I've lived in the United States my whole life and have done almost no sightseeing within my own country, so here is a look at New York City, my first trip, through the eyes of an American. I've been so excited to see New York, because so many of my friends that I met in Europe had already been to NYC and I felt stupid having never seen it! I've grown up watching so many movies that have been filmed here and I know of so many places in NYC, just from hearing dialogues in different movies. I had to finally experience New York. Mia and I took an overnight bus to New York (about 9 1/2 hours, not too bad), which dropped us off in China Town. It felt like I walked right back into ... read more

I've gotten a few messages here on travel blog asking me or encouraging me about my language learning and passion for it. Special thanks to for suggesting to put it all into a blog. This has kind of been my mixed-up gap year, trying to figure out what I want to do, but also learning languages. I just got back from my first trip out of my home country in August and now I'm studying languages abroad for a while. Not any hardcore traveling from place to place hitting famous sites, but I can use the city I'm studying in as a base to explore a lot of the surrounding areas. The trip last summer was to China and right now I'm in Germany improving my German. It's also my first time in Europe so I've ... read more

I arrived in Berlin ready to explore the next capital! I’m considering a university in Berlin too so Mia and I planned a weekend trip to see the city and the university. I flew straight from Paris to Berlin and I picked up Mia at the bus station this morning. Then we went back to the hostel really quick to drop off the bags before we got started seeing the city. The hostel we’re staying at is awesome! Huge room, wifi, pool, sauna, private bathroom with huge shower, the works. It’s part hostel and part hotel. We’re staying in the hostel part and for only 16 Euro a night! It’s called Plus Berlin and they have “plus” branches in a few major European cities like Prague, Florence, and a couple more I can’t remember. Well, that ... read more

I feel like I really got to know Paris today. Even though it sounded like a depressing way to start the day, I started with the Catacombs. The Catacombs of Paris were used when the government excavated a lot of cemeteries, because they were overfilled with the dead and started to spread disease to the living. They moved them all into a mass "grave" here in the Catacombs deep under Paris. Mass piles of dark clothes, bones, and corpses were carried through the streets of Paris to the Catacombs, with priests saying the prayer of the dead alongside. The way starts with stairs deep under ground and then about 15 minutes of walking through what seems to be a mine shaft. It was actually pretty creepy and I could've sworn I hear a scream once or ... read more

“Show me your papers.” Well no, he didn’t say that exactly, but the German police officer with the submachine gun in his hand wanted to see my passport. This is right after I had to take my bag apart for the security scanners to send it through a second time. As soon as I finished packing back up the two police officers were right behind me. After spending a good 10 minutes with my passport, speaking into their radios, and pointing at different oddities in my passport, the armed officer came back over to me and asked if I speak German. I told him yes, a bit. He went back to his partner and conversed with her for a while longer, only taking a break to come back over to me and ask me an odd ... read more