To be or not to be busy

Ok so, I know it has been really long since I last updated my blog – sorry! But remember: no news are good news, and I’ve just been so busy ever since classes began at UGA (University of Georgia). As a GRSP student I am non-degree seeking which means I can basically take whatever classes I want to as long as I fulfill the requirements of having between 12 and 18 credit hours (a measurement for how many classes you take and how big the workload is). Being who I am my schedule is a mixture of classes that has nothing to do with each other but that I really enjoy. The classes I take are: Calculus II (math), classical ballet, contemporary dance, astronomy, advanced Chinese and music business. The classes are all super interesting but require a lot of work too. Some of the classes (like math, Chinese and astronomy) have a lot of homework and others (like contemporary dance) require a lot of effort when attending class – but as long as it is interesting it doesn’t bother me :) In addition to my classes I’ve joined a break-dance club and the university radio station (WUOG) which leaves me with about 10 hours of dancing a week!

    During the weekends I’ve been kept busy too. One weekend I went to Jekyll Island (at the cost of Georgia close to Florida) to meet with all the other 46 GRSP students who study at different universities within the state of Georgia. Last weekend I went to a small festival here in Athens (the university city) where Wiz Khalifa was the headliner. AND then we had our first home game (football game)!!!!! There are some things you have to know in order to understand what a football weekend is like: everyone lives for the university football here. Not just the students at the university but all the citizens of Georgia follow the university football games and most of them cheer for the UGA team! Now that you know that you might believe me when I say that the population of Athens almost doubles on game days. People arrive here early in the morning and set up tents and barbeques to tailgate before the game, and some even bring televisions to watch the game outside the stadium if they don’t have tickets. And also: people dress up for game days. Campus is filled with boys in suit and tie and girls wearing pretty dresses and lip stick – all in black, white and red which are the UGA colors. By the time of kickoff about 92.000 people have entered the Sanford Stadium and most of them (the UGA fans) are singing/screaming along to the UGA football chants. The school we played was University of South Carolina whom we have lost to the last couple of years but that fact didn’t make the loyalty to the UGA team faint – the atmosphere was absolutely amazing. By half time the score was 24-24 and the game was super nerve-wrecking which really just made the feeling of victory even better when we won the game! GO DAWGS! I can’t wait till the next game :D

For those of you who don’t really know what GRSP is you might want to watch this little video I’ve made in which I explain what the scholarship is about and what I’m doing here. I apologize for the fact that I’m speaking in Danish, but I originally made the video for my Rotary Club back in Denmark. Anyway, you might still want to watch it even though you might not understand what I’m saying, cause it also shows some video clips from the football game and my break dance club etc.  Enjoy :D

C ya’ll!

International Orientation at UGA

Hi there!


300 other foreigners: that’s how many international students we’ve been at UGA (University of Georgia) during this orientation week! People come from all over the world to spend a semester, a year or even four years studying everything from English and business to physics here in the town of the bulldogs: Athens.

    And when I write the town of the bulldogs, I really mean it! UGA’s mascot is a special bred bulldog, the UGA students call themselves “dawgs”, almost every restaurant in town is decorated with pictures of the famous bulldog and slogans as “let the big dawg eat”.  Almost all shops (including the local Walmart!!!!) sell a variety of bulldog merchandise which includes everything from clothes, underwear and baby clothing to mats for your car, bedding and plates. The town lives for this university and the whole university spirit is much stronger than anything I’ve ever heard of. What can really gather all the dawgs is when the university’s (American) football team plays home games at the university’s stadium, Sanford Stadium, that has seats for 92.000 people and that hosted some of the soccer games when the Olympics where held in Atlanta in 1996. I can’t emphasize enough how excited I am to become a part of this “dawg spirit” and how excited I am to feel the rush of about 35.000 other students wandering around on campus.

So far, however, I’ve “only” met the about 300 other international students who’ve decided to come to UGA. During this past week we’ve been introduced to life on campus, activities on campus, the American health insurance system, downtown Atlanta, the local Walmart, the local cinema, the best restaurants and cafés in town (including Ben and Jerry’s which is located disturbingly close to campus), Sandy Creek Park, the rules of American football and a lot of other stuff relevant to our life at UGA. The (silly) video below shows some of what I've been doing this week (sorry for the bad quality!). 

    

The thing I’m most excited about is the very active musical scene in Atlanta. The town has several music venues for upcoming bands and artist and walking around downtown this Saturday evening I heard live music coming from not just one place but several bars, clubs and restaurants on the same street! Unfortunately, this week has been more about getting practical things done than enjoying the creative environment.

    Getting ready for classes to begin on the 12^th of august isn’t as easy as I could have wished for. I’ve been doing a lot of paperwork concerning my immigration status and my legal presence and waiting for me are things like: opening an American bank account, getting my last immunizations, signing up for and taking several placement tests, signing up for classes and making my schedule fit, signing up for health insurance, signing up for meal plan, applying for parking permit, moving into my dorm room… And probably 100 other things that I haven’t even been thinking of yet! Even so, I’m still SO happy to be here and to have met the other international students and the lovely International Student Life staff that has taken care of us during this week.

Tomorrow I’m going back to my host family in Griffin for a few days before I go back to Athens to actually move in together with my roommate at UGA! I CAN’T WAIT!

Looove

P.S. This week I’ve been sharing a room with a really nice girl from Japan named Ayaka, and we’ve had the greatest time listening to Tokyo Incidents (one of my favorite Japanese bands) and eating Japanese snacks :D

Studying abroad again

I’ve decided to reopen my blog as I have once again left Denmark to study abroad. This time I’ve headed to Georgia, USA, where I am to attend University of Georgia (UGA). Once again it is Rotary whom I can thank for the opportunity to study in a foreign country. The program I’m attending is called Georgia Rotary Student Program (GRSP) and is a program where students from all over the world can achieve a scholarship from a Rotary Club in Georgia that covers a year of university, housing, food, books and a host family for holidays in the state of Georgia. As you can see, GRSP is not an exchange program but a scholarship offered solely in Georgia but to people from all over the world. If you are interested, you can read more about the program at www.grsp.org .

    I left my family and friends in Denmark on the 26^th of July (this Wednesday) to fly to NYC where I’ve spent two nights on a YMCA (hostel). It is not very often I get to visit NYC so I decided to spend some days there even though my final destination was Atlanta, Georgia.

    It all started out really well with my flight to Keflavik, Iceland, but once I got on my connecting flight to JFK, New York, I faced my first challenge: I got the seat next to a baby… Luckily for me there was a man, who was eager to change his own seat for an aisle seat (which mine was). And believe me: he didn’t have to ask twice! So, my flight to NYC went fine as well, and the only embarrassing thing was, that I cried when watching Les Miserable which the passengers next to me might have found weird (they did not watch the same movie) :D

I had some really great days in New York City and everyone was so nice to me. Two kind men helped me carry my stuff to the Harlmen YMCA where I stayed, and although my room was very small it was good enough for me (I didn’t spend much time in my room anyway).

    Thursday I started off by going to a strech and placement class in lower Manhatten on Broadway. The teacher was really nice and the technique she taught was a special technique called Klein Technique™ which has been developed by a dancer from NYC called Susan Klein. After class I hurried to Bryant Park where musical performers from Broadway held a free concert/show to promote some of the (upcoming) musicals. My favorite was the teaser for Avenue Q – especially the song “Everyone’s a little bit racist” was really funny. I found it on YouTube if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM

In the afternoon I went shopping in SoHo shopping district which I REALLY enjoyed. I’m glad I don’t live there though – that would definitely ruin me! The only really cheap thing I got was when I got a manicure for just 9$!!! I’ve never gotten a manicure before, but if it is that cheap all over America I’m gonna do it again for sure. Another highlight was when what turned out to be a stylist for Rag & Bone complimented my buffalo shoes (and they got a lot of comments in the streets of NYC) :D At the end of the day I was so exhausted from shopping that I didn’t have the energy to go to the city, so I just returned to YMCA and got some sleep which I also needed, as I had to wake up at 5 am the following morning.

    The reason why I had to get up that early was because I wanted to go to Central Park to see Selena Gomez perform live at Good Morning America. I’m not a big Selena fan but she actually did pretty well, and even though it was very obvious that I was not at a concert but at a television show it was still worth waking up early for. The last thing I got to do before leaving NYC was to go to the High Line in the Meatpacking District which is a walking path that goes above the streets and that is planted up with trees and pretty flowers.

Now, I’m sitting at a veranda in front of my new host parents’ house (which is really American!) trying to get used to the humid weather. When Yvonne and Robert picked me up Saturday before noon I had had a horrible flight from La Guardia Airport in New York to Atlanta. Originally I was to arrive in Atlanta Friday evening but the aircraft had some technical issues that caused an 8 hours delay! No wonder I missed my connecting flight in Cleveland… Anyway, the Airline paid for a room at a very nice hotel in Cleveland that I got to sleep at for 3 hours (only!) during Friday night.

Robert and Yvonne are both VERY nice and the first thing they did was to take me to a really American restaurant to get some lunch :) They really do show the southern hospitality that the southern states are known for! This afternoon I’m going to their daughter’s house (that has a swimming pool!) where we are going to barbeque tonight :)

Below is a little (silly) video showing some of the stuff i did in NYC :) 

   

Out of Taipei

Time has gone by, and so has experiences. During the last month I’ve been doing a lot of stuff out of Taipei – a city I really love.

It began with a big Chinese test I chose to take. I originally just wanted to do the test in Taipei, but apparently a lot of foreigners had been thinking the same thought as I, because when I wanted to sign up for the test there were no more seats in Taipei. It ended up with that only one other exchange student and I signed up for the test, as we had to go to another city about 3 hours out of Taipei to take it.

    But not only getting to the test was a challenge – so was the test itself, as we were crazy enough not to take the beginner but the learner level. It took a lot of studying by myself before I felt prepared for the test that is designed for test takers who have acquired a vocabulary base of 1500 words – a lot when it comes to remembering the strokes in traditional Chinese characters. Finally feeling okay prepared for the test I promised myself that I would not get disappointed if I failed, but that I would just give the test a shot.

    And I’m glad I did. Not only because I passed and now have a paper that proves my Chinese abilities (yay!), but also because I had a really nice trip to another part of Taiwan, with the other inbound exchange student, an upcoming Taiwanese outbound student, and his family.

    The test took place in Taichung (literally Central Taiwan), which is the third biggest city in Taiwan with a population of about 2.6 million people. The friendly family brought us to a science museum as well as a big night marked, and I really had a great time experiencing a place, that without being as crowded as Taipei still was a big city.

Video taken at a night marked in Taichung

The next time I went out of Taipei I did not head for another million city but for my teacher (in practice)’s hometown on the countryside. I went together with the two other exchange students from my school and going to the countryside definitely was a big change for the three of us who after about 8 moths in Taipei had become real “city ladies”. This was obvious to tell when we nervous informed our teacher that she was walking in the middle of the road, where after she laughing said, that it was okay here, as cars seldom were seen.

Jane, Chelsea and me having fun at a the famous "flying cow farm"

Me, Chelsea, Jane and our "teacher" Fiona in her home town

The last time out of Taipei for me so far was last weekend when I went on a bus trip arranged by my Rotary district. It took us to southern Taiwan where we got to see beautiful nature as well as we got to go swimming at the beach – something we all enjoyed as there are no beaches and almost no swimming pools in Taipei.

 In the beautiful mountain forests of Taiwan  

Finally playing on the beach! (covered in a nice factor 40!!!)

Even though I’ve enjoyed every minute of my many trips I still have to admit, that I would not prefer those places for Taipei. Taipei is the city I love.

Julia