August 17th: Landed in Austria.
Even the airport was so classy.  We were immediately put on a bus to go to Mariazell for our 4 day orientation. *I thought it was 3 days.  Maybe it was because this was the first glimpse of Europe I had but Mariazell was breathtaking.  Spending 4 days there had its moments of jet lag and forgetting names of the 86th person you introduced yourself to but definitely necessary to prepare us for Vienna.

I am not interested at all in writing very simply on the mundane physical travels that I am now undergoing… I see no reason to rewrite something so many others have already written, and very possibly written much more effectively than I could. I hope that my blog is more a medium of reflection for my own growth and development of perspective. That will be the premise of my writing. I will often disguise it with satire and sarcasm, but beneath will lie serious contemplation.

Hello! My name is Lee and I will be spending the next four months in Nice, France. As of right now, I’m writing from the coast of Maine where I was born and raised. Tomorrow, I board an airplane, and I’m off to France. I put this short video together to introduce myself and to show where I am from. I love the ocean and I am especially looking forward to the Mediterranean Sea! 

After an exploded hard drive killed my old computer and deleted all my old files, I can finally restart this post to announce that I’m officially on my way to Morocco!

4AM ON A SUNDAY

Get back home from a friend’s 21^st birthday celebration. The magic of studying abroad is knowing how to balance social, academic, and night life, am I right?

Looking past the language barrier is the one thing I would advise to anyone wanting to study abroad. The idea of hopping on a plane by yourself and flying to another country that may not speak your language can be a little daunting. And yes, I understand that a large amount of people from around the world can speak English, but that is not the point. It is the idea of facing the unknown. The “what if?” scenario. That's the whole point of studying abroad, right?

My flight for Spain leaves in approximately eight days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-two minutes, and I'm not at all ready.

Okay, so maybe that's sort of an exaggeration. I am ready. I mean I have my visa, my phone plan, all my information from IES Abroad, I've gone shopping for all my necessary travel items (cough cough peanut butter cough cough) but at the same time I still feel so unprepared to spend a semseter in a foreign country.

As an American, I consider myself lucky. I live in a nation that holds the principles of democracy at the highest possible regard. As a political science and public policy major, I have studied the foundations of the American government from a critical perspective and analyzed the works of the founding fathers in the respective historical context. Before arriving in South Africa, I was privileged to work on Capitol Hill and see my democracy in action.