I honestly am not able to comprehend the fact that I am already a month into my semester abroad. I can vividly recall the first moment I stepped foot into my homestay and I often question how many weeks I’ve been here. My fellow students and I have spent this time learning to live the way Czech’s do and it’s been a tough but (mostly) enjoyable learning experience. At the beginning of the trip I often shared to my friends, with pride, the times others assumed I was Czech. That seemed the ultimate success: the moment strangers considered me a native. Yet I’ve begun to realize that the idea and act of “settling in” may not be what I really want to do. I believe that settling in implies finding an everyday routine and learning specific places you like to visit. While these actions in and of themselves may not be bad I believe the habits that you begin to acquire through settling in are. When you first arrive you’re in a whirlwind of trying to learn the city while at the same time seeing as much as physically possible within a constrained amount of time. Settling in, in part, can mean that you begin to take it a little for granted. You might stop trying to figure out all the different things you can do in the city when you religiously visit the same coffee shop every Wednesday for lunch, or when classes start and you become too tired to explore the city. This Monday we had a national holiday which meant no school, wahoo!! It also meant the return of my Czech buddy who found us a park to go visit. After being in Vienna all weekend and being sick with a cold I wasn’t too excited. Still because I had already said I would go I met her Monday morning with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. As soon as we got out there my energy levels and excitement skyrocketed! Not only was the park right off a relatively close metro station but it was a very different type of park than I had seen and the weather was wonderful for it! Even my Czech buddy had never been there before and it made me wonder, how much of Prague am I missing? What else is out there to see? While I totally agree that the quote “never stop exploring” is in and of itself quite cliche I can actually see the relevance here. Especially while abroad don’t get sucked into making routines (unless it’s exercise because lord knows you’ll never do that otherwise) at the expense of really looking around where you are and finding and visiting all types of places when you can.