So my time here in Florence is winding down, as I will be home this time in 4 days and while I am ready to be home and cannot wait to see everybody waiting for me, it will be really weird leaving as I truly have become adjusted to the European lifestyle. I will miss many simple things like walking along the Arno River to the grocery store multiple times a week, taking naps and reading in the beautiful gardens and stopping at my favorite little street market in the mornings to get some strawberries for breakfast.

My one piece of advice for anybody that is going to travel abroad is to never stop when you are there. Travel as much as you can and don’t take anything for granted, because you quickly realize there is no where near enough time to see everything you want to. In total, I was only in Florence for 3 out of my 16 weekends and while I got exhausted sometimes, it was worth it all and I got to see SO many amazing places that exist in this world. I made it to eight different countries and 30 something cities. I have seen so many places that most people only get to see in books or on the internet and when I look back on pictures, it feels like a dream. However, I thought I was going to cross a lot of places off my list, instead, I only found out that there are even more places that I would like to make it to and visit one day!

Just in case you need some inspiration on some of the AMAZING things you get the opportunity to do while abroad, here are my top experiences:
Top Experiences (in no particular order):
1. Walking through the Colosseum
2. Climbing the scariest climb ever up St. Peter’s Dome
3. Cheering on the Florence soccer team vs Verona
4. Experiencing Venice Carnevale
5. Holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa
6. Skydiving 13,000 feet about the snow covered Swiss Alps
7. Night sledding down the alps and seeing the most beautiful sky full of stars I’ve ever seen
8. Seeing the famous clock tower show in Prague
9. Walking along the Berlin Wall
10. Watching and screeching the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower light up at night
11. Walking through the Hall of Mirrors
12. Seeing where Anne Frank lived in utter silence and darkness
13. Riding a bike through Amsterdam
14. Watching the sunset at Fiesole with wine and cake
15. White water rafting and cliff jumping in Croatia
16. Swimming in the freezing cold Adriatic Sea and seeing a dolphin
17. Swimming in the Krka National Waterfalls
18. Writing a letter to Juliet
19. Having dinner on the hill of Positano
20. Drinking a beer in the infamous Temple Bar and PS I Love You bar
21. Walking along the Cliffs of Moher that have been there for over 320 million years
22. Pouring the perfect pint of Guinness
23. Eating dinner and listening to wonderful music at Fitzgerald’s
24. Finding Coop
25. Hiking through Cinque Terre

In my time here, I have mostly learned how grateful for everything back home I am. Things like free water and bread and the free use of public bathrooms will not be taken for granted anymore. Or being able to just get in a car and go somewhere for awhile, since your feet only get you so far in a certain amount of time. I have realized just how great my life back home is and how good I really have it. I have the greatest family and friends waiting for me and this trip has reenforced all of that. It’s been fun, but I can’t wait to see you again America!Casinovendors Com Subcategory Vendors ListCasinovendors Com Subcategory Vendors List

My name is Nambi Arumugam and I am currently studying abroad in The Hague, Netherlands. I have been here since the third week of January and will be staying until the first week of June. It has been about two months since I have gotten here and so I finally feel as though I have had enough time to get a small grasp of the city and country.

This blog post will mostly be dedicated to what to bring to the Netherlands if you plan on studying abroad here. More specifically, I wanted to mention some of the little things to bring to make your time here that much more comfortable.

I packed as lightly as I could for a 5-month trip but brought some things that made the transition a lot smoother. First, I brought a small Swiss army knife (be sure to check this in when flying here). It had a variety of tools on it including a small screwdriver, bottle opener, knife, and flashlight. Any small things that broke or any screw that was loose, I could fix without having to go and give a work order at the dorm office. For example, our showerhead was loose and would never stay up. With some work with the pliers that were on the army knife, I was able to rig it to stay up.

The second thing I would advise is to bring any of your favorite brands. There are stores where you can find brands that are being sold back home but they are usually out of the way or very expensive. Most of the stores sell the Dutch version of the brands we have back home but most of the labels are in Dutch and figuring it out takes some experimentation.

Small locks are something that I wish I had brought to the Netherlands. They are incredibly useful when staying in hostels or keeping valuables safe inside of your room. While the dorms and living areas in The Hague are very safe, it brings about a peace of mind when traveling for extended periods of time. When in the dorms, I found that most of the dorms give you a locker but make you pay for renting a lock for it. This becomes relatively mandatory when you are sharing a room with up to 23 other people sometimes. If you have a lock of your own, you know it is of better quality than the ones usually rented at hostels and having a unique lock may be a good idea.

Finally, a small, fast drying towel is a very good investment before coming abroad. While a large one may be great for keeping in your room, when traveling, it will be a pain to lug around. A smaller towel also takes up less space in your bags which helps greatly considering inter-continental flights usually only allow a carry-on bag.
That is a small list of some things I recommend you bring. I will update this entry any time I think of more items that I feel would be smart to bring.

I have been living in Panama City, Panama since July and the experience continues to be great. I went back home to Louisville for three weeks during Christmas so I will update everyone on what has been going on since I have been back. When I first came here I was living with one of my friends and his family and in January I found an apartment to move into. The apartment is in a great location and is about a 20-minute walk from my internship at Philips and a quick cab ride from my school. It’s in a new building with a pool so I can enjoy the great weather here. Since I came back in January it has been dry season here, which is completely different from how it was during my first part here. I was used to it raining half the week with a few sunny days (I prefer a few rainy days over snow and cold). But in dry season the weather is absolutely perfect for four months and there is not a single drop of rain.
When I came back in January my school asked if I could be a chaperone for three study abroad groups that were coming to take classes for three weeks. The experience was great and I got to go to all the tours with the students (which included the beach), and also take the students out and show them the city.
In February I got to experience Panamanian carnivals, which are nothing like I have been to before. The festivals are located in small towns outside of the city and I went to one in Panonome. The festival has thousands of people dancing to crazy loud music. And something unique to Panamanian carnivals is that you get sprayed with water the whole time. There are multiple water trucks that go around continuously spraying people down with water. At first I didn’t really like this, but it got so hot during the day that I loved it.
My favorite beach that I have recently gone to is the San Blas Islands. Getting there is an adventure but it is completely worth it. It about a two and a half hour car ride through curvy roads and then once you get there you have to take a 20-minute boat ride. But once you arrive it is absolute paradise. Seriously the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It is made up of over 300 islands and everything is so undeveloped and natural. This is a protected area of Panama because the native Indians are the only ones allowed to live on the islands. It was amazing to be in the boat and see so many islands and clear blue water. We got to go snorkeling through a sunken ship and we also went to a natural pool in the middle of the ocean. They called it a natural pool because it’s in the shape of a perfect circle and it’s this area right in the middle of the ocean that is about three feet deep. It was pretty wild to get off the boat and be able to stand waist deep in the water, with no land around me.
I brought my dog from Kentucky here and I think he has been having a great time as well. I took him to his first beach in February and he was a little confused about it at first but quickly started to play and swim in the water.
I’m also going to be a little famous here in a few weeks. Last week I was in a photo shoot for one of the cell phone companies here so they will be putting the ad up around the city soon. I will post a picture of the ad as soon as it gets published.
My Spanish is progressing but it is still not as good as I would like it to be. There are a lot of people who speak English here so it is hard me to be more proactive and always speak the language. But I am not letting myself leave here until I am fluent.

Be sure to check out the website I have created since I have been here:
www.panamastudentguide.com

And also follow me on twitter for more recent updates:
www.twitter.com/joeybonura

-Joey Bonura

So, I finally make it to Bordeaux eight and a half hours later than scheduled. I’m at the baggage carousel and I’m waiting and waiting. It eventually becomes apparent that my bag did not make the transfer to my new flight. Luckily for me, the girl I was sitting next to on this flight did not receive her luggage either. Since she spoke French and we made friends on the flight, she assisted me in dealing with the airport staff.

There I was in Bordeaux homeless and without luggage, except for my carry-on. I proceed to the exit and I find the Melting Potes waiting to taxi me and a couple of other international students to our destination. The Melting Potes is this wonderful student organization at BEM dedicated to helping international students. Their name is a play on words as potes means mates or friends. I will talk more about them later. The guys from the Melting Potes inform me that I will spend the night with one of their members, William, for the first night and that we will figure out the rest in the morning.

On the ride from the airport to downtown Bordeaux they turn on the radio and what do I hear, American music! I’m in France ready to experience all that she has to offer and the first song I hear is an American song! Then one of the guys proceeds to ask if we were hungry and suggests stopping at McDonald’s! Nooooo! I did not come to France to listen to American music and eat McDonald’s! American influence on France is something I will talk more about later too. For now let’s get back to our trip and the first French word that I learned. As we are discussing the fact that none of us international students know French, one of the Melting Potes guys tells us that we need to know one word because we will hear it often. Now I cannot or maybe should not share this word on this blog, but I will tell you that it would be considered a bad word in the US. In France however, this word is used so often that it has no bite to it. This again is something I will touch more on later.

After spending my first night in Bordeaux on William’s couch, we get up in the morning and head down to Bordeaux École de Management, BEM for short. This is the school at which I will be studying. We’re in one of the larger classrooms and the Melting Potes is busy making arrangements to pick up all of the international students that are scheduled to arrive throughout the day. As I’m waiting and meeting some of the incoming students, I ask one of the Melting Potes guys to call the airport and make arrangement for my luggage to be delivered to BEM since I don’t have an address. After a couple of hours, I’m told that there is a French student who lives downtown and wants to live with an American student. Jackpot!! I have not even seen the place and I already want it. Anything to not be homeless, and besides that it meets all my criteria. We later arrive to see the flat and I take a short trip through and say “Yes please.” I’m informed he has to discuss things with his other roommates and let us know later. I go back to William’s place to await my destiny; will I be homeless one more night? After a few hours I find out that my luggage will be delivered to BEM around 7pm and that the French student said I can move in tonight. The stars have aligned!! I am no longer homeless, and better yet I didn’t have to haul my luggage around for two days until I found a place to stay. It seems delayed luggage was actually a blessing in disguise. Things may not always happen the way you want, but everything tends to work out exactly like it’s supposed to. That’s all for this installment. My next posting will be on Bordeaux first impressions.

Guten Abend from Germany! My name is Jonathan Sevy and I am studying for one semester at European Business School in Germany. I am a junior accounting major at UofL, minoring in International Business and Chinese Studies.

I can see my colleague Jennifer Schramm has already posted a great review of a semester here at European Business School (EBS), so if you want a good review of the school and helpful tips scroll down a few posts. To avoid redundancy in my posts, I’ll try to highlights unique aspects of my semester and travels here to complement Jennifer’s post.

Winter in Oestrich

The biggest variation between Jennifer’s and my perspective is one of timing. Jennifer studied in the fall of 2011 and I in the spring of 2012. I hear Oestrich is quite the sight during the autumn. The vineyards that stretch across the neighboring hills are vivid green; vines sag under the weight of next year’s wine. The local Rheingau area is famous for its Weißwein, and every space not occupied by a quaint German house is used to grow the grapes for these white wines. It reminds me of the tobacco fields back home that were once a ubiquitous part of our Kentucky landscape, and more recently the fields of corn and soy that have replaced them. Oestrich in the fall is warm and bustling with life.

In the winter, the warmth and life of Oestrich becomes a bit harder to find. Many of the older residents of the town flee to warmer climates for vacation, and many of the degree-seeking EBS students elect to fulfill their mandatory study abroad requirement during this semester. The town is left in a half-empty slumber for these months, though the bright houses still display the cheer of their absent inhabitants.

Oestrich is not unlike the myriad of other such small towns that dot the fruitful hillsides of the region- a close-knit but welcoming community, isolated from the metropolitan life of cities like Frankfurt, which is just an hour’s ride east by the convenient trains serving the area. Oestrich is a harbor for students looking to study away from the distractions of the big city, but is close enough to still utilize the resources and opportunities found in the financial capital of Germany.

I arrived in Germany on the second of January, an anticlimactically grey and quiet Monday. After sharing a car pool with a few other new EBS students from Frankfurt airport to Oestrich, I was dropped off at the door to my apartment. My landlord had ceased answering my emails a few weeks prior, and I was a bit unsure when- if ever- he would arrive to meet me. I stood in the rain in front of the apartment building and gazed at the door and then down at the wet pavement. It was littered with the exploded shells of spent firecrackers, the sodden cardboard lingering proof of recent New Year’s celebrations.

As the driver pulled away, I began doubting the chain of decisions that had led me to this unfamiliar doorstep. My choice to study abroad was based on the obvious and numerous benefits, but had I been too hasty when I decided to leave my home and university behind? The impending threat of homelessness weighed on my mind as I waited in the cloudy drizzle. After about fifteen minutes and a few telephone calls around the town, my landlord at last materialized out of the narrow, winding streets and gave me a heartfelt greeting. I had a key. And a home.

The next two months are not overly interesting, so I will skip over most of it. January and February passed in many respects like a typical spring semester at UofL- cold, wet, too-little daylight, early classes. The only really remarkable part of this period was the people I met. You have probably read about the meaningful friendships, cultural understanding, and new perspectives attained by other bloggers on this site, and I can confirm this is a major benefit of study abroad.

The group of international students (or Tauschies as we’re called) here at EBS is especially tight-knit, perhaps due to nature of the school. As a private school in Germany, EBS caters to a more affluent student base than the free public universities throughout the country. The high ratio of hoity to toity found in many German EBS students may be off-putting to newcomers at first, but the majority of German students are decent enough once you get to know them. Regardless, the international students tend to be wary of the copious amounts of high fashion wafting from their German peers, and the exchange students form a thriving community for mutual support while at EBS. Anytime an exchange student is having a problem with an assignment, trouble with travel, or is looking for the next party, other Tauschies or sometimes German students are there with the answer. I have never felt so connected to a community than with the people I have met here in Germany. We travel together, eat together, party together, study together. I am rarely lonely here because I can always reach out to someone within the community.

And that is the warmth of Oestrich in the winter- the people. Even on cold, snowy mornings, I can make the trek through the vineyards to school knowing I will meet familiar faces along the way. People come from all across the world to this tiny wine-making town to study business at EBS, bringing warmth and life with them. As winter turns to spring and color returns once more to the vineyards, I can only imagine what adventures are yet to come.

Go Cards!

PS: If you’re interested, I ocassionally post pictures of my travels on Tumblr:
http://tumblnwithjonathan.tumblr.com/

I have been in Florence, Italy for just about six weeks now. Although some of the first couple of weeks were really difficult due to the adjustment period and feeling like I didn’t have time to accomplish anything, now time is starting to fly by and in two weeks, it will already be halfway over! I am studying with a program called ISA (International Studies Abroad) and I LOVE them! I would definitely recommend them to everybody and they have study abroad locations all over the world. The staff is amazing, both during the pre departure process and while abroad. Our staff here is amazing and our Resident Director is like a second mom. What is really great about ISA is that they plan excursions for you, that are included in the price of your tuition. For example, they took us to several tours around Florence, the opera, a cooking class, a soccer game and several locations throughout the Tuscan region of Italy. It’s something I didn’t realize would be such a big deal, until I met friends here that are with other schools/programs and they have to plan everything themselves.

So far, since being here, I have mostly just traveled throughout Italy. Besides Florence, I have been to Rome, Venice, Pisa, Assisi, Siena, San Gimignano. Arezzo and Cortona. I have also done a wine tasting at a Chianti castle in the Tuscan countryside and gone to the opera. Outside of Italy, I have been to Interlaken, Switzerland which was seriously the BEST weekend of my entire life! I went skydiving (I think that day will even surpass my wedding day) and night sledding. The food was incredible and the people were amazing. It is one of those trips that you just cannot physically put into words. The view was beyond beautiful and the entire weekend was completely life changing. I would go back there in a heartbeat…

School here has proved to be quite different then back home in the States. The weirdest thing for me is the fact that when school is out due to a holiday, they reschedule the classes! This means that if on Monday there was a holiday, your teacher would reschedule class to Friday or some people even have weekend classes. They also don’t allow you to have sick days, even with a note. It is very strict, and of course, I was thinking they would all be blow off classes. That isn’t quite so true.

I am lots of travels coming up including Prague, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Amalfi Coast, Croatia, Cinque Terre and Ireland. I am really excited and becoming addicted to traveling!

My trip to study in Bordeaux, France did not have such a great beginning, but in the end, some of the seemingly bad things actually worked to my benefit. For starters, I did not have housing accommodations when I left for Bordeaux. I was very adamant about living with French students in downtown Bordeaux. I hoped that living with French students would aid me in learning French, and I was informed that everything worth doing happens in downtown Bordeaux. Unfortunately, I did not get responses from any of the French student I contacted about housing. I was worried and considering taking dorm housing near BEM (Bordeaux École de Management), which is unfortunately thirty minutes by tram from downtown Bordeaux. The Melting Potes, the student organization that helps international students, assured me that I shouldn’t worry, because they would have a place for me to stay until I could find housing. So, I chose to put my faith in the Melting Potes and embark on my journey without housing arrangements.

Then there were issues with my flight arrangements. As a caution to the future adventurers from U of L who will embark on a trip abroad, be careful when booking with American Airlines as they have a partnership with a Spanish company, Iberia, with which another American exchange student and I both had issues. I had a flight from Louisville to Chicago to Madrid to Bordeaux. In Chicago, we boarded the Iberia flight on time and subsequently sat there for an hour without any explanation as to why. It wasn’t snowing at the time, so I am still unsure of the reason for our late departure. This normally wouldn’t be an issue but the connecting flight from Madrid to Bordeaux was scheduled to depart only one hour from our scheduled arrival in Madrid. The girl sitting next to me proceeded to ask an attendant about our delay, as she was concerned about her connecting flight to Germany being scheduled for around an hour after arrival in Madrid as well. The attendant assured her that it would be fine. He said the flight was scheduled for eight hours but with the wind current to our backs we would only need seven hours to get there. So, the only explanation for our late departure seems to be they thought they could make the eight hour flight in seven.

As I was talking to the girl next me, Katrine, she mentioned her grandfather owns a travel company. When she expressed her concern about making her connecting flight in Madrid, her grandfather assured her that she would be fine as long as she wasn’t travelling with Iberia. There goes explanation number two, apparently Iberia is known for being late. With our destiny in the hands of Iberia, Katrine and I proceeded to have good conversation for most of our eight hour flight.

When we land, with only twenty minutes until our connecting flights depart, we proceeded to run through the airport hoping that we might just make our flights. I always wanted to run through the airport like they do in the movies; to stop someone they just realized they are in love with from leaving. Unfortunately, it’s not near as exciting or interesting when you’re trying to catch a connecting flight in a foreign country. We soon realize that there is too much distance and too many obstacles preventing us from making our flights. After making our way through customs and security, we proceeded to the Iberia service desk where we receive great news! Okay, it wasn’t great news. We were told that the next flights to Frankfurt and Bordeaux are seven and eight hours away, respectively. On the bright side we did receive free meal vouchers. Now, I love my free food, but it just doesn’t seem all that free when you’re losing eight hours of your day. Luckily we had each other to keep ourselves company and we hung out in the airport having good conversation for the remainder of our time in the Madrid airport. I will end the first posting here, as not to make this too long of a read at one time, and to add some suspense. To be continued….