The semester is just past half finished, and Britain is in full bloom. Since my arrival in Grantham, I have seen many moons, and one of the brightest of them all so far has been the UK itself. Five days after landing in Heathrow, I ventured out for the first time on the train service to King’s Cross, London. As I walked through the winding lanes of St. James Park and down the grand avenues of Westminster on the way to meet a friend that was in town, I caught my first glimpse of Parliament and Big Ben (actually named Elizabeth’s Tower). As I stood at a spot on the far end of the bridge across the Thames River and looked over London, a cool breeze blew by and I thought to myself that I could not have felt more thrilled to be alive. A week after I returned to the city for my first weekend expedition, and after long hours of exploring every corner of London that I could find, I grabbed a quick bite at a pub before settling into my same-day ticket discount show of Les Misérables. After bumming some extra London Eye tickets off of a few program administrators, I took the last train out of London feeling resolved to be back to this UK home. This was just the beginning of my travels, and after several trips around England to see shows on trips with my theatre class, I set off for my second major trip of the semester, the Olympics. I met up with some UA study abroad friends from Sorrento to explore Milan, and then set out for Livigno, where the Olympic event of Freestyle Skiing would be taking place. Sunburned and full of Olympic spirit, we returned that night to a full Italian pasta dinner and a pulsing Milan Olympic Host City. After a brief hiatus to get work done and the semester’s travel fully planned back in the UK, I hopped on an 8-hour train to Edinburgh, Scotland, where my newly made program friends and I mounted Arthur’s Seat, toured castles and palaces, and messed up some haggis. On my 5:00 train out of Edinburgh my buddy and I began to plan the crowning achievement of our logistics epic so far–Spring Break. Our itinerary was ambitious and our experience was minimal, so it was with not a little trepidation that we stepped onto our EasyJet flight to Paris, where we would be spending a few days, before taking a car up to Northern France, from the beaches of Normandy with its gun batteries and the American Cemetery, to the central north with its magical island castle of St. Michel and its beachside fortress town of St Malo. Moving down from the northern coast to the southern, we landed in Nice and spent a day at the beach before biking east to Monaco for the day. Worn out but reinvigorated by the mountainous cliff-beach beauty of Nice, we finished our first half and left early for Morocco. Morocco was beyond incredible, and our time experiencing the medina of Marrakech, the views from Ait Benhaddou, the sands of the Sahara desert, and the Hassan II mosque of Casablanca did nothing but make the wander-lust itch grow stronger. What I have been struck by more than anything else in these short weeks is how much I have to learn about the places I’ve explored. The more that I learn about a place, the more curious I get. I took the advice of a travel-wizened friend to start reading up on the history of, and speaking with people who had traveled to, the places I was going before arriving. My appreciation of even ancient history’s continued relevance everywhere and my understanding of the far-reaching effects of today’s actions have been completely transformed, and I have spent every moment of my free time back at the manor retracing my steps to understand the history of the places I’ve been on a deeper level and beginning the groundwork of research for the places I plan to go for the rest of the semester. What I have learned is that understanding a place and its people is not an easy task, and for the rest of my time here I hope to be as intentional and open as I can to listening to what the small details and moments of the cities I visit have to teach me.