousands of people die from the flu each year, why is everyone freaking out? It’s not a big deal, right? Wrong.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, their estimates for the seasonal flu last year during the flu season were 35.5 million cases, 490,600 hospitalizations and 34,200 deaths. Know what that death rate comes out to? 0.00096%

COVID-19’s death rate right now is sitting at about 3.4%. Seems like a small number but if the seasonal flu’s death rate was 3.4%, 1,207,000 would have died last year. That’s a hell of a lot more than 34,200. That, and there seems to be a shortage of tests everywhere in the US and it takes three days to get results?? I saw a story that a man who got tested in the US didn’t wait for his results before hopping on a plane and then get informed ON the plane he was infected. This is how the world ends. This is why it’s spreading like fire. Because people are idiots sometimes. Because they don’t take health professionals seriously.

Because will that man most likely survive? Probably. But will all the people he came into contact with survive it? If they’re older than 70, more likely not.

I get that people shouldn’t be panicking. I do. Mass hysteria does no one good. But please, people, use your brains. Think of people other than yourselves. Think of your grandmother, your friend with an immunodeficient disease. Your friend or sibling with asthma. If you’re a young, healthy person, the precautions aren’t about you. They’re about those who can’t fight this off and you’re being selfish if you don’t follow health professionals’ instructions.

While life in the Netherlands is just now slowly beginning to change, the atmosphere has changed a lot. It’s suddenly all anyone talks about or is concerned with. There’s an air of suspicion every time someone dares to cough after deciding to be present in class.

And while I understand the frustration with pretty much everything getting canceled–trust me, I’m studying abroad and can’t go anywhere or to anything–can we all refrain from the complaints about how stupid it all is? It’s been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Getting ahead of it is the best plan of attack. It sucks, it really does. I was looking forward to streaming March Madness over here. I look forward to it every year. But some things are bigger than sports. Some things are bigger than concerts, conferences, etc. Saving our health professionals from overflowing hospitals and decreasing the deaths suffered from this virus seems like one of them.

If someone tells me I have to get on a plane and go home, I might lose it. It seems like the worst option for me right now, but I’ll keep you updated. I’m going to keep writing as much as I can, because this is the weirdest time in my life I can remember.

Stay safe, wash your hands, and don’t touch your face.

In the month that I have been here, I’ve gone to two concerts already. Which isn’t all that surprising, if you know me. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: if I could only spend money on one non-essential thing the rest of my life, it would be concerts.

First one I went to was the Band CAMINO, a small alternative band from Memphis, Tennessee. I think I started listening to them three or four years ago? Shout out Nate Dufrin for that one, sent me 2/14, the Black and White and My Thoughts on You and it was over. If you want to get into listening to them, start there. But anyway, the last year or so they’ve become one of my favorite bands. I have yet to dislike anything they put out.

So of course, when I saw their European tour get posted and it started right after I arrived, I knew I had to go. The Amsterdam date sold out before I bought tickets, so to Belgium I went. It was only about two hours by bus so it wasn’t bad. Crazy side story, when Shelly and I checked into our hostel, one of the other girls who was staying there arrived and we discovered we were all there to see the same concert. Guys, I’m not kidding, we are like the same person. Her name is Lauren and I felt like I found a kindred music soul all the way in Europe. She’s from the US, too and we spent the rest of the day together and it was one of the most fun nights I’ve had.

The concert itself was perfect *chef’s kiss*. The venue was tiny and there was maybe 80 people there. No joke. We were front row and it was just magic. They were so good live and there were multiple times that the lead singer locked eyes with me and we both sang the song. It’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine.

We also met a couple from the US/Canada who live in Dubai and were traveling and they were hilarious. We went and got drinks with them after and it was a blast. I wish I could describe them in a way that did them justice but I can’t. Let’s just say that Kim and Christian are kind of the coolest power couple I’ve met. Overall, top three concert I’ve seen. Partly because I loved their energy live and partly because they were able to connect so well with everyone in the crowd.

Besides that, Antwerp was really cool for the day we got to spend there. We went to the Chocolate Nation factory and museum and it was so cool. It was by far the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. 10/10 would recommend.

Concert #2 included a whole weekend to London (!!!!!) and it was a dream until flying home (but we’re not gonna talk about that right now. or ever). We arrived Friday afternoon and had a more chill day, just went to a fantastic pub and then did a bus tour at night. Saturday, we walked around central London for a solid six hours. It was incredible, all the architecture and history in the city is just so cool and I loved it. Except I hated the tube. It was so dirty and packed usually and hot. Also they’re kind of sketchy trains. It’s my least favorite European public transportation thus far. Its only perk was really the fact that they ran all night and so often so getting back from the concert was easy.

Let me put this concert into a little more context: it was basically my musical dream to see the 1975 live at the O2 arena in London. It’s a huge arena that they always sell out two nights of every tour and the atmosphere is off the walls. I think junior year of high school was when I really got into their music and they might be my favorite band. So I got floor tickets by some miracle in January because they released 100 more right when I looked again after failing to get them the first time around. I managed to make my way pretty close to the stage, maybe four rows of people away? It was insane.

This was definitely the best concert I’ve ever been to. The energy in that arena was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Their sets are absolutely incredible and they are such good performers. On top of that, they played two unreleased songs from their new album :’)

I thought I was going to pass out after, though, my body was exhausted from the day and standing for five hours at the concert, singing every song at the top of my lungs.

I couldn’t have asked for better concerts so far. There’s nothing quite like seeing songs you’ve listened to for hours on end live, in the flesh by the artists who put their heart and soul into the music.

I’m so grateful to get to have these experiences. These are the memories I’ll never forget as long as I live. Nights where I was truly living.

Next concerts as of right now are Chelsea Cutler and Jeremy Zucker in Amsterdam in May. Possibly Lewis Capaldi in Dublin in June. Can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Wow. I’ve put this off for a while, mainly because the first two weeks here were incredibly busy and honestly I was just trying to survive. So, apologies to the three of you who have been looking forward to this (hi mom).

I’ll briefly recap my travels to Europe for you since it happened nearly a month ago, but was incredibly fun and memorable all the same. My 14 hour layover in NYC was a dream, I cannot wait to go back one day. My friend Shelly and I managed to get to the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Central Park and Times Square. Ground Zero was incredibly sobering. Volunteers placed flowers on the names of the people whose birthday was that day and it was equally as touching as it was sad. It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted and felt a need to visit and it’s not something I’ll forget soon.

After sleeping nearly my entire seven-hour flight to Amsterdam, we were immediately faced with the challenge of European transportation, which is not easy for an American used to driving everywhere. Also, it’s all in Dutch. Which reads like someone dragged their hand across a keyboard and called it good. So we made it from Amsterdam to Utrecht by train, but the biggest challenge for me was figuring out the bus system in Utrecht.

First of all, stops were nearly impossible to remember because, again, Dutch. To top it all off, I had no service on my phone for the first couple days because I hadn’t gotten a new SIM card. So, I was left to my own wits to get myself around, which was not entirely successful. There were more than a few bus trips that started out on the wrong bus, the wrong way. My first grocery trip took two hours. But after a few trips and a new SIM card, navigating the bus was quite easy. One step closer to being European, right?

Classes have been keeping me busy, especially with extra “excursions” that our professors schedule for us. I have six classes right now including my beginners Dutch class and there’s plenty of assignments to go around. To add onto that, there’s a student group called Erasmus Student Network and they put on events for international students. So some of my friends and I did their introduction week which was fun, but packed full our schedule.

I feel settled in now this week, going to classes, running errands in the city, getting a bike. I feel like I’m finding my way around and my new way of life and honestly, I love it. It’s almost scary to me how fast I can adapt to a new way of life, but I guess it’s a good thing.

The one thing I truly despise here is the wind. Holy sh– is it windy here. All the time. And I’m not just talking a breeze, legitimately 20 mph winds that blow you backwards when you walk. Rarely is there a day when it’s not windy, rainy or both.

Back to the bike thing: everyone here rides bikes. The bike to car ratio is probably 20:1. I have no idea if that’s accurate, but I’ll put it this way: there’s a ton of bikes here. There are red brick bike paths all throughout the city and it’s actually quite fun–and nice not to pay a bus fare to get into the city.

Safe to say, I love Utrecht. The highs have outweighed the lows in these first couple weeks and I am beyond excited for the next four months.