Far away far away, I want to go far away

For those of you who have talked to me recently about my study abroad plans my first response is "oh yeah, I'm going to spain" which is closely followed by the comment "that's assuming I win the battle of my classes transferring to count for my major." This so called battle has been going on for the last month, as initially none of the Spanish classes I planned to take in Spain were going to count towards my major (which is ridiculous since I'm going to the heart and soul of the Spanish language.) So I have been going back and forth with the head of the Modern and Classical Languages department as to what I could take. As of last week I was actually considering just giving up on Spain and going to some place exotic and random that had business classes to take, however today I won my battle and some. Not only did I get the one class I wanted to count towards my major to count, but also got all of my business classes to also count for my Spanish Linguistics for business settings major (since all the classes I will take are taught in Spanish,) so I get to double dip in classes, AND take a lighter load my senior year. Pretty sure winning this argument meant more to me than getting my acceptance letter yesterday. Having the classes I could potentially take written down on paper makes everything real, and seem tangible. I have a meeting with my study abroad adviser tomorrow to finalize plans etc. Keep you posted until then!

PS these are the courses I can potentially take:
Spain and International Economic Organization
Spanish Models of Organization and Management
Spain and the European Union
Advanced language Usage for Business
and then I have the opportunity to become contracted with a Spanish company and have it count as an Internship for my Spanish intensive International Business major!

Hope, Esperanza, and Reality

The word congratulations is used fairly frequently throughout the day. Congratulations on your graduation. Congratulations on the birth of your son. Congratulations on passing that class that you thought you were going to die in. It is said somtimes with true meaning, and other times said out of necessity. Today the word "congratulations" was said to me as the introduction to a journey I will never forget. I got my official letter of acceptance into the study abroad program here at the University of St. Thomas. Now you may all say, "well Laura you knew you were going to get accepted," however things never quite work out how I planned them to and I'm a fairly cynical person to begin with. Yes I realized I was going to get in, otherwise I wouldn't have started my blog almost a year ahead of time to talk about the whole process, however it would have been more dramatic if I had gotten a letter beginning with "to your dismay" or "we regret to inform you" luckily that's not the one I received.

The First of Many

You may be wondering why I would start my blog a little less than a year before I actually leave to study abroad in Madrid, Spain through IES, and my answer is why not show the whole process leading up to all of the adventure: applying, registering for classes, getting my visa, and of course finding out about my host family! On Thursday the 22nd of April I turned in my entire application to study abroad during the spring of 2011, my junior year. As of now I hope to return to the place I fell in love with almost 4 years ago to the day. I have pursued Spanish as my career of choice as well as international business, and I hope that I gain an infinite amount of experience while abroad. On the right hand side of the blog is a list of things I want to accomplish within my time abroad and a little bit while I'm still here in the states. My goal is to try to accomplish all of these things, so here goes nothing!