Thursday, January 15, 2009

New Quarter, International Studies Program

First of all, I apologize profusely for completely and utterly neglecting this space for the last month. It's been nuts traveling all over the place, but really fun. I kept a written journal on most of my travels, but I've found it hard trying to find time to sit down and write out blog posts. Hopefully someday I will get around to it, but at this point I feel like I'm just getting further and further behind, so I'm going to start with the New Quarter! which started on January 5th.

The new program is called International Studies, and it's pretty tight. I've got four classes, which are all pretty cool. I'm taking the main course, Lecture Series on International Organizations which is all about the UN and the like. Right up my alley. I'm also taking two electives: Intro to European Issues and History of Paris. Both are interesting in their own ways, and cool experiences. The fourth class is a French class that focuses on the oral, so it should be a solid way to keep up my language skills.

On top of the classes the new program has a series of excursions with it. Some are more normal, I'm hitting up the chateaux of the Loire Valley again tomorrow, and we're doing Versailles later on. And some are program specific. We are visiting UNESCO, the OECD, the IEA, the European Parliament, and we saw the Assemblée Nationale today. All government stuff.

The new kids are really cool. It's the second week now, so I'm still getting to know people, but so far so good. It's also been fun because a lot of people I knew from first and second year are here, so it's been cool to catch up a bit.

Again I'm sorry about the lack of updates. I posted links to my Spain pictures, but here are links to my Italy pictures... oh, and I went to Germany last weekend to celebrate my 21st birthday (yeah, I'm 21 now!). It was fun and I met some cool kids from the Chicago area which was strange, but really cool too.

Anyways, the pictures:

Florence: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010856&l=468a0&id=1599570086

Vatican City:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010860&l=a2de5&id=1599570086

Rome 1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010861&l=ee24f&id=1599570086

Rome 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010862&l=c73d8&id=1599570086

Rome 3:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010866&l=17c2f&id=1599570086

Capodanno (New Years-in Rome):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010868&l=313dc&id=1599570086

Naples/Pompeii:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010869&l=d586e&id=1599570086

Sorry again!

Love,

Nora

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