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Month: April 2013

Andrew Jdaydani | Dunedin, New Zealand | Post 3

Andrew Jdaydani | Dunedin, New Zealand | Post 3

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Seven papers, twenty-plus hours of lectures, and the difficulty of choosing between several classes made my first trip with the Tramping Club perfectly timed. Adding to the promise of relaxation was the fact that the campground we were headed to was called Paradise—freakin’ Paradise! Philosophy 101’s “Mind and Reality” was the first class I had taken in over two-and-a-half months and lived up to the brief online description of “How the brain constructs reality” with its interesting content. It was also the first class I had taken with over 150 individuals…

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Ruth Bolster | London, England | Post 4

Ruth Bolster | London, England | Post 4

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While London is a treasure trove of shopping, historical sites, and killer Thai food, one of the city’s best assets is undoubtedly its location. As a metropolitan hub, London is only a short train, plane, or even bus ride away from most major cities in continental Europe, making travel within the continent easy and somewhat less painful than journeying to Europe from America. Because flights across the English Channel are significantly less expensive than flights across “The Pond,” I decided to take advantage…

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Maxelle Neufville | Tokyo, Japan | Post 2

Maxelle Neufville | Tokyo, Japan | Post 2

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My study abroad program CIEE follows the Japanese school year. This means that we exchange students entered the university at the same time as the freshmen did, which also meant that we were able to share in their orientation week activities, including their club fair, and that I continued to feel a bit like I was a freshman again myself. Joining a club in Japan is a much stricter affair than back in the States. Clubs are divided into two groups—bukatsudō (部活動) and circles…

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Emily Dowling | Paris, France | Post 4

Emily Dowling | Paris, France | Post 4

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My study abroad program seeks to immerse its students in French language and culture to the greatest possible degree. Indeed, we live with French host families, take courses in French at Parisian universities, and even have the opportunity to work at a stage—a French internship. The first week, we were presented with numerous internship options, ranging from working in a wine store to taking photos of French cheeses for a fromagerie to hanging paintings at a Parisian gallery. Since I have been a tutor in Poughkeepsie schools during…

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Jessica Tarantine | Oxford, England | Post 4

Jessica Tarantine | Oxford, England | Post 4

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Though culturally England is fairly similar to the United States, one of the most unfamiliar aspects of studying abroad at Oxford is the academic experience. As I’ve explained in a previous post, Oxford features a tutorial system which necessitates a fair amount of writing, averaging about a paper-and-a-half per week. As a humanities major, I’m not a stranger to writing papers, and as a writing consultant in the Writing Center, I’m used to reading a wide variety of papers and prompts. It took…

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Skyla Lowery | Bologna, Italy | Post 3

Skyla Lowery | Bologna, Italy | Post 3

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Sometime at the beginning of March, I became infected with the travel bug. I was also, unfortunately, infected with a real bug, which kept me in bed for almost two weeks. After spending almost all of February in my beloved city of Bologna, I woke up one morning at 6:00 am with a jolt and a sudden urge to go somewhere, anywhere, despite the fact that I was still pretty ill. That day, I went on a ticket-buying spree and booked three trips to Florence, Brussels, and Barcelona,…

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Maxelle Neufville | Tokyo, Japan | Post 1

Maxelle Neufville | Tokyo, Japan | Post 1

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So far, the most difficult part of my JYA experience has been just trying to get to Tokyo. Flying from New York to Chicago went without a hitch, but the two planes provided for my connecting flight—the second one after an hours-long delay—were both unusable due to mechanical issues.  Luckily, I was able to find and band together with three other students, participating in the same CIEE program as me, who were booted off of the same flight to be placed in the same…

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