New Beginning

No one ever told me that the hardest part about moving to a new country would be moving back. Returning to the same house, that is emptier in both the physical sense and the number of individuals, is some comfort in familiarity. Sleeping in the same bed, under the one blanket that you have, is relaxing until you wake up to an empty room. But the emptiest thing is the realization that you also came back to one, maybe two, friends. The hardest thing about moving away is knowing that life and people continue to move on without you. People change, close friends find new closer friends and all the friends that you made in your new country are now 6 hours ahead of you. Thankfully University starts soon. There I will make my new beginning, again.

Obviously this is my last post, I apologize that it wasn’t a “happy to be home” one but I’d prefer to write the reality to keep my sanity. Thank you to all of you who have followed my journey through these two years, and to those readers and fellow bloggers who I picked up along the way.

Ode to Andrews

My graduation was on 22 May and my sister and grandfather travelled in to witness it. My class consisted of about 200 students, 30 of whom were IB. After the graduation ceremony was Wes, a party thrown by the school to celebrate the graduation of a new class. The celebration went well into the morning and unfortunately it was the last time that I got to see some of the friends that I became close with. Now I am looking forward to moving into my dorm at Hamline University where I will be studying forensic science for the next 4 years.

Although I didn’t attend St. Andrews College from a primary level, I did have the honour of being educated for 2 years. I joined the 5IB group two years ago and was overwhelmed with how friendly and welcoming the students and teachers were. Of course through the years they continued to be helpful and friendly. From my first day where I attempted to blow up the biology room (Read FIRE!) to starting off my 6th year with meeting the new 5th years at a team building retreat (Read Carlingford) and finally pranking our chemistry teacher, getting through three weeks of exams and graduating.

I want to write this to thank the students and staff of St. Andrews College for all of the help and support I received through my two years during the International Baccalaureate. Your wisdom and insight have most defiantly prepared me for my years in university. No amount of thank you would be enough to show how grateful I am for your time and commitment. My Spanish teacher, Ms. Moran who is helpful and has many strange stories and experiences to share with us. She is one of the few teachers whom we have multiple inside jokes with. Mr. Micallef and Ms. Chellar, my Geography teachers, for grilling us with statistics and helping with the IA. My English teacher, Ms. Devane, for helping me learn how to expand my ideas, making us #Laugh and bringing in countless sweets. Thank you for the guidance and help with my EE, I couldn’t have done it without you. Also for finally throwing the waffle party that we planned in 5th year. My awesome Maths teacher, Mr. Macken, for throwing the sarcasm back in my face, helping with our maths problems and always having new funny cat videos to watch. My Chemistry teacher, Mr. Heir, for teaching with a passion and respect for the subject. Also thank you for taking the Avogadro prank in a good manner. And finally thank you to Mrs. Rimbi, my Biology teacher and the best Form teacher ever, for still allowing me to be in your classroom even after trying lighting it on fire. For being sarcastic with me and spending hours staying after school for more study and review with the class. Good luck with the new rowdy 6IB’s and everything to come.

19 years of age

Some of you may know that Sunday was my 19th birthday. Some of you may also know that I don’t usually celebrate my birthday because for a long confusing reason I don’t understand why people celebrate birthdays. Instead I spent my morning and part of my afternoon binge watching Supernatural, my new favourite television show obsession, until I received a call from a dear friend of mine asking me to meet him downtown. I spent the rest of the afternoon talking and walking around Dublin with Alessandro. We had fish and chips for lunch and then we went to a cake shop for some sweets. He is such a sweetie and I want to thank him for making me have an amazing 19th birthday!

Currently my family is preparing for the move back to the States and my university years. I have heard back from 6 of my US colleges and 4/5 of my UK universities. Now I just have to make it through the next two months and exams of schooling. Easier said than done…

(Not) Taking the ACT’s

It is application season which means I am filling out apps for university, writing papers for scholarships and taking the ACT’s. Because the ACT’s are not offered in Ireland my mum and I flew to Belgium to participate in the testing of maths, science and english skills. We left on Friday, but before that my friend Marguerite and I went downtown for bubble tea and Penny-boarding/Long-boarding in the park. Mum and I arrived at the hotel sometime after 12pm and we both proceeded to pass out. We woke up the next morning at 6:30am to shower, dress and eat breakfast. We hailed a taxi to the International school to take the test. The first inconvenience was that we ran into construction and had to find another route. After we were dropped off we had our second inconvenience: we didn’t know what building was hosting, so we ran around for a small while. Side note of possible importance: we walked by a black cat, and I wanted to pet it but we didn’t have time. Once we found where we were supposed to be we were 6 minutes late and they didn’t allow me to sit the test. After some discussion with the guy running the whole deal we headed back to the hotel and I took a 4 hour nap. Mum and I spent the rest of the day walking around the Grand Plaza. Sunday was our last day, being my mum and I we spent the day at the Anderlecht market. The market we attended was MASSIVE it took us about 4 hours to walk through roughly 85-90% of it, and we didn’t even look at everything! We got to try different fruits and cheap shoes and clothing. I got a nice fake leather jacket for only €10! After that, with some troubles, we made it home at around 11:30pm and I again passed out. My next ACT is now scheduled in December, when my mum and I will be flying once again to Belgium.