It feels extremely strange to be blogging again, but the times we live in are even stranger. So much has happened since I last posted here (February 2019), both in my life and in the wider world. So, since I'm never one to ignore inspiration when it strikes, here's a quick update:

June 2019: I went on holiday to Spain with three of my closest friends from university, which was a lovely reunion. It was so nice to get away for a week or so and just sit on the beach or by the pool every day - or so we thought. To cut a long story short, we ended up spending more time waiting around the local hospital than on the beach after my friend was taken seriously ill and spent around a week in hospital. Luckily she made a full recovery, but it was one of the more dramatic and traumatic experiences of my life so far, especially as I was the one who called the emergency number and had to negotiate hospital fees in my very inadequate Spanish.

September 2019: I went to visit family in the UK and travelled around a bit, notably visiting a part of the country which has a lot of significance for my mum's side of the family on account of our ancestors having lived there hundreds of years ago.

October 2019: I started an internship with a seriously cool organisation! I've decided I'm not going to give any employment-related details (past and present) on this blog, but lets just say it's a global organisation that deals with humanitarian affairs. I was working on communications which was completely new to me but I actually enjoyed it a lot and met some amazing people who I know I'll stay in contact with for years to come. In October I also got my grades back for my MA and I passed with a Distinction, and received a prize for the highest dissertation mark on my course!

January 2020: January feels like an age away now - before any of us had likely even heard the word 'coronavirus'. Towards the end of the month I went back to Brighton with my parents for my graduation, which was about as different from my Durham graduation as it possibly could have been. Whereas in Durham I graduated in the historic cathedral, in Brighton it was on a stage in a huge events building that's often used for conferences. All in all it was a very low-key affair, as I had far fewer people from my course to celebrate with and (though I don't want to sound blasé) after only one year it didn't seem like such a huge achievement as my undergraduate degree did. However I did celebrate by going out to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner with my parents and one of my best friends, which was lovely.

March 2020: After finishing internship number one at the end of February, as March rolled round and the coronavirus crisis started to really take hold in Europe, I started another internship. This current one is at another major organisation and (without tooting my own horn too much) it's one of the most prestigious programmes that exists in my area of interest, namely international politics, migration and EU affairs. So far it's going really well, except that barely 2 weeks in we went into enforced teleworking mode which means that as of this weekend I've now spent 7 weeks working from home. While tt's certainly not the ideal situation as I'm missing out on many of the aspects of the experience that I would have hoped for, I am of course grateful to still have a job (even if it's a lowly and poorly-paid internship) and that it wasn't point-blank cancelled. I'm still managing to get something out of it, even as the entire organisation learns to navigate the new normal and all the technological aspects that come along with that. 

A couple of days after teleworking began, Belgium entered into a nationwide lockdown which is still ongoing at the time of writing this. It looks like it will stay in place for some time yet, and even if it's lifted to some extent it's likely that I'll continue working for home and that, more broadly speaking, life won't return to any recognisable normal for the foreseeable future. As a lifelong introvert who is used to living somewhere which doesn't make going out to the shops (or anywhere else) particularly easy, I'm coping fairly well, especially as my friends mostly live in other countries anyway so it's not like I would get to see them normally. I'm making sure I switch off from work at 6pm every day, taking breaks when I need them, baking and cooking more than usual, and getting into a lot of books and series that I told myself I didn't have time for before. While I'm not aiming to come out of lockdown with a bunch of new skills, I'm also following a couple of online courses on FutureLearn.

That's all for now - to anyone reading this, please stay stafe, stay happy, and stay healthy.

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