It has been a while since my last blog entry, but that is because it has been a while since I've been in a place where the internet works well enough for me to upload things! =) Right now, it is Wednesday, December 16th 2009, 7pm and I am eating the third meal that I have made all by myself since being in Mozambique! What did I make for dinner tonight? Beans! And besides the fact that they are incredibly salty, they taste ok, I did refill my bowl. They taste better than the soupy sphagetti I made last night. A lot has happened since I last wrote. And I don't blog as my journal, so it is thus hard to bring to mind what exactly to tell you. I do suggest that you look at my pictures on facebook, because there you will find more than my words express.

I'm sitting in the guest house for Save The Children, in Morrumbala, Zambezia. Zambezia is the Province, Morrumbala is the District and Save The Children is the organization that I am working alongside with. Yes, I found out on Thanksgiving Day that this, Morrumbala, would be my site for two whole years. And my "job" well, let me tell you a little bit about that, what I know of it thus far. Save The Children is an NGO that you might be familiar with, it is very large. The main office for Zambezia is in a city called Quelimane, about 2 hours from here by car (about 4 hours in a chappa-the normal form of transportation here in Moz) and one of the two smaller offices that work more "hands-on," in the community, is here in Morrumbala, my new home. All Moz 14ers (health) from the Peace Corps have been paired up with an organization, from community based, to faith based, to large NGOs all throughtout the country. The director of the health program, Crisiti, along with all the trainers that were working with us the last 3 months decided which volunteer went where. They paired us up according to a couple interviews they had with us, our skills, and what they thought would be a good fit. And so far, I'm definetly feeling that they placed me well! =)

A short description: I will be working with a home-based care program, a pilot project in child-focused home-based care. I will be working with community activists to carry out Home-Based Care (HBC) and Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) care activities and support the staff of Save The Children in planning activities. The community activista's activities include visits to patient's homes at least twice per week, the provision of first aid and home-based health care activities for the acutely ill, the referral of patients and family members to public and program supports. They also accompany patients to the hospitals and/or provide references for patients' hospital visits, supervise patients' adherence to medication (especially in the case of patients on ARVs or who are being treated for TB) and participate in the distribution of food baskets to patients who qualify for food support. Activistas' responsibilies include the provision of psycho-social support to patients and their children. As part of this attention to psycho-social support in the provison of Home-Based Care, the activistas of each neighborhood work as a group to coordinate and run weekly or bi-weekly activities for children or parents with chronic illnesses, choronically ill children, and other neighborhood children. These include football and other games as well as dance, singing,, and theatre workshops.

Ok, did you get all that? =) My job, is assisting in all those things, because I work closely with the activistas! The main goals of Save The Children-Mozambique are
1.) Mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDs in communities, especially children
2.) Food security and nutrition
3.) Education, support to improve instruction, and the quality and participation of communities in schools
4.) Responding to emergencies (ie: floods)

This is a NEW site, as in I am the first person from the Peace Corps to live in Morumbala. Also, I have NO site-mate. The closest PCV to me is Jordan, and she is about 2 hours away. I have been here for 3 days now, and things are definetly different. But, this is the Peace Corps I imagined. The last 3 months have been wonderful! I learned a new language, which I am communicating quite well in; I gained so much knowledge about public health from amazing trainers (thank you Caroline and Sonia!!), specifically about HIV/AIDs, malaria, cholera and TB (those that affect Mozambicans the most). I lived with a terrific host family, who I grew to love and plan to visit in the next two years. And I made amazing friends, whom have impacted me in ways that I didn't think could happen in such a short amount of time. And now...I'm far away from my host family, seperated from all my new friends. I've been dropped off, in what some would call the middle of no where, with all my many bags, ready to make a new home. It won't be easy, it wasn't easy when I first arrived, but at the end, 3 months into it, Namaacha had become my home. I truly believe that the same will happen here, not immediatly, but in time. I pray that in 3 months I will feel at home here in Morrumbala. My house is going to be ready to move into next week (so they say). I'll let you know about that another time.

For now, I think I shall leave you. I've told you about my job and my new "home." Next time I will share culturual stories, and get to more of those great questions posed by wonderful Lisa! =) But I DO want to tell you how to send me letters/packages/ect. the address now to send me things is:

C/O Amanda James
Save The Children-Maputo
Rua da Tchamba 398
C.P. 1854
Ciadade de Maputo
Mozambique

What to send you ask? Well, you can NEVER go wrong sending BOOKS, any book! I have a lot of free time on my hands and not enough to read. MOVIES, can always watch another DVD, I do have my comp and sometimes have found watching a movie to be very theraputic! =) GROUND COFFEE!!! O yes....I brought my french press (thank you Lord) and yet sadly ground coffee is very hard to come by here. And from there, just think, what would YOU like to recieve when you were so far away from home, what would you miss? Cuz I prob miss it too! Let me tell you, Target, I have come to the realization that Target is by far the best store ever! If I could go back to America I would go on a quick shopping spree there! lol (but really!) But really, there is just SOOO much joy to be found in getting ANYTHING in the mail!! Thus far I have gotten 2 packages (remember it takes a LONG time for things to get here, so maybe you sent one and I just haven't gotten it yet) and it made my MONTH!! =) o as a side note: I am practicing yoga a lot and incorporating meditation into my prayer time, and I am learning a lot through these two new practices, and also enjoying them very much! So, that is to say, anything related to either of those two things; yoga & mediation, books, dvds, incense...be creative, would be O SO APPRECIATED!! ;) yoga hasn't quite caught on here yet!! Ok, ok, one more thing I WISH I would've thought of before coming here, that I'm just gonna throw out there, since we are on the topic, I wish I would've thought of buying a kit to start me on some new HOBBY! Anything really, knitting, hemp, something that I don't know how to do and usually don't have the time to learn and now have ample time. I am starting to garden though, well, ok I plan to start, once I move into my new home. So just throwing that out there, if you see any cook starting kits for...anything that you wish you had the time to learn to do, I prob wish I could learn to do it and thus you can live vicariously though me! ;)

NOTE: If sending a package, check into the flat rate boxes @ the post office, its the best deal! And you can fill it up w/heavy things like BOOKS!! ;) And remember it's best to lie about the value/whats actually in the box AND lastly decorate the box in some kind of religous manner (get creative!) lol these are just ways that will HOPEFULLY keep things from being stolen.

I hope this long amount of writing finds you happy, well, and in good health. Thank you for taking the time to get all the way down here to the bottom! =) That makes you a true friend! lol ;) O and my new motto here, "Don't just do something, stand there!" You should try it out to, hard to adjust to, but you notice things that you never saw before!

So much love from Morrumbala, Mozambique to you, wherever you are reading this
XoXo Amanda

Vida em Mozambique*Thus far

I can't believe that I have been here in Mozambique for over a month now! Sorry I haven’t written and/or posted any pics sooner. Things take longer here, including the internet, which is difficult to come bye! To set the mood for you, it is 9:43pm, and I am so tired! Bedtime here is usually around 9:30pm, later than that is def pushing it. I wake up when the roosters start to crow, no I'm NOT joking! They seem to be loudest around 5am-lol-it seems funny as I type this, but in the mornings I'm not laughing! Things are so good here right now. I don't know how to describe life here, but I will try to tell you some of the things that I believe you should know.

My host family is wonderful. It consists of my mae (mom), Belena, my irmao (brother) Mendis-14 and my little irma (sister) Amanda. Yes, there are two Amandas in my casa, we call my sister "Amanda Pequena." =) The people in Mozambique are so very friendly, I can't count how many times a day people say "Ola," as I walk bye, or ask, "Como esta?" And when you ask it in return you often get a big smile with a "Muito bem, obrigado." It is a very communal culture, family and friends, neighbors are the most important thing. Everyone is incredibly hospitable. It could be the poorest of families and they will offer food and drink to everyone and anyone who comes into (or simply near) their home.

I am currently in a city about 1 1/2 hours from Maputo, the capital, called Namaacha. We have been here basically the entire time. We have gone into Maputo 2x-and the capital is def a much different feel than out here. Namaacha is a rather rural city. Lots of goods we buy here actually come from our neighboring country of Swaziland. My current favorite thing to buy? COCUNUTS! One coconut cost 10 metical, and right now 28 metical=$1 (more or less). I have officially learned how to open a coconut with a rock, lol, I think it's my favorite snack because how often did I open one in Cali? Never! =) Weather? It is bipolar! It is raining buckets one moment and squalling hot the next! =) Rainy days here are...something else! I live in a part of the city with other health volunteers where we basically HIKE to and from class. I get my work out literally from walking around; everything is up hill, down hill, and then all over again...all day long! In my barrio dirt and rock are in surplus, and when it rains, walking around becomes quite the adventure. On these days our shoes gain about 5lbs each, of mud, and this is not me being over exaggerating! Many have fallen up and or down the slippery slopes, I haven't...yet. =/

What have we been up to? Well, Monday-Saturday (yes Saturday!) we have classes. There are about 69 of us volunteers, which you will be hearing referred to as Moz 14, because we are the 14th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to be here. So, Moz 14 is split into two; education and health. Only 1 day a week, Hub Day, is all 69 of us together, besides that we do separate training. Regardless of which group, we all start @ 7:30am everyday and go till about 5pm. We all alternate between Portuguese lessons and then tech lessons (either health or ed). I have learned so much, in what feels like much longer than just a month. Sundays, our one day off, is often spent cleaning! Doing laundry-this is obviously all done by hand, so it takes some time. Our families like to hang out with us on these days, since we are so busy throughout the week. The last two Sundays I have gone to fiestas (parties) with my family. One was a baptism party, and the other was a birthday party. Our days here are rather filled up.

A very popular pastime here, PASSEAR!! Which is really “walking?" We passear to visit other amigos around the city, and to explore the area. I already mentioned that the Mozambicans are friendly, and let me tell you, so are the other Americans I am here with. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many great, talented, smart, fun, adventurous, brave and all in all awesome men and women here. There are lots of us, and it is fun getting to know them all-and since there are so many of us it can be difficult to hang out, 69 of us can't all go to one place after Hub Day, we would overwhelm the community! So.....myself and a very lovely young woman from Oregon, Jordan, organized a Halloween PARTY!! There was a lot of work and some stress that went into planning it, but it was FANTASTIC!!!

There were 2 parts to the party; the first part involved our families. Costumes were of course required. And our host families had a great time, they thought our costumes were ridiculous, but they had fun laughing! =) Then after a few hours of eating, roasting marshmallows, and trick-or-treating, we said goodbye to the younger kids and all went dancing! There was a dj and there were tons of lights, oh, it was o so much fun! =) We are already working on ideas for Thanksgiving! It was a hit of a party!

Yes, there are lots of things I haven't mentioned, like how I bath in a bucket, outside, sometimes under the stars even (my fav!). My bathroom is outside, right next to the "shower," but late at night we all use something wonderful called a xhi-xhi bucket, and you def pee in a bucket, in your room. Sounds crazy maybe, but I'm telling you, it's pretty great. I don't wanna walk outside in the middle of the night and deal with the insects and animals in the latrin (bathroom) area! =( No! Xhi-xhi for sure!

There are so many other things I could say, but it's way past my bed time, I'm currently in my room typing this and I will save it and go to the internet cafe tomorrow to put this up, save some $$ that way! I have had ONE melt down day, which is expected, and normal. That happened @ the end of week 2. lol but besides that I am truly doing so well. Let me leave you on the most current of news; this Saturday-Wednesday Moz 14 is going on "Site Visits." That is where we are all assigned a site of a current volunteer to go and visit. Moz 12 and Moz 13 are the current volunteers that we Moz 14 will be staying with. And they are all spread out in this large country....and us Moz 14's were so excited to find out where we were going to be going! This isn't nec where we will be placed for 2 years, BUT there it is a possibility that they are placing us where they are to "test" their thoughts on it being a good match for us or not. We found out today where we are all going!!! And I got EXACTLY where I wanted to go!!! =) Can you guess?? Nope...PEMBA!!!!! Pemba is WAY up north; check it out on a map. The only way to get up there is by plane!!! (Or a car, which could take 1week+) Pemba is where people go to vacation!!! It is supposed to be BEAUTIFUL!!! I can't wait!!! We all leave Saturday, some earlier than others. I am leaving Namaacha at 4am with some other people to get to Maputo to catch our flights.

I hope that this all gave you some insight into my life. Let me know what other kind of details you are curious about, and what you want to hear more of. I am putting some pics up on facebook too for you to check out! I hope all is well with you, thanks for reading this. =) Lots of love from Namaacha (soon to be PEMBA) Mozambique!!

Amanda

Sending Love...

Ola!! So a quick update on my mail situation…
If you already have sent me packages or letters to the previous address, the Peace Corps staff members tell me that I might or might not end up getting them. Sorry! The address you should send things to, effective immediately, is:

Amanda James, PST
Corpo da Paz Nº 345
Av. do Zimbabwe
Maputo, Mozambique

However, this address is only good until the 5th week of training or so (mid November). After that, please hold off on sending packages until I get my permanent site address for you all.

ALSO, the current Peace Corps volunteers have suggested that if you have to estimate the value of the package when sending something, never estimate it to be worth very much (>$20-30) because I’ll be the one who ends up having the foot the import fee when I try to pick the package up. On that note, if you have to indicate what is inside the package, don’t write things that are easily recognizable and make the package a target for thieves (ie. write ”Snacks” instead of “Food” or ”Educational materials” instead of ”movies/dvds”). Finally, if you want to increase the probability of the package not being tampered with EVEN MORE you can (apparently this works) write ”Jesus Saves” and/or put crosses all over the package/envelope.
Once again, the communication I´ll have with all of you for the next several weeks will be spotty at best. Thank you for the support! I love you all!

Last night in America...

It has been much too long since I've last blogged. But I don't have time now to catch you up on how AMAZING this summer was! I got to meet tons of amazing people through being a Roadie for Invisible Children, and go on the biggest road trip for a great cause that I will probably ever be blessed to be a part of. Then I got to spend the remaining part of summer with my family and closest friends. I couldn't have asked for a better send off to Mozambique!

If you are reading this right now you probably already know that I have joined the Peace Corps. Yup, after a year of not knowing the news of the year came, I was offered the opportunity to serve in Southern Africa, which is where I wanted to go. The Peace Corps invited me to serve in Mozambique as a Community Health Promoter for the next two years. I was so excited! And I am more so now, as I sit in my hotel room in Philly after our day of Staging. There are 65 of us volunteers who sat in a room all day today, learning about one another, the Peace Corps and our soon to be new home. Everyone I have met so far is so wonderful, and I have no doubt now that I will make incredible friends among these other volunteers very quickly.

It is around 10pm here, eastern time, and we are checking out in the lobby at 2:30AM!! =/ Ah!! lol yes and then all 65 of us are getting into 2 buses to head to JFK and we leave there Sept 30th in the morning. From there we have a 15 hour flight to South Africa (hopefully a good get to know one another time), and then only an hour flight to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. It's gonna be a long night/day! We arrive in Mozambique October 1st! =)

And for now, that is that! =) I will write when I can. I do not know yet how often I will have Internet access. What I DO know is that for the first 3 months, during Pre-Service Training all 65 of us will be together in a city about an hour from the capital, and if you would like to EVER send some love <3>

Amanda James, PCT

Peace Corps C.P. 4398

Maputo, Mozambique

This is my last night in America for who knows how long! Crazy! So for now...goodbye...talk to you again from Mozambique!!! =)

Living after Graduation

I look at my blog, and I realize that I haven't written one in far too long. I mostly started the blog so that friends from college could stay some what updated on my life in MO for the summer, traveling in Europe by myself and then while I was studying at Oxford in Spring 2008. Once I got back to APU I was with those that I had mostly been writing the blogs for, so I stopped writing.

I thought that I should start up again, since I am not with those people that mean the most to me in the world, particularly my girls from APU. If you're reading this you probably know that I'm working with Invisible Children right now, and I wanted to tell you about it. Then I realized there is so much since my last blog I could talk about....but...I won't. There is too much! All I will say is that I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE!!!

I can't really begin to say what that was like. The only word that comes to mind still, is surreal! College flew bye, and I honestly feel like this is just another summer so far. We said our goodbyes, and we all do our own thing for a few months, and then we come back together....right? Well, no. Not this time. My head knows this, but my heart is still disconnected from this reality I believe. Besides this surreal feeling of being a college graduate, I know that I am so incredibly lucky to have made such amazing girlfriends. Even if we aren't all together again at APU in the fall for classes, I know that all of our paths are going to overlap, and connect, somehow, someway...and some WHERE! =) I love these 9 girls!! XoXo

!!INVISIBLE CHILDREN***
Ok, so the update that I wanted to share before I went off on a tangent, as always, I must refocus! ;) As you probably know I am a Summer Roadie for Invisible Children (IC). Funny thing? Go back and read my August blog, and in it I mention how I met some Roadies from IC at Warped Tour when I was with Murf, and I say casually "Maybe I should do that next summer" lol who would've thought I would actually be doing it? Not me! I am not going to be touring on Warped Tour this summer, but I will be traveling in the south east! Who doesn't love southern hospitality and cooking?!? I got here May 31st and it has been a crazy ride since then! In a nutshell, I have been living in a house very much like one you have perhaps seen on Real World: co-ed, roughly 30 people, maybe more, not too sure. All in one house, sharing little space. This in itself is an experience!

In the last week and a half we have been training like none other, to get us ready to go on tour. We launch, which means we all peace out of San Diego for our particular regions this Thursday afternoon, in 2 DAYS!! My team consists of 4 people, Annie-she's from Virgina, Cory-from Louisiana, and Brian-who's from Oklahoma! The four of us are going to be with one another 24 hours a day/7 days a week for 5 weeks straight! I'm thinking we are going to get close! =) And I'm really excited for that.

I have met lots of great people, interns, other roadies, as well as staff- it really is so wonderful to be a part of this organization and all these lovely people. O and there has been plenty of fun stuff that's gone on amidst the crazy training days- in case you were wondering! For example; this last Friday night we went to a "Future" themed party!! So much fun, just getting ready for it-just check out the pic and you can tell!

Spent a beautiful Saturday at Ocean Beach and I went to Sea World with a couple of amazing girls on Sunday. I could def spend time getting to know San Diego, but the road calls! We will have some time after tour, for de-briefing, to be here again. But this is it for now, the update. Wanted to some before we launched, who knows when/where we will have Internet. Most of our screenings are at summer camps and at churches, it's going to be lovely, I feel it! =) And my uniform? IC apparel! If I'm wearing it, you can buy it at the merch table-makes getting ready that much easier!

12:07 pm now-I'm off to bed! Big day tomorrow-so next time you hear from me...I'll be in the SOUTH EAST!!! o ya...=)

PS I Love You & Abbey Road <3

I really do need to stay more on top of this blogging thing. I just realized I never even wrote about Ireland! How horrendous is that? Life is busy these days, but I’ll get to that after I say a few words on Ireland. So, Sarah and I left the 26^th a Friday night and got back 6 days later on Thursday night. It was incredibly fun! We went all over the South West. Dublin, Kilarney, Cork, Dingle and Galway, more places too but these were the main stops. If you have seen the movie “P.S. I Love You” you will understand how breathtaking the countryside in Ireland is. Everything is so green. Which is why it had to rain on us everyday we were there! Dublin was a fun city, very industrial. If you go to Ireland it is a must see, but you have to go to the country side as well. If you only go to Dublin you will be disappointed and miss out. My favorite city we stopped in was Galway, it was very quaint and full of character.

We were on a tour for the majority of our time there which I definitely recommend. It was not too pricey and you meet loads of people, of course they were all Australians! Haha Seriously, everyone I have met during my travels is Australian! But really, the tour is great. They take care of everything for you and you just get to relax and enjoy. This was a huge change to when I had been traveling alone, where I had to do all the logistics on my own. Nice break! I would love to go to Northern Ireland one day as well, didn’t have time to make it up there this time around.

We definitely had our fair share of Guinness, which is officially my favorite beer now, we had at least a pint a day! =) lol We ate loads of Irish Stew as well as Potatoes. I always want to be as “authentic” as possible. Our last night was our best night! We met the coolest people ever. A guy in our hostel named Will who had sailed from America to Ireland, along with an American-Irish couple. Sarah, Will and I met the couple at a great pub in Temple Bar. There was live Irish music, though it was in English a lot of it was difficult to understand. Fortunately our Paddywagon Tour Guide had taught us a few traditional Irish songs and we were actually able to sing along and that was wonderful. The couple we met at the pub had to be in their 50’s and they were in Ireland on “research” for the Irish pub they own at home in Indiana! They bought us rounds and we all hung out, dancing and singing along until 2am. We returned “home” to Oxford the next day. O did I mention how WINDY it was all the time, especially on the coast, I think this pic shows you!!

Since being back in Oxford: Wow..I don’t know where to start. I will tell you the things I am more or less involved in as of now (hopefully the list doesn’t grow, I don’t know where I’d fit much else!) Sundays: Church in the morning, fencing in the afternoon, the Oxford Union debate teachings at night; Monday: free; Tuesdays: small group dinner and hang out at night, loads of international persons; Wednesdays: photography lessons at night; Thursdays: Oxford Union Debate at night, Friday: and Saturday: rowing in the daytime, while the nights are up for debate! ;) O and I am also a member of the Oxford Caving Community-yes it is so! We are going on an adventure sometime soon I hope and we will have “social gatherings” once a week or so, that is IF I can manage to fit it in.

I study during the day, like a job 9ish-5ish (well that is my goal anyways!) I am in 2 tutorials, Sociology of Gender and Human Emotion, yes I meet one-on-one with the Profs, it is wonderful! And then I am in one seminar-C.S. Lewis. This seminar is great, it is a “break” from the rest of my readings. All in all, things are great. Oxford is a beautiful city and overly crowded I must add. During the weekends I feel like I’m at Disneyland on the streets, where everyone is walking incredibly slow, you feel like a sheep! I am meeting great people and getting involved, probably more involved than I am in Azusa even…

Last thing, how could I forget? I went to THE Abbey Road! It is in London, though some like to say it is in Liverpool. It is NOT! We tried our best to replicate the infamous pose, but mind you this is an extremely busy street, so it is hard to do with cars honking at you! Ugh! I even forgot to take off my shoes in the rush of it all! Lame! Though it is definitely far from perfect, it turned out rather well. This was one of the highlights of the last few weeks, I walked where the Beatles walked! =) Yes!

That is all for now. Hope you aren’t too tired of reading this! Thanks and I will write again soon!

~*~SOLO TRAVELS~*~

As you might already know, I ended up traveling alone in Europe for 2 weeks just before coming here to Oxford. I should have written a blog during that time but I was having way too fun to sit down for long enough to do such a thing. =) Before August 25Th I never would have imagined myself traveling around Europe alone. I saw myself much too unorganized, irresponsible and having the worst sense of navigation in the world. These things and more combined=no chance of traveling alone. And really the idea of solo travel had not even crossed my mind much. It was that day in Cologne, Germany when I was with the person I was suppose to travel with that the idea popped in my head. I tried to ignore it, but it didn't go away.

Before night fall I knew 100% in my mind I was heading out ALONE the next day. Talked to the guy, and there were no hard feelings. He is really nice don’t get me wrong, it's just we wanted to see and do very different things than the other. I set out to Berlin at 7am the next morning. It was the beginning of THE craziest adventure I have ever had!

I loved Berlin! I was my favorite city that I spent time in. I could definitely live there for a while. The history, the culture, the people, the buildings, I loved it all. I will spare you of all the details of the many different people I met while I was traveling. Usually I met people in the hostel I stayed in, but sometimes I met them randomly too. Like, the group I hung out with in Berlin, I met them on a bridge on my first night there. We were inseparable after that. In Vienna, I met a group I got along fantastically with on the train. If you know me, I am a rather outgoing person. But I was much more so because of being alone. If you want to have friends and not be solo all the time you HAVE to put yourself out there. Then once you do it a few times, it becomes second nature to strike up conversation with new people.

We always traded emails as new friends and I departed, as I did travel without a phone. I am sure that some of the people I met I will never see again. And that is what makes it all the more beautiful. They are persons I won’t forget, and that I will always look back on and smile and wonder where in the world they are. =) It was interesting how close you could get to someone after only knowing them a day or two, I suppose it is due to the circumstances we are under while traveling. Interestingly though, I made a few friends who I WILL be seeing this semester. My favorites were Jo and Rob; I met them in Vienna and hung out with them the entire time there. Jo GOES to Oxford! How crazy is that? So she and I will most definitely be hanging out here and I can’t wait for her to return. Rob doesn’t go to Oxford but he lives nearby. Then there is Tim, I met him in Munich. He is from Australia but he is studying in Manchester this year. We are going to go to a Manchester game together this term, can’t wait!

In order of my adventures, I went to; Cologne, Berlin, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna, and Munich. Like I said Berlin=my favorite. I thoroughly enjoyed Germany. I didn’t think I would like it so much. But I love Munich too! Munich is a very different feel though than Berlin, because it is Bavarian there, which is a different culture all together. Prague is such a romantic city, I vowed to never return there unless I was with the man I was in love with. Cologne you can do in a day, if you don’t have a ton of time in Germany I would skip it actually. Salzburg was beautiful; it is where they filmed the Sound of Music. I was supposed to go to Zurich, but I couldn’t get myself to leave Munich, so I never made it to Switzerland like I had intended to do.

All to say, traveling alone was fantastic! It is hard to put into words what it was really like. It is something that I really wish everyone would try. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did it and I did it good! It grew me and it challenged me and it most definitely made me more independent ;) My next adventure you ask? I am actually going to Dublin tomorrow and I am traveling all over the south and the west of Ireland. I am so excited! I was planning to go alone, but a friend here from Oxford decided she wanted to do what I was doing too. So Sarah and I are embarking on this adventure together. Until next time….CHEERS!!