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The Netherlands has been amazing. I'm so lucky to have had this experience. And to think that my college and my job allowed me to do it. Awesome.

Joyce keeps saying that I've had the full Dutch experience and I really believe I have. I've seen and done a lot and am so grateful to have had such an accommodating, fun, and funny hostess!

And now... on to the next portion of my adventure! Almost as soon as I found out that I was chosen for the international exchange, I started thinking about what else I could do while in the region. It crossed my mind to stop in England and visit the friends I have there. I also thought about going to Paris. I decided that I needed to go somewhere I've never been before. I'm so close to many different countries and lovely cities--I need to do and see things I haven't before!

So I landed on the Cosmos website, which is the tour group that I used in 2010 when my aunt and family friends met me in London and we toured the UK for 2 weeks. I had a good experience on that trip and so I thought I'd use the same company; I feel comfortable with them. They had lots of tour options for Paris and for the UK, of course, but I found this one and couldn't get it out of my mind, both because of the cost and the cities.



See how awesome that looks! Honestly, it was one of the cheapest tours that Cosmos offers. I pondered over it excessively and, finally in February, I booked it! I mentioned in a previous post how difficult it was to commit to this tour... mostly because I'm going by myself and, even though it was the cheapest, it's still a pretty large sum of money between the actual tour cost, extra excursions, and flying to Munich from Amsterdam. After booking, I didn't know for sure if the tour was going to run or not (if it didn't, I would've had to change flight plans which would've cost me $300) so that was a little hectic for a while... but alas, all is good!

And so now I fly to Munich tomorrow to begin the next leg of my journey! Everyone I have talked to has said that Prague and Budapest are beautiful cities, so I'm super excited! More to come, of course!