November 9-11

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My dad came to Dublin, Ireland to visit me during the second weekend of November. We stayed in Dublin for the weekend but I brought him to Limerick to show him around the city. We went to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. Guinness has a rich history. We took a self-guided tour of the storehouse and it was an interesting tour because we were able to see how the beer was made. It was a short weekend but I enjoyed the visit from my dad. I had a fun time showing him around Limerick.

 

2 Birthdays 🎂🎉

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On October 30th, I turned 21 and two weeks later my good friend Rachel turned 20! My friends and I celebrated my birthday by ordering out food and hanging out at my house. It was relaxing to spend time with friends. At the end of the night, I received my care package from my parents which made it even better because I wasn’t expecting it to come until later in the week. I Skyped with my niece, sister, and brother-in-law before I went to bed so my birthday was pretty amazing. We celebrated my friend Rachel’s birthday by going out to one the university’s pub(Scholars) on campus. It was relaxing to talk with her and see how her day went. Rachel is a sophomore in college and I met her through one of the education modules I am taking at the university. I feel so blessed to have made so many new friends over here during my experience. Definitely recommend study abroad to anyone who is interested because you have the opportunity to meet many new people.

 

Halloween

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Sarah’s Blog:

Our excursions for our study abroad program wrapped up at the end of November so I have had some free time to spend time with my friends. Many events have happened within the past month and Halloween was one big event. Halloween came from Ireland which is really interesting. My friends and I celebrated the holiday by dressing up and going out to the university’s pub. The pub we went to is called Stables and every Friday there is a DJ inside and outside. It is a great time to spend with your friends and have a blast. Every Friday is International Night hosted by the International Society which is really awesome so you are able to meet me other study abroad students. Also, we went to a haunted house to celebrate the spooky season.

 

It’s all Greek to me

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Hello everyone! In this post I’ll be talking a little bit about the language barrier ! 
The College we are attending is an American College. This means that American tax payers help pay for costs at the college. This does not mean that everyone in attendance is American. The student population is about 30 percent study abroad students from around the world. I would estimate that 90 percent of the study abroad students are American. This is a large chunk of the student body! However the larger part of the students are all Greek as well as all of the staff. Classes are all taught in English, and teachers require Greek students to ask and respond in English. This is to include all students in the learning. Understanding accents is still a challenge, but gets easier with time!
The language barrier in Greece for an English speaker is not as hard as we expected it to be. Public transportation is basic, many store signs are in English and many Greeks speak English. If they do not, Greeks (in general) are extremely accommodating of English speakers. We were told that Greeks have a “culture of hospitality” meaning they want outsiders to feel as comfortable as possible. I believe the trickiest thing to get down is grocery shopping. Almost all of the products in stores are labeled in Greek, and some products that are common to me at home cannot be found or are very expensive. But this is fun to try and figure out!

Hello From Greece!

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Hello everyone! It’s been about 2 months since we’ve been living in Athens, and we feel a little bad about not posting yet! We thought it’d be good to talk about the beginning of our time here anyways! I’m (Ella) gonna be talking about the first couple of weeks and initial beginning of school.
Naturally we both had lots of ideas of how everything would happen but we probably had the same amount of “but I really have no idea how it’s gonna happen”s as well. I had thought a lot about going to Europe, but less about how we would actually start our time at Deree, The American College of Greece. We met some fellow students at the airport after our 15 hour travel day, and were picked up by our program director. The study abroad provider helped transportation, helped with our bagging and was overall a huge help being with us in our first couple hours in a completely new country.
We were dropped off at our housing, which is composed of all study abroad students from around the world, mostly the US. We didn’t have time to unpack one bag before orientation and introductions began. 
College in America is the same as college in Greece, in almost all respects. The school wants to set you up for success and they made this clear! We went to mixers, orientations, campus activity fairs, met important people and went on neighborhood and school tours all within 2 days of arriving. The school and students equipped us with everything we would need to know how to succeed.

The scariest part was over, and in the end wasn’t scary at all study abroad students who we were now living with were all on the same boat. We were very excited to see how everything would happen and excited for our semester to begin!