Archive for 2012

South Africa: Examining Global Service

Greetings! Welcome to the blog for the J-Term course, South Africa: Examining Global Service! This site will serve as a platform for students to share their experience, provide insight into their respective learnings and challenges, and to raise meaningful questions that will engage you, the reader. The blogs will be the students’ answers to the […]

Welcome to Olympic Quest!

It is December and here at Gustavus most students and faculty are busy wrapping up on semester while anxiously looking forward to break!  We are Olympic Quest are looking forward as well – but we are looking forward to January and beginning our adventure through the Ancient and Modern Olympics.  This will be our blog throughout our […]

Changing My Mind

I remember values that I used to associate with myself, values that I was proud of and wanted everyone to know about me. I used to say ¨”time is money and time is short”, “About time”, “working hard or hardly working”.  These sayings have undoubtedly had some influence on my life. Yet it never occurred […]

Levels of Integration

Levels of Integration I had one goal in coming to Spain: To integrate to the point of authenticity. The time I have spent here so far has shown me that there are many factors to integration and that it may be impossible to reach certain aspects of that goal within just year. For example, my […]

Taking Off

I’ve spent the last several days in a bit of a disbelieving haze, unwilling (perhaps unable?) to admit to myself that yes: I’m leaving. I’m taking a plane to Toronto and then another one across the Atlantic Ocean. I’m leaving. I’m going to study literature at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. I’m […]

Traveling light

The sun here is different. It rises and falls at new times and the heat burns in different ways. Spending time in the sun takes the energy away from me but I not like in Houston, and not like in St. Peter. The sun is affecting me in ways that I cannot write. I could […]

Orientations is over

The entire first week of this program has been quite enjoyable. It was orientation in CIEE and basically for me it was just a week long vacation. We spent the days touring the city and the nights going to bars and clubs. Wash, rinse, repeat, all with other CIEE group members, all the time. After […]

Baby Steps

Now that everything has been settled It’s story time. My first and most dreaded blip occurred within minutes of getting off the plane. They lost my luggage. Before coming here, I wanted to do everything myself. In order to immerse I knew that it would have to hurt a little. For that purpose I had […]

Checking Out

When I got the acceptance letter to spend a year in Sevilla ,Spain I started counting down the days until the flight. In one hundred fifty six days I would officially be living, not visiting as some tourist, but living, eating, reading, writing, speaking, everything as a Spanish student. It was a day I dreamt […]

Epilogue

For over thirty posts, I have related experiences and observations from my life in France.  Vignette by vignette, I have told the story of Nantes becoming my third home.  This is my last post in this travel journal, and it is not about the details of the story I have been telling you.  Today, I […]