Remember your senior year of high school? Touring colleges, trying not to get your hopes up. Retaking the SAT for the tenth time, wondering if you’d get a better score with the ACT. The love/hate relationship with collegeboard.com, and endless trips to the college counselor.

Then, THE WAIT. And running to the mail box every day. Staring at your application status page - pressing F5 over and over (refresh, refresh, refresh!). Until, one day that magical word appears: admitted.

Fast forward to September.
The move-in is over (your mom only broke down once, thank goodness). The awkward, “Hi, I’m going to be living in close quarters!” moment is over with your roomie(s) and classes have begun.

And an unsettling feeling set in. This place isn’t what you thought it would be. You try to love it - really you do - but it isn’t the right fit and you can’t seem to get into a groove. You know you could transfer but *argh!* you thought you were set! That the application insanity was done for good! What do you do? Read More »

Let’s just hope you never have to know how to say this one. Although, from our experiences with guys abroad, this convo is a given.

[Photo courtesy of failblog.org]

So, when an attractive stranger asks me if I want to grab some coffee, all common sense totally flies out the window, and what do I say?

“Sure!” (Insert a little drooling)
And then the worrying begins.

I know, I know, grabbing coffee is totally innocent. Yada yada. But, years of motherly concern, “What time are you going to be back?”, “Be careful when you drink”, have been totally ingrained into my thinking. I mean, I’ve been on the streets at two at night. Alone. In some of the roughest parts of London (yes, I’m a Brit), but those worries don’t stop flying around my head. No matter what. Read More »

Three days ago, I returned from the first ever Rothbury Festival in Rothbury, Michigan – a 5-day musical event featuring an eclectic range of music, from Dave Matthews to Disco Biscuits to Snoop Dogg. I’m exhausted, my feet are calloused & my cheeks are sunburnt (& freckly!), and maybe it was just all the booze, greenery & glow sticks, but my little spirit is renewed.

After spending a night chillaxin’ in Sherwood Forrest, letting my fatigued body sink into a colorful hammock for two and talk for hours with one of my new best friends over cocktails in combustible corn cups, I knew it was time for a change. A huge, life-changing, effortful change. Something about spending the weekend surrounded by happy, empowering, inspirational people (albeit a little dirty & drugged-up) was a huge, magical, sparkly slap in the face that it’s time for me to conquer, one-by-one, all the things I want to in life.

So, without further adieu, here is my list of sweet stuff I wanna learn.

1. How to give a kick-a** massage. I am OBSESSED with massages. I try to con all my boyfriends, friends, (even boy friends!) to give me little shoulder, back or foot massages (perfect after a long day at work…or shopping). However, I am just as inclined to return the favor because I know how ridiculously nice (and/or orgasm-inducing) a massage can be.

2. How to make sweet jewelry. I used to be the baddest b*tch on the block because I could make friendship bracelets with any color of the rainbow out of any type of string. Unfortunately, I haven’t practiced my art for about, oh, 10 years & I think it’s time for me to get back in the game. But, I sure will have a lot of catching up to do. Read More »

So they are going to France. I really hope that in this episode that there is some action. Funny, violent, I don’t care. And I don’t care if it comes from the girls, from French bystanders - just give me something to care about in this hour.

I tune in and the three girls are outside; Seezinz says something about “there’s no way you’re coming into the house already in love with Flav.” Yeah, that’s what I’ve BEEN saying. Seezinz thinks that Black is cocky because she says that she doesn’t have to fight for Flav’s time – but really, she’s just telling the truth. Flav thinks that she’s smokin hot.

Now they’re on a yacht. Cool, fight on the yacht, please. Anything so that I don’t have to watch Flav hook up. Sinceer didn’t wear bathing suit bottoms on the boat; I’m glad that she didn’t jump in bottomless. After water time, Flav asks the girls if he made the right decision about eliminating Thing 2. Please don’t bring her back.

I got a phone call and missed out on how they went from T2 talk on the boat to a soiree. I also can’t believe that I spelled soiree right on the first try. Read More »

Last October I was idly browsing the BBC news online when a bizarre headline caught my eye: “French held over Chad ‘adoptions’”. Clicking on the link I soon found myself reading a very sordid tale indeed.

Nine French citizens were arrested in Chad for attempting to kidnap 103 children from the country. They were part of an organization called Arch de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark)—a group of French 4×4 enthusiasts (yes apparently they do exist) who banned together following the Asian tsunami of December 2004.

In April 2007 the group announced it would try to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur to France.

The BBC found out that approximately 300 European families hoped to adopt one of these children—perhaps paying up to $1.4million dollars to charities.

Zoe’s Ark responded by stating that they were not an adoption agency. They “just wanted to rescue [the orphans] from death”—the children were supposedly from Darfur.

It turned out, however, that nearly all of the children were from Chad with at least one living relative.

Oops. Read More »

I never studied abroad as an undergrad–the programs my school offered always seemed pointless to me. Instead of sending us to a foreign school to meet new people or learn a new language, my college had set up satellite campuses around the globe. I’d have the same teachers, the same peers, even the same dorm life, just transplanted to a new city. And since I was an English major, that new city had to be London, because that’s where they offered the classes I needed.

I thought it would be fun to have a change of scenery for a semester, but I had heard many a tale of study-abroad-gone-useless: “I never went to class, I just got drunk all the time”. “I only hung out with other Americans”. “We lived with other English speakers, so we never even bothered to work on our French”.

So I decided to skip the whole semester abroad experience and go all out–after graduation, I’d go to grad school in another country.

I applied to a few universities, one in Dublin, Ireland, two in London, and one south of London in the seaside town of Brighton. Because of rolling admissions, I heard back from the three UK schools almost immediately–accepted! Yes! Having never been to England, however, I wondered how I could possibly choose. So…I flew to London. For the weekend. In a jet lag-induced haze, I wandered the city, taking photos, visiting campuses. I took a train to Brighton and tried to imagine myself at school there. I made my choice. I bought a London guidebook.

On graduation day, I got another letter in the mail. It was from Ireland, and informed me that I had been accepted to the school in Dublin. My well-laid plans were suddenly de-railed–the masters program in Dublin was exactly what I wanted, and the school had a bit more prestige. At the advice of friends, professors, parents, strangers, whoever…I changed my mind.

I moved to Ireland in the Fall.

When I arrived at Dublin airport on a sunny day in late September, my entire life packed in two suitcases, it was the first time I had ever set foot in Ireland. I knew no one, and my program wasn’t supposed to begin for another few weeks. I was entirely alone…

[I’ll be chronicling some of the best and worst experiences here, so stay tuned!]

“What do you know about Belgium?”, I recently asked a friend.

Looking slightly bemused, she dug into her mental recesses of 10th grade world history and replied, “WWI… no wait WWII… well something with Germany at any rate right? ummm… a city with a weird name– Sprouts?… no… Brussels! And…oh oh oh! Waffles!!!”

She gets full points because lets be honest, unless you are an international affairs geek like myself, most Americans probably couldn’t come up with five facts about this little state if their lives depended on it.

Recent events, however, have catapulted Belgian politics into the front page of international headlines.

Most recently, on Monday February 28th, the Belgian parliament finally came to an agreement after months of deadlock which some feared would split the country in half.

Yes… serious concerns that the country would split in half! Read More »