A Simple Sparkle

Well, I'm back stateside! It was quite the little adventure trying to make my way home, but I finally made it. I'm happy to be home with all things familiar and a summer of infinite possibilities ahead of me, but I'm a little homesick for Ireland and all the people there. But let's talk about France. After I left Ireland I spent six glorious days in France with my family and it was a magical experience. Paris is the most beautiful city I have ever been in. Everything about it so lovely and quaint. It's a place that titillates the senses. The sounds of the metro, though screeching and murmuring make you feel like you're being pulled into an adventure you never expected. I heard music in the rusty creaks of the underground escalators and the voices of arguing Frenchmen in the streets. Everywhere you turn there are more things to see and the most stimulating smells imaginable. On one corner you sniff the peonies from the florist and on the next your ...

How do I sum up an entire semester in a single post? I can't. If you've been reading you already know many of the things I've learned, but I feel like I need something to close us out since I leave the Emerald Isle tomorrow evening. I guess I shall simply follow suit of my good friends Leanna at  between a shamrock and a good place  and Arianne at  unicorns and peaches . The most significant thing I got out of this semester was friendships. I'm the type of person who can only be close to two or three people at a time, but here I lived with 31 people day in and day out for three months. We got pretty close as you can imagine. I learned to talk to people and open up to people that I otherwise would have never gotten to know. I'm not best friends with all 31 of these people, but I have more friends now that I think I've ever had in my life and it breaks my heart to think about leaving them tomorrow. I'll see many of them again in th...

Labels are dangerous. I am a moderately quiet person and because of that I have been labeled introverted. This has never really bothered me since I believed it to be a fact of my personality. This semester has taught me a lot, but most recently I've discovered that I am in fact extroverted. I get my energy from being around people, talking to people, and sharing things with others. I hate being by myself. I've always thought that the anxiety I felt when I'm alone was just my lack of independence or some flaw in my character. I've always assumed that when I'm stressed that I should spend time alone, but it never helps. I need to talk things out, I need to share experiences with other people. For years I've been trying to fit myself into an introverted box and that has not been working out.  It seems unfair to label people based on early impressions we have and yet we continue to do it. We're on our last week in Ireland and I'm still disco...