Whale Watching: $45

Lobster Pie: $20

Spending a few days with your girlfriend along the coast of Massachusetts…Priceless.

In another life I think I was a fisherman because as far back as my memory serves, I’ve fantasized about fishing the North Atlantic Ocean. Call it simple, call it unrefined, but there’s something magnetic about living at sea for months at a time. Naturally then, when my girlfriend’s brother announced his wedding plans included a ceremony in Cape Cod, we plotted a few extra days of travel to experience coastal Massachusetts.

The best thing to do in Salta, Argentina, we found, was to wander. There were three of us — a Bolivian and two Americans — and our trip was last minute, our destination chosen for us by friends. The twenty–four hour bus ride from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to Salta was exhausting and the multiple stops at the border were interminable, small towns and grim faced officials blurring into one another.

Choosing to study in Granada, Spain instead of a larger, well-known city was an easy choice. I wanted to experience what I felt was the “real” España, not a huge cosmopolitan city where everyone speaks English. Most travel books suggest only a day trip to visit Granada, but I was there much longer and still couldn’t get enough. There’s a famous saying about the city that perfectly expresses its beauty: “no hay en la vida nada como la pena de ser ciego en Granada” (There’s nothing in life worse than being blind in Granada).

“We didn’t come here to study, we came here to travel!”

It may not be the best motto of my trip to “The Land Down Under,” but for me and basically every other study abroad student, it was what we lived by. Although we grew up and adore good ol’ PA, another student and I, both juniors at Shippensburg University, decided that we were a little bored and needed a change of scenery. So we decided to travel to the other side of the world and see what it had to offer. We knew that with the label of “study abroad student” stuck to us, it would be more acceptable to spend all that money because it’s being used for “academic purposes.” Which the majority was, but like any other curious person who has never left the country before (not even to go to Canada or Mexico), I wanted travel and adventure!