The Packing Dilemma

One suitcase, one carry on and one purse sounds like it would be no problem, especially when the biggest purse I owe is more like a sac half the size of my body, but its extremely hard.  Lucky for me my older brother is a seasoned traveler so my Mom has been forced into becoming an expert packer.  It wasn't until my first full week in Florence passed that I fully appreciated my Moms help.  Pre departure I was annoyed that my cute pink heals didn't make her cut and stayed home, by the 5th day I realized even packing one pair of heals might have been too much.  My feet were swollen from exploring the city everyday, fashion came second to finding comfort while walking on the uneven brick sidewalks.  I don't know if it is because I was enrolled in fashion design courses or if magazines and movies created an inflated image of Italy's fashion but I envisioned wearing heals everyday.  I thought I would be more of a tourist if I wasn't dressed to impress everyday.  I was very wrong.
The trick to packing and the trick to fashion in general, I think, is simplicity and versatility.  Bring clothes that can be worn multiple ways and can be dressed up, dressed down and changed around with accessories or other items of clothing.  I wore this one loose black tank at least 10 times; it went with everything and was my go to.  I paired it with shorts, skinny jeans, tucked into a skirt, under a jacket and with a high waited belt, it was awesome.  If I could do it all over I probably would only pack neutral, loose, versatile clothes and I would not pack any accessories because that is what I bough the most of.   
Packing outfits was only part of the process. I cool thing my mom and I did was pack A LOT of things I would just toss at the end of the trip.  We went to TJ Max and bought cheap towels, sheets, and toiletries.  When I threw them out I regained half my luggage space.  I was pretty please with my packing overall, the one thing I wish I would have brought was my straighteners.  This item was so much harder to find than I anticipated, I didn't buy one until after the first week and it was super expensive.  Also, there was no reason to pack electrical adaptors because the girls before us left a bunch in the apartment. 

Lastly, my lap top was my life line.  Skype was an awesome way to keep in touch with family; it is so much cheaper than using a international phone.  It was heavy and kind of a burden BUT totally worth it for me.  Some of my roommates shared with each other and it worked out for them but I liked having mine. As a side note, because luggage space was limited I had to fight the deep urge to buy my family all the cool trinkets I saw.  The cool Idea I had was to take a picture for each member of my family (a picture of a Venice for mom, my favorite restaurant in Rome for Dad, etc).  I framed them all when I got home and wrote them a note as to why I was reminded of them there.  These gifts were a hit and very personal. 

Happy Packing
Brittany

Why Florence?

I'm not much for blogging or at least I don't think I am, this is my first time so I'll let you know.  Although I am not much on sharing thoughts just for the sake of sharing, I am all about spreading the word about going abroad because it was the best experience I have ever had. 
I always knew I wanted to go to Italy because: 1) I am Italian and I felt exploring the Italian culture beyond my grandmas kitchen was a must and 2) I am an artist and what better place to find inspiration than Italy.  So, picking the country was easy, picking the city, not so easy.  I always saw myself as a big city girl because I loved all the weekends I spent in Chicago but after talking to some of the people who traveled abroad and seeing the movie "Taken" (which I don't recommend pre departure for women) I realized something smaller might be perfect. The people who loved Rome seemed to thrive on the fast paced environment, the people who Loved Florence talked mostly about stopping at the fresh market on the way to class and how, by the end of the trip they felt they knew all there was to know about Florence.  I really like the idea of creating a home in a different country.  Florence was a perfect choice. It was a central hub, only an hour or two train ride away from a day at the beach, Pisa, Verona or Venice, ten minutes away from horseback riding through vineyards, and a 20 minute walk to the highest point overlooking the entire city.  I loved this city..I loved all of Italy.  The truth is, you can't really pick a bad city in Italy, especially if your going with a program like mine, API, because they plan so many trips that you get to experience it all anyways. 

-Brittany

Class...

Class. Studying abroad gives you a many options of how to take your classes. In my case, I chose a hybrid program, half of my classes were at the CEA Global Campus with other American students in the program and the others were taken at the Universite de Paris - Sorbonne IV.

First the classes with CEA were taught in English by foreign professors. I chose to take an International Business course and a Globalization & World Politics course. These courses were very different than classes I have ever taken. Then were more focus on experience and learning through seeing what's in Paris, and with that in mind most of my classes were field trips. I had the chance to not just read and see a video about the European Commission and UNESCO, but I actually got to have a tour of the facilities, meet people who work there, and even get to sit in on an conference. Classes only meet once or twice a week for about two hours and we had a midterm, a final, and a project. My professors at CEA tried to grade on more of an American scale too.

Onto the French system. The French are known to be very harsh and strict when it comes to school and grading, and that I can say is true. I went to La Sorbonne IV, which is the international section of the college, so, my classes there were with students from literally all around the globe, which was really neat because I was able to make friends from all over the country and still talk to some of them today. I took French Grammar and Phonetics, taught in French and only French. Written placement examinations were given for grammar and an oral examination was given for phonetics.Two hours of grammar everyday and an additional hour of phonetics everyday every other week. English or any other language was not to be spoken once one entered the class room. The teaching style was quite different and very straightforward. My teacher would call out people's mistakes on the spot in front of the whole class and you would have to fix it then and there. Exercises were done aloud and my teacher would pose challenges on everyone and push you till you had to check the book or notes for what to say. It's hard to explain how exactly they taught grammar, but I loved it and learned a great deal from my grammar professor. I had never taken Phonetics before and when Phonetique classes started I was kind of shocked of how it was run. 30 minutes in the classroom working on a specific sound, then 30 minutes in Lab, recording and listening. Phonetics was the most helpful class for me and I have noticed a great deal of improvement in myself with help from it. Final exams were very different too. We had to go to a huge building, Maison Des Examens, and were not necessarily with our classmates but just others who were in our level. You had to check-in, and someone told you a room number and chair number quickly in French. The final exam was pretty much what our whole grade was based off of and grades were give on a number scale up to 20, obtaining a 20 is nearly impossible so striving for a 15 or above was the goal.

Maison Des Examens. A bit overwhelming.

Well guys, that's all for now,

A Bientot!

Kelsey

Daily Transportation & Traveling

Daily transportation in Paris was a whole new system for me, I'm so used to driving my car wherever I need to go and had ever had to take a subway before ever in my life. I was terrified that I would never learn the metro system and I would always be lost. Luckily I learned that the system is in all honesty, simple. After taking it by myself once, I had it mastered. If you have a subway system in your city, put up a poster of it in your apartment so you easily find a route and always carry a pocket map of your city and the subway. You do not want to look lost down their if you are at one the not-so-friendly stops or exchanges. Just like rush hour traffic, the metro had traffic, and it got crazy. But, in the end, we perfected running down escalators and cramming into cars as well as knowing where to turn to get on a certain line at the large exchanges. A downfall to be prepared for is the cost of getting passes. I would get month passes called a Pass Navigo, which cost me around 70 Euros and have a card that I would swipe to enter. The cost was high, but for how many times you use it a day, it is a great deal.

Now onto travel, I took planes and trains to get everywhere and it defiantly depends on where you are for which airline is the best deal. I know everyone says RyanAir is the cheapest and the best, but disclaimer, if you are studying in Paris or going to Paris, don't even think about looking into it. Why? The airport for RyanAir is so far outside the city, the cost of taking a taxi to get into the city will be double the cost of your ticket. With that said, there are many other very cheap airlines with prices as low as RyanAir, my favorite was SmartWings or EasyJet. You can look at their website or use other like Kayak or Expedia to book your flights. Once you arrive to your destination, be sure to figure out from advisers, other students, or travel guides (Rick Steve's is a favorite) what is the best way to get to your hotel or hostel. Most cities we were able to haggle down the price of a taxi or found a route using the city's subway system.

When traveling within a country or to city very close, look into trains, or just go to the station and ask for the cheapest ticket. When I was in Italy, we took trains from Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome, each of which costs about 12 Euro, and another bonus is you can buy your ticket when you get there or buy it as you get on the train. Same goes for the Cote d'Azur (Southeast coast of France) we hopped from Nice to Canne to St. Tropez so easily buy paying 5 Euro for trains.

Bonne Voyage :)

Kelsey

Packing & Skype

Bonjour mes amis :)

Packing was very challenging for me. I am such an over packer I tried to bring almost all my clothes with me at first - something that was impossible to happen with the limited space of two suitcases. I recommend bringing mostly basic pieces, dark jeans, and leggings. Fancier pieces for going out to clubs and bars is a must, and a business professional outfit comes in handy too. I brought scarfs and different cardigan sweaters to mix and match everything and seem like I brought more. Shoes was another issue for me, one pair of good heels is a must for women, and tennis shoes are a must as well. I wore many layers at the airport when I left to save every tiny bit of space, haha. Don't even bother bringing any hairdryers or curling irons with you, since they will NOT work, my roommates and I went to the equivalent of Target and bought those pieces after we got there and shared them. Defiantly bring pictures of friends and family from home to decorate your space with, and a nice journal isn't a bad idea either. Check the packing lists online, I did not bring everything they said to but it reminded me of little things I needed.

Packing to return was another interesting challenge. I bought a lot of clothes in Paris and ended up leaving a lot of the clothes I originally brought there or swapped things around with friends. If, you have any visitors, who will return to the US, it is a great idea to sent some things with them. My parents visited in April and they brought me a suitcase with some of my summer pieces in it and I they took back with them all my bulky winter clothes.

Skype is something everyone studying abroad should have! Not only can you video chat for free with your family and friends back home, but it is a vital tool to avoid extremely high cell phone bills from communicating with your friends abroad with you. I started by skyping my family once a week and my friends would either set up times or we would just be on around the same time and call. Facebook is a way to stay in touch too, but skype is much better since you can actually talk to their faces instead of messages or chat. CEA provided cell phones for everyone, but the charges were ridiculous, as were the pay as you go phones from France. To avoid those rates we barely used phone to talk to one another or plan, skype was our savior. Whenever I was in my apartment, I would pull up my skype and we would call each other that was instead of the silver brick cell phones.

Bonne Chance!

Kelsey

Planes, trains, and buses

I didn't get the chance to write two weeks ago, so you're getting two blogs from me today! First, let's talk about transportation. I honestly amazed by the transportation in Spain.

If you need to get anywhere in Europe, I recommend using Ryanair.com. This site is awesome. Once I got a round-trip ticket to London for less than $20. If you have a specific destination in mind, try to be flexible with the departure and arrival dates because it will be much easier to get a cheaper flight. If you just want to travel and don't have any solid idea on where you want to go, you can do searches based on price. I know people who have gotten flights cheaper than $5, and my friend from the Netherlands swears that she got a flight for free once.

I only took a train once. It was a little faster than a bus, but much more expensive.  I don't recommend taking a train unless you plan to travel before or after your program. If you do decide to travel after your program and want to see a lot of different places throughout Europe, the railpass is a really great deal. You can buy passes that last for different amounts of time. My friend bought one for two weeks after our program ended and jumped on any train he wanted to any destination he wanted within those two weeks. He got to see a lot of different cities and countries that way.

I did a lot of traveling within Spain, so I used buses. The bus system in Spain is great. You can get to almost any city for a very reasonable price. I either bought my tickets online at alsa.es or I went to the bus station and bought my tickets at the counter. If you plan to go across the country, however, I recommend flying. I took a 13 hour bus ride to the north coast and then took the same ride back a few days later and it was miserable. With all the transfers there were a lot of issues. Not to give too many details, but I spent a snowy night sharing a blanket with a homeless man.


Now let's talk about classes.

I took all of my classes in Spanish with Spanish professors from the university; however, 98% of the other students were Americans. There were some French, Japenese, African, and Canadian students, but the place was dominated by American students. On top of that, the building at the University of Granada where the language classes are taught is on the other side of the city from the rest of the campus. Meeting native students during classes was practically impossible. I didn't know about this before I went, and it's probably the one thing that bothered me the most about my study abroad experience.

In Spain they use a grading system out of 10 (instead of 100 like we do here). It's very hard to get a 10 or even a 9. Many students are happy just to get a 5 or a 6. One of my professors explained that if there is a class of 30 students, only 1 student will get a 10, 2 students will get a 9, and everyone else will get something lower. That may be a little exaggerated for some classes, but not all of them. Overall, I enjoyed most of my teachers and the classes were fairly interesting. Also, all the classes that I took abroad helped me to graduate a year early!

Well, that's all I have for you guys today...

cuídaos!

Jacob

What to Pack and How to Stay in Touch Back Home!

Initially I was worried about coming to London because I'm known as the "over-packer" of the family. Though I brought more than most people, I made good use out of almost everything. For clothing try to bring clothes that can be very versatile and layered. I made sure to bring all the basics, plain colored v-necks and t-shirts, jeans, black jeans are very European, one or two professional outfits for class presentations, dress up clothes for going out to clubs and to the theatre. I'm sure most of you have a pretty good handle on what to pack clothes wise. And remember, you are probably going to buy clothes there as well.

I really recommend bringing a comfortable sheet to sleep on. I took an old queen sheet, folded it in half and sewed half way up the side to create a little sheet sleeping bag. The linens provided at Nido Student Housing aren't super comfy, so I used this all the time. It can also come in handy if you plan on staying in hostels and it doesn't take up a lot of room in your suitcase. I was really glad I brought thumb tacs for the bulletin board provided, 3M wall hooks (with the sticky backing, found at Walmart), and pictures from home. Though you can use Facebook to see your friends and family's pictures, it's nice to have something on the walls. I also brought a small tapestry to add color to my room and give it a homey feel. I recommend bringing 3 coats: a raincoat, light autumn coat, and a heavier winter one. To make it looked like I had more than three outfits, I brought and bought a lot of colorful scarves to change things up. Some people suggest buying a converter for abroad, the adaptors in London work fine and are really cheap. Also, some of my friends bought hair dryers at a place called Argos (it’s a cheap catalogue store) so they wouldn’t have to worry about using an adaptor and changing the voltage settings. If you’re a big movie buff, you may want to bring a couple of your favorite DVDs along so you can watch them on your laptop. The TVs in the Nido kitchens didn’t have DVD players and the screening room was under construction when I was there. From what I saw, London didn’t have anything like a Redbox but I wasn’t really looking. Cell phones are really cheap and easy to find abroad but if you have a smart phone and are considering bringing it, check with your carrier to see if you can change out your SIM card for a UK card. My friend brought his iPhone and it helped us navigate through the city and came in handy a lot.

As for staying in contact with family and friends, the first month I had 100 minutes of international calling but ended up switching to unlimited texting/calling in the UK towards the end of my stay because I wasn't using my minutes and it was less expensive. I mainly used Skype, email, and Facebook as forms of communication back home. Nido’s internet usually gets really jammed up at night so Skype was quite slow at times. I’m not the type of person who gets home sick a lot, so this didn’t really bother me much. I know one of my friends who had a Gmail account used Gtalk to call the US for free but I’m not totally sure how that works. I will ask her though if anyone is interested. Just remember there is a 6 hour difference from London to Wisconsin so try to come up with a good time to talk. If you don’t bring a laptop, there are a couple apple computers in the Nido lobby and 2^nd floor café. There are also computers at London Met in the libraries but are being used most of the time by other students.

Casey

¡buenas!


I wish I wouldn't have packed so many clothes. By the second month I had already made an area in my closet for clothes I hadn't worn and wasn't planning on wearing. It's almost inevitable that you're going to buy some clothes abroad, and towards the end of my trip when I needed more room in my suitcase, I actually donated a lot of the clothes I had brought with me. I also wish I wouldn't have brought any toiletries. I'm glad I brought contacts and contact solution, but I easily found the rest of the items I needed at a decent price there. Also, my luggage arrived a week late, so I had to buy all my toiletries anyways. I wish I wouldn't have brought my electrical adapter either. I used it properly (with the converter and everything), yet it still blew a few fuses. I bought a really cheap adapter (less than $5) there at an electronic store and it worked perfectly.There's nothing that I didn't bring that I wished I would have. Depending on your host country, you can find almost anything. I would, however, recommend that you bring nail clippers and tweezers because those can be expensive (in Spain they were almost $15 each).


The best way to stay in touch with people is with Skype. There was no wifi where I was staying so I either had to use my computer at school or at a reasonably cheap internet café down the street from my apartment. I did have a couple friends that bought USB wireless internet through different local phone companies, but I didn't think that was necessary. Personally, I had a hard time keeping in contact with my friends and family. With the time difference and everything that I wanted to do, I probably only talked to them once every week or two. Instead, I decided to make a blog, and I updated it once a week with stories or pictures.


un saludo,


Jacob

And through foggy London Town the sun was shining everywhere.

Hello mates,

To start off, let me just say that studying abroad was one of the best decisions of my life and has forever changed me. I think I first caught the travel bug just before my senior year in high school when my family road-tripped over to Niagara Falls and New York for a couple weeks. I loved how different the New York City atmosphere was compared to my hometown in Wisconsin. Quickly after that trip I started to write my bucket list and visiting every state was one of my goals. I'm only up to 16 states but at least it's a start (not including states I've driven through, because those don't really count). I hadn't really set my sights abroad because I always figured I would travel when I was older and had more expendable money. But during my sophomore year of college I saw pictures of one of my friends studying abroad. It looked like so much fun so I decided to check out La Crosse's study abroad programs. 

I passed the map of places available abroad and realized we had a ton of options available. My foreign language skills are minimal so that helped to narrow down my choices. Once I decided I wanted an English speaking country, I was going between a couple Australia programs and England. I ended up choosing London because it's the hub of Europe and would give me many opportunities to travel. I was also very interested in the rich history and yes, I’ll admit it, I wanted to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry. I then chose London Metropolitan because it offered many business courses so I wouldn't get too behind back home, and it turned out to be a great decision because London Met really is in the heart of London. I lived just a couple blocks away from Kings Cross and was only a tube ride away from all the main attractions. 

                                                        http://unexpectedways.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html

Cheers,
Casey