huzzah!

I have finally finished my third year at Boston University. I had my third final today in LF 455: the Nineteenth Century French Novel. It FEELS fantastic. I took a nice little bike ride to celebrate being finished. It is the official first night of summer tonight!

It's always nice to have a feeling of completion -an end to a fantastic year. However, the things I always look forward to are the free time for the people I care about and the projects I have put off because of the daily grind and the work demands for classes. But the thing I really look forward to the most about summer: reading the books I really want to. I already have the first three set up and I CANNOT wait. They are:


These have been on my waiting list to read for a long time and I will begin Deutschland tomorrow.

Additionally, I get to have my first "official" training day at my new job tomorrow. I am now employed at a shoe boutique on Newbury for a Spanish shoe company called Camper. I'm pretty excited about it. The company is really cool, I know I will have fun, and I really love the shoes (which is cool because I get free pairs like these!).


Anyways, I hope all of you are enjoying your weekend as I now am. Don't forget to call your mothers tomorrow since its their day and all. Time to celebrate the commencement of summer.

looking ahead.

I have just received an email from a friend in Paris (yes, Alexandra, that's you!) about the French presidential election. I have also been following the debates, candidates and outcomes over the past few weeks. Today was the decision day for the French citizens and it seems that they have chosen reform in the vein of the conservative center over constancy in the vein of a social left woman candidate. Sarkozy has won. I don't know what to think yet because we'll see how his ideas pan out. From what I gather (from what Alex informed me), both candidates expressed too many ideas without rational solutions.

I guess all we can do is look to the future to see if Sarkozy's unemployment/immigration/economic projects will benefit France. I think he will be an interesting new president to watch given his diverse background and hopeful policies.

I leave you with a picture that is awkward (does anyone else think that that could NEVER possibly be his arm?).

testing out new waters.

Well...I have succumbed. I am starting my own blog in order to stay in touch. I want people to experience what I see as it happens. I hope that everyone will comment/post/view to their leisure instead of me sending out mass e-mails to people who all have so many diverse interests.

This will be my way of connecting to everyone while being time zones ahead and on the other side of the globe. I encourage everyone who is interested to post on my entries and send me emails if they are interested in anything they see (or to just say hello!).

For everyone who does not know: I will be going abroad next semester. The program I am participating in is called Semester at Sea. I will be taking classes aboard a ship and travelling around the world stopping in select ports along the way and taking in the local fare. The decision to participate in this program came to me after I learned that I did not receive the Department of State internships I had applied for in Geneva and Marseille. I had planned on the internship counting as my stand-in study abroad experience. Then I found out about this program and I will be departing from the western coast of Mexico on August 27th.

I hope you will follow along with me in my journey around the world. The destinations I will be visiting (depending upon world conditions, as they say) are:

Honolulu, HI
Kobe, Japan
Qingdao, People's Republic of China
Hong Kong, People's Republic of China
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Yangon, Myanmar
Chennai (Madras), India
Port Suez (Adabiya), Egypt
Alexandria, Egypt
Istanbul, Turkey
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Cadiz, Spain

If any of you are interested here is my itinerary plotted out in Google maps (here) I will be posting as regularly as I can throughout the summer and during my Fall semester. Let me know if there is anything you believe I should (must!) include in my posts. I'm already dreaming up ways to fit in everything I want to share with everyone.

Have a lovely weekend all. I'll leave you with a few pictures of the places i'm currently dreaming about.