Hey everyone! I know it has been awhile. For that, I apologize. It has been a crazy year for me, but I am so happy to be back writing again. Here’s a brief recap of some of the things I have been up to this past year:

I moved to Kelowna with Tyson in September. Moving back to Kelowna, moving in with him, and going back to school at UBCO after my semester on exchange (if you missed my thoughts while on exchange, you can catch up here) was definitely a major transition. I won’t lie, it was definitely a struggle adjusting to UBCO after being abroad. First semester was pretty difficult. I met some great fellow students and had some incredible professors teaching my classes, but the adjustment of it all was still a challenge. Plus, the winter season always gets me down in the blues. Tyson unexpectedly had to get surgery in the fall, I got pretty sick for awhile, and it was difficult to get back into the flow of things after that.

However, there was also some incredible things that happened: I got accepted into the co-op program at UBCO, which was super exciting, and I also got accepted into a Global Seminar program that would be running in May 2017 (I’ll talk more about this later). To finish off the year, Tyson and I had a pretty great Christmas season together, and got to celebrate our first holidays together under one roof.

It is crazy to think that 2016 went by so quickly for me! It has definitely been my biggest year of growth and change so far, and I have to say, I am very happy with where I am heading. I don’t plan on stopping this growth and change anytime soon!

In the new year, I was feeling pretty inspired by the start of a new semester. I had some great classes and got a job writing for UBCO’s on-campus blog, The Global Spectrum, which was incredible. Unfortunately, I got really sick only a couple weeks into the semester, which hit me pretty hard. I was pretty upset about it because I had just started to feel like I was getting back in the groove of things; but, c’est la vie. I eventually recovered from my sickness and was able to get back on my feet for the rest of the semester. I was really busy applying for co-op positions, prepping for my Global Seminar trip, and studying for final exams. Before I knew it, I had secured a position for the summer, finished writing all of my exams, and was packing my bags!

UBCO runs a variety of Global Seminars each year. These courses focus on a specific subject area and usually run for 3 weeks, though some seminars can run for up to 6 weeks. I was really honoured to be accepted into a seminar that was looking at Human Migration in three different countries: Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. These were the countries we were going to be travelling to while we learned the course material. The entire purpose of the Global Seminar is to get students out of the classroom and learning their courses in a real-world setting. I think the concept is pretty great, and you know what going global means to me…. I was ready to pack my bags in a heartbeat!

I was super excited to visit these three countries, all of which I had never been to before. I decided to extend my trip by travelling to Italy to visit my relatives before the Seminar started, and I also did a little bit of travelling on my own in Spain. In total, my trip was close to five weeks, which was a big deal for me! (Especially in comparison to my three-week solo travelling trip last year.) I loved every minute of it. I finally returned to Canada on June 1st, with a wealth of experiences, inspiration, and love. Throughout the summer, I’ll be writing many posts about my experiences abroad, so you can expect lots more to come!

I just want to give a shout-out to everyone that has supported me so far on my journey with chiaragoesglobal. Your support means everything to me, and I hope you will continue to join me on this crazy journey! Please let me know if you have any feedback about my work, possible topics, the new site design 😉 or anything else under the sun. I would love to hear your comments! I look forward to sharing more about my adventures with you very soon. 🙂