SO MUCH LEARNING.

It's hard to sum up what I've learned this past week in a blog post. It's hard to even pinpoint one thing among the myriad of information and new experiences that have been thrown at me this week. But I will try my best.

I've learned to go exploring. Even if you don't have a specific goal or destination in mind at first, you'll find one. On Friday Connor, Katie, and I went exploring on the Philosopher's Walk just to see where it would take us. We ended up finding this path up the mountain and following these signs. We didn't know where it would take us, but it was exciting not knowing what we would see at the end of our journey. During the hike up the mountain, our curiosity kept building until we finally got to the top. We found a HUGE well, tower ruins and the remains of castle, a Nazi amphitheater, and an old monastery. It was such a rewarding experience.

I've also learned a TON about music therapy on this trip. Since I'm not pursuing a music therapy degree at the moment, this experience has been SO informative. I've tried to soak up as much information as possible every chance I get. I keep taking notes on everything I learn and everything people tell me so I won't forget anything.

One of my favorite discussions this week was during Friday's class. We were split into groups and we had to define health from the viewpoint of the therapist and the client. We started really analyzing what it means to be healthy; does it have to do with physical health, mental health, emotional health, social health...etc.? I've never really thought how being healthy is so incredibly subjective. It depends on what you view as healthy and the context you have around the word. This past semester I took a course called Introduction to Mental Health as a Profession, and we discussed a lot of the fine tuned details of being therapists, including health. However, we never talked in depth about the different definitions of health. We defined it, and mentioned the importance of considering all the facets of health, but we didn't talk about it from the view of the client vs. the view of the therapist.

Another interesting learning experience was watching the mock music therapy session on Wednesday. I've only seen one music therapy session so far in my education, so it was really exciting and interesting seeing one performed. Thanks to contributions from our group, I noticed the differences in the way they conducted the session from the way an "American" music therapy session would have gone. It was helpful to watch them perform and gave me a lot of insight into this profession. Before this trip I don't think I knew there were so many variables and differences in how to conduct a music therapy session. Now I see the depth of this field and it makes me so excited to study it in the future