Advice for study abroad!

I am finally relaxed and have spent enough time at home to feel like I can think back on study abroad and consider what advice to tell you if you're preparing or thinking about it! While my advice may be more tailored to Latin America, I also traveled in southern Africa and friends in other regions have agreed with some of the points below.

Suggestions-
1. Bring your favorite brand of peanut butter
2. Don't bring any flashy jewelry/electronics.. it's not worth getting it stolen/lost
3. Buy a neck pillow for the airplane ride/bus rides
4. Always carry lots of medication (just in case!)
5. Pack as light as possible- it is frustrating to lug around a suitcase
6. Pack in a backpacking backpack if you can so you can carry stuff easily
7. Don't carry useless things like shampoo from the US.. buy it there!
8. Bring photos or other things to make you feel better when you're homesick
9. Buy a Lonely Planet guide so you can plan travel cheaply and awesome side trips
10. Download Skype to talk to friends!
11. Always carry toilet paper...

Hope that helps- I think many of these can relate to any trips abroad, more broadly than just study abroad. It's always super key to keep your passport, credit card, and ATM cards separate and in safe spots to assure you don't end up stuck somewhere for longer than necessary.

Happy traveling! I, on the other hand, am going to enjoy the good ol US of A for awhile!
marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

I’ll be home for Christmas…actually I already am

Want to hear something wonderful? I’ve been done for the semester and have been on Christmas vacation since last Wednesday (the 14th) and home in Wisconsin since Friday (the 16th). I know, I know, some of you may hate me for that or are jealous (that’s what all my friends keep telling me), but hearing all of them complain about just now finishing finals has made me feel quite relived. How was I done so early you ask? Well, here was my final exam schedule:

Tuesday, December 6: East Asian Calligraphy Final (Paper + in class performance)

Wednesday December 7: Executive Branch Politics Final Exam

Thursday, December 8: Social Research Methods Final Exam AND Theories of Personality Final (Paper)

Wednesday December 14: Social Psychology Final Exam

As you can see, the second week of December was extremely busy for me, finishing 4 out of my 5 exams in just 3 days. Then, I had to wait for almost another week to be completely done for the semester. Overall, it was quite a nice finals schedule, by far the nicest since I’ve been in college. Usually, I’ve had an exam on the 21st or 22ndand flown home the next day, which made for quite a delayed break. However, since this year I made it home on the 16th and we start a week later in January, it means that I get an entire month for break (and I am home for 9 days before Christmas)! That fact alone makes me smile.

Don’t worry, just because I am on break, doesn’t mean I won’t keep you updated or blog every few days. In fact, my next post later this week will be a review of all my classes. Good luck on any final exams you have left before break!

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie

Santiago!

I finally found time to get to Santiago de Chile- after being in Chile for 4 months! Wrapping up my trip, I spent 4 days in Santiago touring the sights.

Santiago at night

Cerro San Lucia

Pablo Neruda's house in Valparaiso, on the coast

 I spent my time climbing the "cerros", or the small lookout hills around Santiago, traveling to Valparaiso to see Pablo Nerudas house and eat delicious cuban food, shopping for last minute souvenirs, going to museums, and eating great food. It was an enjoyable end to study abroad!!
marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

And finally.... the penguins!!

For my last two days in Patagonia, I spent them well- with penguins!! We took two trips away from Punta Arenas to see them.

The first was the typical trip to see the Magellanic penguins on Isla de Magdalena.

Following the penguins down the path

Penguins

Penguins along the coast

The second trip was a trip to see the King penguin colony in Tierra del Fuego.

My friends from my program

King Penguins

It was amazing to finally see penguins in real life!

marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

Putting Down the Books to Pick Up Some Pancakes

Servers wore construction hats
instead of hair nets. Cute!!!

This past Monday the GW community continued one of its longest traditions, Midnight Breakfast, to kick off the two weeks of finals for the Fall semester. For its 26th year, GW professors, coaches, administrators and staff have gotten together to serve students a nice evening breakfast before we continue to pull our all-night study sessions. Although studying may not be the most fun thing you do in college, at least at GW we get to it on a full stomach :)

GW Women's
Basketball Coach Bozeman
and President Knapp help
serve students a great breakfast

This year the theme was "Trespassing Welcome" and there were themes all around the renovations going on around campus. There were showcases of the new Aimes Academic Center on the Mount vernon Campus, plans on display about the construction of the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) near Whole Foods and sadly the closing of the Hippodrome and 5th floor Bowling Alley. President Knapp joined students as the signed a wall of the former Hippodrome before it is constructed into a new office space for student-run organizations. Some friends and I played pool for the last time in the Hippodrome before hitting the books again in Gelman Library.

The beautiful new academic space at the
Mount Vernon campus

As well as eating and looking at the projects at hand, we also had the opportunity to see various groups perform at the Midnight breakfast like Balance, GW Troubadours, Ballroom and Capitol Funk.

As always, let me know if you have any questions about anything and congratulations to all of you who joined the Colonial Community through the Early Decision I program! Your hard work has paid off and I can't wait to see you on campus

Peace, Love and Hippos!

Brandon Moore
brmoore@gwmail.gwu.edu

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…..in my dorm room

After my roommates and I returned from Thanksgiving Break, we decided that it was time to start decorating for the next holiday- Christmas! So, I pulled out my Christmas lights from last year and we hung them up around the living room. Next, Katie went to Whole Foods a couple blocks away and bought a real min-Christmas tree, which she hung lights and ornaments on right away! Then, to complete the look, we placed our Christmas presents to each other under the tree, all while listening to Christmas music. And on Thursday this week (before I go home for break), we are having a roommate Christmas party (dinner and opening presents). I’m excited! Decorating our room was a wonderful way to get into the Holiday spirit while on campus. Here are some pictures!

the beautiful lights and baby tree in the background

our "Christmas corner" (note the Advent calendar filled with chocolate hanging on the wall behind the tree)

close-up of the tree with ornaments with our initials (my gifts to them for St. Nick last week)

3/4 of us surrounding our baby tree

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

National Tree Lighting Ceremony

On Thursday, December 1, my friends and I were lucky enough to attend the National Tree Lighting Ceremony held just south of the White House near the Washington Monument. In order to get these tickets, which were for standing room only, we all entered a lottery contest, and thankfully two of us got them, each receiving 5 tickets. And being the good friends they are, they brought the rest of us who did not win tickets along.

The ceremony started at about 5pm, and included musical Christmas performances from OneRepublic, Rodney Atkins, will.i.am, Jersey Boys, Marsha Ambrosius, Big Time Rush, Ellie Goulding, and the ever-popular Kermit the Frog. The ceremony was hosted by Carson Daly and also featured the entire Obama family and Santa Clause.

This year, for the first time in over 30 years there was a brand new tree, since the previous one was taken down by a storm this past February. As a result, the tree was a great deal smaller than the last one, but it will grow (it’s just a baby Christmas tree right now). From where we were standing, this also made it a little difficult to see it without standing on our tippy toes.

Overall, it was a really fun experience and hopefully I can attend again in the future. Everyone attending was in the Christmas spirit, singing along with all of the songs and it was a nice way to kick off the holiday season. And of course I have a few pictures!

Taylor and I with our tickets

The entire group

Stage to the left.

The beautiful baby tree from a distance since with all the people we could not get any closer

Feel free to email me with any questions! cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu
-Christie

Torres del Paine National Park

This past Thursday, I went on the most amazing tour in Patagonia. We stayed for 3 nights in Puerto Natales in an amazing hostel called Backpackers Kaweskar and did a day long tour into Torres del Paine National Park. We woke up early to eat a big breakfast in the hostel and then hopped into a small van at 7:30 AM. There were 7 of us- me and my 2 friends, 3 other Americans studying in Santiago, and a French woman who teaches French in London. We had a driver as well as a tour guide and we started heading straight to the park once we collected everyone from their hostels.

View from Laguna Amarga (taken on Emily's iPhone.. I haven't uploaded my pictures yet!)

We spent the day driving around, stopping at beautiful lookouts to see condors flying above, guanacos (similar to llamas) eating grass, and the sights of Torres del Paine. Many people head into this park to do a circuit called the W which lasts 3-5 days, and you camp along the path. Everyone we met had an amazing experience doing it, and I think it would be really fun to come back here someday and do it!

Lake we hiked along (again, picture from Emily's iPhone)

 After driving around for awhile, we got out of the car and did a 2 hour hike along beautiful scenery, past a perfectly blue-green lake, and to a good spot to look out over the water at the towering Torres above us. It was an amazing spot to sit and take pictures!!

Lago Grey

Finally, we drove for an hour or more (we all fell asleep) to Lago Grey- where the winds nearly pushed us all over as we walked along the pebble shore around the lake to get close to the icebergs! It was amazing to see icebergs for the first time and also to see someone paddle boarding in the middle of the lake. From the lake, you can barely see Glacier Grey in the distance- it is crazy that the lake used to be filled with icebergs and even before that, the entire thing was a glacier. It was scary to think whether or not these icebergs will even exist in the future. The backpackers who do the W trail end up walking past Glacier Grey, but otherwise it is a long trip out there.

We made our way back to the hostel, all sleeping in the van. It was an exhausting day but a really exciting one as I saw what most people consider to be the highlight of national parks in Patagonia!! Of course, I wore my Patagonia apparel :)

My trip is ending soon but we have had a blast so far and don't want the vacation to end!

marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

Brief Highlights from Colonials Invasion

I don’t think any of us ever did a post about Colonials Invasion (GW’s own ‘midnight madness’ which signals the beginning of basketball season) that took place during Colonials (Parent’s) Weekend in October, so I figured I would give you a brief rundown since there are 2 videos I wanted to share with you. It took place after our volleyball match versus Fordham which we won easily in 3 games in front of the biggest crowd ever for a volleyball match held in the Smith Center (1,317 people).

My family was in town so we stuck around after my match to watch Colonial Invasion and to show our support of another GW athletic team! At Colonial Invasion, they introduce the men’s and women’s basketball teams and there’s a bunch of entertainment—the First Ladies dance group, Capital Funk (hip hop dance group), Colonial Army, and a slam dunk and three point contest involving the teams and audience members. For me, this was one of my favorite parts: the inflatable DC mascots (Hippo, Big George, Air Screech, G-Wiz, and Air Slapshot) performed a dance routine which was quite entertaining.

Also, here is a video summary of the night that I found:

Feel free to email me with any quaestions: cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie

Final Presentation

I thought I would blog quickly and describe the end of the SIT model, because my study abroad program was so unique in the sense that all of November was a research period for each of us where we could live and research wherever in Chile that we wanted and were basically independent.

Our academic director checked in with us weekly, helping us formulate a more specific idea each time we spoke with her and finally reading over the draft of our 20-30 page paper. It was really useful for me to have her advice, because she worked as a maternity nurse in Chile previous to her job with SIT, and I was able to use her a resource and for explanations of many terms and systems.

For our final grade for a class, which was just the Independent Study Project, we had to turn in the paper along with a work journal. The work journal was a log of each day of our month of November, complete with contacts we made, articles we read and cited in our papers, interviews we had, thoughts on our projects, how we felt about our progress, and how our themes shifted over the month.

Finally, along in this grade was a presentation grade. Like I said previously, we were lucky enough to spend our time at Hotel Arica during presentations. I went on the very last day of presentations (Saturday). Each person presented for a total of 20 minutes in Spanish with a powerpoint presentation followed by a 10 minute question and answer session. My advisor for my project came to see the end of my presentation (in Chilean fashion- she arrived late, halfway through).

Not only was this project a great way to practice writing in Spanish and to practice doing research, it was also a great way to practice my Spanish orally and practice presenting a topic I was seriously interested and invested in!

I'll post soon about Patagonia- we are going on a tour in Torres del Paine tomorrow!
marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

Internal Transferring and Studying Across Schools!!!

They call me the master of transferring and I am still on my game!!! In my freshman year, I switched from the Elliott School of International Affairs to the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. This year I have transferred from Columbian into the GW School of Business.  A few days ago we received a question along the lines of if it was possible to switch from Columbian to Business and I am here to tell you that, and almost any other move, it is completely possible within your first two years.

There are 6 schools here at GW which are as follows: Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Elliott School of International Affairs, School of Media and Public Affairs, School of Engineering and Applied Science, GW School of Business and the School of Public Health and Health Services. A student generally can transfer around easily withing their first two years if the maintain a 3.0 GPA. However, the Elliott School GPA requirement tend to be a bit higher (around a 3.5) and some schools will want you to have taken certain courses before transferring in order to make sure you stay on track to graduate within four years. The process is as simple as filling out the following form http://www.gwu.edu/staticfile/GW/Admissions%20-%20Undergraduate/transferreadmit.pdf , meeting with advisers in both schools and bring the form to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Another thing to note is that it is very easy to study across schools. If you wanted to study Business Administration in the GW School of Business and were say a Sociology major in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, you could complete a Secondary Field of Study in Business Administration so you would not have to transfer to that school. Secondary Fields also exist in the School of Media and Public Affairs (Journalism and Mass Communication), the Elliott School of International Affairs (International Affairs) and any minor in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences is eligible to be completed as a Secondary Field in that discipline.

I hope this answered all your questions about moving around schools and studying across schools, but if not always feel free to e-mail me and I will give you an answer or find you one. To all ED 1 applicants, decisions will be out before you know it here in mid-December.

Peace Love and Hippos,

Brandon
brmoore@gwmail.gwu.edu

End of study abroad program

My program here in Arica, Chile, just ended yesterday and I am surprisingly sad to be leaving the place I've been living in since August. I felt that I really connected with the program director, my host mom, and the city in ways I didn't imagine I would.

We spent the last few nights in a hotel, listening to final presentations of the Independent Study Projects. It was really eye opening to see everyone's work from the past month of November when we were able to be on our own and working on our own interests. The hotel was also amazing- there was a salt water "infinity" pool as well as a chlorinated pool, all next to the ocean. Here's a picture from their website- I literally felt like I was on spring break!! Haha.

I am leaving for my dream vacation today- my friends Emily and Elizabeth and I are flying down to Patagonia!! I'll update you all from there!!
marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa

My Thanksgiving Break

As previously promised, here is my Thanksgiving break in a nutshell. Nothing too interesting, but I figured I would share it with you anyway. Classes ended on Tuesday, which for me consisted of turning in a paper for Social Research Methods and taking the last of my midterm exams (Theories of Personality). I flew home to Wisconsin on late Wednesday afternoon after a layover in Detroit. It was defiantly nice to be home for the first time since August 9.

Thursday: I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with my sister Vickie followed by the Green Bay Packer game versus the Detroit Lions. Obviously, the Packers won, which my family was very happy about (and after this afternoon’s football game the Packers are still undefeated! 12-0!). My grandma and uncle came over to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and my parents made a wonderful and tasty dinner, complete with turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries, biscuits, and much more. That night I was very full and happy. Maybe even a bit too full. And in case you were wondering, our dinner was of course postponed until after the Packer game ended, so that we wouldn’t miss a minute of the action.

Friday: Thursday night Vickie and I did not go bed, since the Black Friday sales began at midnight. We stayed awake, watching the Friends (the tv show) Thanksgiving marathon on Nick at Nite and then headed out to the stores. We shopped, along with all of the other crazy people, from about 12-4:30am. At about 4am, we hit our breaking point and headed home to sleep. After my adventurous morning shopping, I did nothing notable the rest of the day.

Saturday: This was a very laid-back day, as all I did was go to Cheesecake Factory with one of my friends from high school and get a haircut, both of which were long overdue.

Sunday: Flew back to D.C, with a layover in Memphis, which ended up being completely worth it since I had some fabulous barbeque in the airport. After another long day of travel, I was back in my dorm room, caught up with my roommates and shared Thanksgiving stories, unpacked, did a little bit of homework, and went to sleep.

Like I said, nothing exciting, but it was wonderful to have a few days to relax and to not do any school work (even though I really should have gotten a head start on my papers due the few days after break, but whatever). Now it’s time to finish of the semester with my finals starting on Tuesday!

Feel free to email me with any questions: cbgraf@gwmail.gwu.edu

-Christie