There is always an adjusting period for how long it takes you to feel at home when you find yourself in a foreign city, country or continent. You know, how you say "let's get back home," when your legs start to hurt after a long day of sightseeing on vacation, but you actually mean your hotel or the apartment you're renting.
When I decided to jet off to Ireland for a semester, I was equally terrified and hopeful.
Terrified that I'll spend the semester locked in my room without any friends; terrified that something bad might happen at home and I couldn't be there; terrified that I would screw up traveling alone and end up stranded on the other side of the world; terrified that the semester abroad might scare off my wonderful boyfriend.
But also hopeful to find a new home and leave a piece of my heart in Ireland. As Amy Poehler, whose book I have finally acquired a few days ago, once said, this is the time to take risks - as you grow older, you become more fearful and less flexible.

After deciding to be less fearful and more flexible, I am now sitting in the dining room of my shared house not too far away from Maynooth University while I watch my French housemate prepare a quiche (it's quiche day, after all), I hear my German housemate singing to herself in the next room, and I hear my Slovenian housemate coughing upstairs, and I think to myself: "This is home."

This is my home for now.

As much as I anxiously anticipated the four long months ahead of me that I would spend in Ireland, the moment I settled into our lovely, badly insulated Irish house with a heating problem, and met my mixed bunch of housemates, I felt like home.

All the other parts of this experience were just added benefits; like the fact that I now live in the city where one of my favorite musicals, Once, was filmed. Or that I wanted to attend Trinity College of Dublin after I finished high school and now I actually study at a university not that far away that is even more beautiful than Trinity. Or the fact that the Irish are one of the nicest nationalities I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. And the concept of "luck of the Irish" that I unknowingly live my life by.

I know it will be painful to eventually leave this part of my life and these people behind, but for now, this is home. And these amazing people are home.

Maybe the fact that my birthdays were always filled with carefree and school-free adventure made me adore summer so much.
When I was younger, I was able to play with the neighbors' kids day and night.
And now that I am older, I am able to enjoy open-air concerts and festivals where I can now forget about college assignments or the fact that I might get a cold from standing outside for about 6 seconds without a wintercoat (because really, who wants to go to an outdoor party during winter?).
So as much as I love the colors of fall, building snowmen during winter, and watching nature wake up in the spring, there is nothing as magical as running around with bare feet, a healthy tan and a minimal number of clothing items.

As much as I love Christmas and snow, a 35-degree summer day beats depressing winter days for me.

The thought of September coming closer makes me choke up.
The weather forecasts, saying autumn is coming closer, make me feel a kind of pre-nostalgia.
It feels like a break up that keeps happening over and over and over again; I have to let go of summer with hopes that the next one will be even better.

So far, every summer has been better than the last, and that is why this quote hits so close to home.



At the same time, this quote is the reason I am far less worried.
Who says I can't make every day my July?
Sure, I am 10 times more bored and stressed and freezing all the time during winter, but that doesn't mean I can't make every day the most magical day ever. Especially if I am surrounded by the amazing people I've been surrounded with this summer that can make the most terrible day instantly better, and the most boring topic into something I can't stop talking about.

What is your favorite season of the year?

Midterm exams have come and gone and after I was done with those I spent the next few weeks on short road trips around the country, crafting, playing with my cats and dogs, nieces and nephews, and indulging in good quality TV.
Despite the fact that I watch about a hundred TV shows – I've never actually counted them because I'm afraid the number would come too close to that – I have pretty high standards for the ones that get qualified into my top 10. They don't need to be good quality shows, but they have to tug at my heartstrings. So if you feel like you might have a similar taste in TV series as me based on the ones I've fangirled before, here's a few you could try. 

Playing House
I haven't heard about the Jessica StClair/Lennon Parham comedic duo before, but they're amazing. I love them and the way they incorporate important issues into a sitcom (like Jessica's real life battle with breast cancer).
It's pretty short, 26 episodes throughout 3 seasons, but every single episode is amazing and rewatchable.



The Bold Type
Being a journalism student, I'm constantly torn between what people perceive as "real journalism", and entertainment magazines. Since there's so little TV shows that would show the creative side and the process of magazines, The Bold Type is the right choice. Along with female empowerment, awesome actors and the fact that it's coming back in June, I am a huge fan.



NewsRadio
Contrary to The Bold Type, NewsRadio deals with a "real journalism" radio station and the relationships between the people who work there. I love the humor, I love how the characters are written, and the fact that Dave Foley was veeery attractive in the 90s (not that he isn't now, but it would be inappropriate for me to say that).
(I couldn't find any trailers, so here's a clip from the series).




What other TV shows should I be watching? ☺

In these cold college-stressful days I often browse through my summer photos. Spain, to be more specific.

We were planning on going to Greece, actually. But you know how it is when you procrastinate the heck out of everything and keep telling youself "The tickets will be even cheaper if we buy them next month!"

They weren't.

When the price went from 40€ to 200€, we decided that might not be too great (what's so special about Greece anyway, am I right? *holds sarcasm sign*). I spent the next day searching all kinds of low-budget airlines, and suddenly there it was - Santander. Neither of us had heard about it before, but one Google photo search confirmed it was breathtakingly gorgeous, plus it had the seaside, so it was decided.

Somehow we started thinking what an adventure it would be if we went camping. So camping we went. Because policies on what you can take on a plane differ from airline to airline, we made sure we would have a very cheap tent waiting for us in Santander (coincidentally, we were able to get it back to Slovenia without a problem).

We also made sure there would be space for us at the campsite, which, obviously, there was, because who goes camping in September? (Us, a younger couple, a guy with a bike, and an older German couple.) We overestimated our ability to walk from the airport to the campsite with 10kg backpacks, but we got there - slowly, but steadily.

 


I don't think I've ever felt so free and safe on vacation before; besides Santander we were also able to visit Bilbao and Santillana del Mar, so that was three cities in a week, and it was amazing.





So now if you'll excuse me, I'll use the rest of this winter to plan out other hidden gems to visit this year. ☺

Hello wonderful people!

If you usually enjoyed my skillfully crafted English-is-my-second-language sentences, you might have noticed I've been missing for a while. Letting go of a hobby is not very hard once college is crippling you with anxiety and you have multiple jobs because you want to be semi-financially stable without your parents' money. So while I have put my blog on the side tracks for an indefinite amount of time, I still wish to be able to write something every once in a while.

As you've probably figured out, I've been extremely mobile these past few months - college, three part-time jobs, and trying to maintain a somewhat social life can do that to you - and since I didn't spend that much time at home, I've been thinking a lot about what my hometown actually means to me.

I couldn't just focus on one particular part of the world, though.

Obviously, the place where I grew up will always be my favorite. There's a certain wonderfulness of knowing the paths like they're the only paths you've ever taken. Knowing the exact speed with which you can drive into a crossroad behind your house, and that there's a pothole - or twelve - about a feet away from the sidewalk that you have to avoid.

But I guess every town where you linger for more than the average minute becomes a part of you. Every street you've walked in that city somehow becomes special and you don't realize it until you leave, feeling the emptiness inside you.

The thing is, the place that you call home is more often than not everything but the house you live in.
It's the people, the experience that make it feel like home.
It's the feeling you get when your country's basketball team wins the Eurobasket championship and you're suddenly a part of something amazingly huge.
It's the feeling when you finally hug someone after a really long time.
Or the feeling you get when you see your home country from the plane on your return flight.
And the feeling when you cross the border and start seeing signs in your language.

So even though I've been struggling with a lot of changes and with moving around, I've accepted that changing my surroundings and meeting new people is just another opportunity: another home that's waiting to be discovered.

My new goal in life is to find as many places that make me think "This is home. This is what I love". Because even though it might hurt when you leave, it's nothing compared to the joy it brings when you return one day.