If you haven't had enough of me already and you are still here, today I will just summarize this past whole year in... a blog post. I kicked off 2017 with my family, at my parent's restaurant. Everyone was worried because I was not doing anything special with friends and stuff when the truth is I simply wanted to be home for the holidays, as I was living in Denmark at the moment. Then, something like ten days into the new year, I flew into Hamburg Germany and met one of my really good friends from my high school exchange in the USA. I spent the night and then I took the train up North and started University again until I went to Colorado for my spring break. It was good to be back and see everyone. My daily routine was pretty basic in Denmark. If I was not at Uni, I was working, and if I was not working I was hanging out with my couple of friends. 

As everyone says that at least once a year people need to go somewhere new, my best friend and I went to Madrid Spain for four days, and we loved it. I fell in love with Spanish and the culture and I can't wait to be back. From then, I spent the summer in Italy. A few friends came to visit me, I went to the South to visit my grandparents, and then in September I packed my bags and moved once again. This time my country of choice was the United Kingdom. In the spring, it has been hard to choose between Spain and the UK. Looking back now, I regret nothing. I am really happy I chose the UK for this amazing experience and I wouldn't change a single thing. 

People think that now I am used to moving around and traveling to the point that I don't even realize I am changing, but it's not true. I do realize it, and I embrace it. For the past four years, I've been living in four different countries, but each experience has taught me different things. All of these transfers seem similar yet they are so different:

I arrived in the USA with a basic knowledge of English and I lived with strangers. 

In Denmark, I had to translate the contract of the studio apartment I shared with a stranger from Danish to English, and I was employed for the first time. 

In the UK, I lived "alone" for the first time, I studied and worked while I tried to socialize with all the local and Erasmus students. 

Five years ago I was a 15-year-old who didn't speak a word of English, only visited one country and didn't trust himself. Today I am a (more) confident 20-year-old who speaks nearly three languages, has lived in four different countries and has landed an internship in the USA.

I won't spoiler my plans for 2018 but I will definitely write them down on January 1st and then I will read that piece of paper every day to remind myself that I need to work hard to achieve whatever goals I set. This method actually works. I remember that last year I wrote a list of things I wanted to do in 2017 and forgot about it. A few months past, I found it somewhere and I was amazed by the fact that I forgot half of those. It's so weird to see how our priorities change in such a short period of time. I don't want to commit the same mistake. I want to focus on my goals and achieve them. My 2017 has been good, but I hope that my 2018 can be even better.

- Cris

These past few days have been amazing, leaving aside all the assignments that I am procrastinating on and that are due in January. I’ve worked a lot, I’ve been out a lot, and I regret nothing. I spent quite some cash without thinking straight, but I thought that after all the hard work I deserved to enjoy my Erasmus a bit more before it finally gets to an end.
 Last night after work I went to the pub with some of my colleagues for “a couple” of drinks. 

They basically became my second family here in the UK, given the fact that I spent most of my day at Tiger than I did at home. I haven’t had the chance to have deep conversations with everyone but I did have the opportunity to get to know them fairly well. I really enjoyed last night, even though I just remember being loud and annoying to my friends (too many drinks, perhaps). I enjoyed myself but I was also worried I was going to miss my train at 6 in the morning. I still had lots of stuff to do, like finish packing and printing off some documents e.g. my boarding pass (ended up printing off nothing). Thankfully I did most of my packing on Sunday because if not I’d have had issues. As soon as I got home I threw some more stuff inside my luggage, rested for a couple of hours at the most and then I got up, took a shower, fixed some breakfast (or dinner?) and then left at about 5.30.

I’m currently at the Liverpool John Lennon Airport looking out the window, with my tired eyes, a headache, and a nice travel pillow from Secret Santa around my neck. I will never get tired of looking at airplanes taking off and landing. As they come and go my mind travels with them and that makes me happy.

At the beginning of my Erasmus, I thought that this was just going to be like one of the many experiences I lived in the past and I am yet to live, but it turned out to be a very special one and I am honestly not ready to say goodbye to the UK, nor my friends. I was planning on not coming back in January, but I am really glad that I was basically forced to because it would have been really sad to leave for good today.
In a month I will be in the USA for my internship in video production and I can’t express how excited I am to return “home”, but it is definitely going to be hard to say goodbye to Worcester, my international friends, my colleagues, the UK.

December 19th, 2017

- Cris

Believe it or not, it's already December. The most beautiful time of the year began with a Christmas Fayre which took place here in Worcester from Thursday 30th to Sunday 3rd. Due to the fact that I worked, I didn't really get the opportunity to experience it as much as I wanted to, but it has been a blessing for me eventually because it was overcrowded and a nice walk in the city center would have turned into a nightmare. In fact, I've never seen so many people at the same place here in Worcestershire.

Saturday night I went to the pub and it has been fun because I met new people and I enjoyed the conversations we had. Then on Sunday, since it was my day off, my friends and I attempted to go to the Fayre but we ended up choosing to grab food instead of being walked on by people. Hard to believe but after three months in the UK I still did not try Fish And Chips, so my friend wanted to take me to a place she previously had some at. My fear became true when we arrived and discovered that it was closed. Ended up at Mc Donald's for a burger and then worked a couple of hours extra because my colleagues needed a hand to run the shop. 

This past week has been intense. Despite working 27 hours and going to University for 16, I managed to bake some cinnamon cookies, hang out with some friends, go to a dance show here on campus and also finally try some fish and chips with a special friend.

Friday it snowed for the very first time but what was cool was that it was also my payday so I received a lot of money. On the other hand, I will literally be left with £45 soon because next week my rent is due. Anyways, Friday's snow was nothing compared to today's. When this morning I opened the curtains, my eyes captured the beauty of snow that has been falling throughout the night. My friends and I planned to go to Birmingham weeks ago and we still had to do so, therefore we decided to go today. Some of my friends are leaving the UK this week and today was their last opportunity to see the German Markets. Well, we all woke up early but ended up not going anywhere because apparently there was a strike and snow slowed trains down, some of which got even canceled. The ticket machine was out of order so even if we wanted to risk it and go anyways we couldn't. As we did not want to walk back home quite yet, we went to Starbucks to sip some coffee and admire the flakes slowly falling from the sky and inhabit the pavement. Then we went for a walk and visited the Festival of trees at the Cathedral.


Each tree was donated from different institutions and people could vote for their favorite. My University's tree was one of the best ones simply because the purpose of it is to raise awareness of our need to take care of our mental health. I popped into Tiger to say hi to my colleagues and then I ran into a supermarket to buy some boots because my feet were soaking wet. I got home and took another hot shower because I desperately needed one. 

As I checked my emails I found out that one of the two classes I have tomorrow is canceled so I got extra excited and now I am here in my kitchen writing a blog post while my flatmate bakes banana bread and makes lentils.

I also sorted out all my documents for my American Visa and I soon have an appointment at the embassy. I couldn't be more grateful that everything is finally falling into place. Working hard repays in the long run. 

Cheers to the last 21 days of 2017.

- Cris