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!

Weekend in London

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The best part about studying abroad in Europe is the fact that it is cheap, quick, and easy to travel around the rest of the EU. Myself, another girl from my ISA group, and two other friends I’ve made here at UL spent the weekend in London, England! We were only there for a total of 48 hours, but we filled that time with everything touristy possible!

   

London is only a quick hour flight from Shannon Airport and of course due to delays; we arrived in London at 4 am with the intentions of starting our day at 8 am. Our hostel was a quick 15-minute tube ride to the London Eye. We began our morning going up and around the London Eye to see the stunning views of the city. Then we walked to see Westminster Palace and Abbey which both had amazing gothic architecture. The girls and I also took a boat ride down the famous Thames River to see even more of the city and the famous Tower Bridge. Then we made our way to Leicester Square where we ran into a red carpet movie premiere of A Beautiful Boy! We saw Timothee Chalamet and Steve Carell! It’s easy to say that this made our trip.

Day two we began our morning bright and early to catch the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Sad to say we didn’t get to see the Queen, but we were in awe of the palace beauty. After this, we found ourselves a cute coffee shop where we ended up hanging out for a few hours before we made our way to the Tower of London. Let’s just say we were so excited to see the crown jewels! We then ended our trip by seeing a production of the School of Rock, which was awesome. I cannot wait for more weekend trips in the near future!

 

Cliffs of Moher

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It’s sights like these that make you forget how much work you’ll have to do with you get back to campus. Right now, Sarah and I are in the midst of the most stressful time in being abroad. Classes here typically do not have daily work, which sounds nice and all until you reach those later weeks in the semester where everything is due. At the moment, Sarah and I are working on assignments that are worth half or more of our final grade. In classes, you will typically have a paper worth about 50% and then either a presentation or group project or maybe even both. We are taking a total of five classes over here, but only have two exams to take during the two week exam period. So we are looking forward to traveling most of December!

Our weekend excursions with ISA make us forget about all of our school work. These excursions allow us to see the beautiful western country of Ireland. On this excursion, we saw the stunning Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs of Moher are one of the biggest sites to see while visiting Ireland. So a trip to Ireland is not complete until you have seen the famous cliffs!