I had initially thought that getting everything packed the night before and waking up early the morning of my flight would be the best plan, but now I'm left sitting in bed anxiously reviewing how I plan this trip to go.  The most nerve-racking part of this entire trip is definitely the plane rides over to South America.  I just cannot seem to get comfortable with the idea of being thousands of feet up in the air, crammed into a tiny little box with a bunch of people I do not know!

20,000 British soldiers died in the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The battle would go on to last from July 1^st until November 18^th and at the end, over 1,000,000 men were wounded or had lost their lives fighting over less than 10 km of ground. Going to the locations I had written about in previous papers was a sobering experience. On the way from my parent’s house to the Somme, we stopped by Verdun, where a similarly horrific battle had taken place.

I would like to start off this post by making it clear that before I came to Japan, I had never once experienced an earthquake before. I am from Chicago and I go to school in the Midwest where we rarely ever have earthquakes. I think there has been only one in my area in my entire life and I didn’t even feel it; the only reason I knew it happened was because everyone freaked out over social media about it.

Hello and Good Morning from Vienna!

No more than 3 days in this city and I'm already in love. And what's not to love? Just look at my breakfast below.

So I've never actually written a blog before...and all of the journals I've ever kept are...well let's just say they're all still in progress. But I figure this will be a good experience for me, and I'm so excited to actually finish a journaling escapade for once! 

An Irish Poem for the Italian City

There was a student from Texas
Who drove herself up to Dallas
After a long flight
The first ray of light
Brightened the city of Romulus

Hello everyone! I am Robin Clower, a college senior at Oklahoma State University receiving degrees in Secondary Education: Mathematics and German, as well as an additional major in Mathematics. After graduation, I am planning on being a math teacher who (when my students get unruly) can yell at them in German, but before then I am studying abroad in Berlin. Additionally, I am spending the month before school starts in Germany visiting my family who live here and completing research for my Honors Degree.