Um, so apparently I fail at properly using this website/attending this course/reading emails. This, my introductory blog post, should have been completed and posted some time ago, however, better late than never so here I go. I am Jacob.I am a 20 year old junior in the Gallatin school studying entertainment journalism and creative writing. I drink excessive amounts of Diet Coke. I expect this to one day result in some rare disease and/or disorder. I fix my hair approximately 10,000 times a day. I like things that sparkle and shineI sometimes forget which events have happened in my real life and which have happened on TV. I am living the next few months of my life in London. Whenever people ask me the inevitable question of “what’s your major?” I always have the choice of awkwardly fumbling through my little shpiel about Gallatin, and individualized study and blah blah blah or sort of fibbing and saying that I’m majoring in either writing or journalism. Wanting to be accurate/honest, I tend to go for the first option which is kind of a conversation killer a lot of the time. The explanation is confusing and weird and I only pray that somehow I can clearly convey what I have been doing with the past four years of my life once I am faced with the unenviable task of impressing potential employers. NYC partygoers tend to perk up, though, when I tell that, right now, I am focusing on tabloid/celebrity journalism. In New York, I interned at OK! Magazine, which was one of the most truly amazing experiences of my life. I had heard so many horror stories about interns tasked with slave labor and hellish Miranda Priestley-style bosses, that I was nervous about my fate at OK!, but I ended up not only vibing with my co-workers but getting to do genuincly fun and interesting work, even (gasp) getting to write, and rub elbows with big name celebs at movie premieres and red carpets. Basically my dream come true. I only focus so much on this internship because it is a huge focus of where I am right now in my mid-academic life. I hope to continue to grow in this field when I intern for the Daily Express in London. So that is where I am at right now in a nutshell. Dreaming of red carpets, and one day maybe actually making some money doing something I like.  Stay tuned for post #2.

xoxo

JGH

The entrance to my buildingPossible reasons I am behind on this blog:

1. I was homeless until a few days ago, and now finally have internet

2. I’ve already forgotten how to express myself in English

3. I spilled red wine all over my keyboard

4. I got swine flu (I knew I should have listened to NYU and brought protective masks and gloves…)

I leave it to you to decide which (if any!) of those is true, but in any event, my apologies! Here’s a bit about me and why I’m in Paris:

I’m Aniella, I’m a junior at Gallatin, and my concentration is “Writing About Art, Writing As Art.” It was a happy day for me when Gallatin declared that undergrads could do minors, as French has been a fairly constant thread in my life and I’ve never been sure how to incorporate it into my concentration. I spent two summers living in France in high school, the first time studying Art History and French, and the second time living with a family in Montpellier.

My background in music (piano and voice) seems linked to my passion for language: learning the nuances of sound, intonation, and meaning in French feels very much like learning another instrument to me. My interest in cultural and artistic criticism (the “writing about art” portion), was born, in part, out of my earlier visits to France. I was never a journal-keeper, but I found I couldn’t help but scribble down my observations on the people I saw in the street, the particulars of my home-stay family and their house, and the experience of living in a foreign language.

These two loves—language study and critical writing—have led me back to France. Since my reasons for coming to Paris are tied into my studies at Gallatin, I feel a sense of focus here that I didn’t have in high school. Then, France represented adventure, new ways of socializing, and exposure that I felt was missing at my small private high school. Now, having settled in to a very rich and stimulating life in New York, I don’t need quite the same things out of my time abroad. In these three months, my hope is to get to know Paris more intimately, to learn the fine details of how people live, eat, interact, and speak, and to examine my observations through writing. In the long run, I’d also like to master the language enough to do creative writing (a genre unheard of France, I’m learning!) and poetry in French, or at least to translate other writers’ works.

I am keeping my own blog as a way to keep writing (and keep my family and friends happy back home!), which I will sometimes incorporate into my entries here. I’m excited to see how the readings we do, and all of your observations, relate (or possibly differ) from my experience in Paris. The first two weeks have been a bit of a blur here, and I’m guessing it’s the same elsewhere, so I hope everyone is starting to feel more settled and excited for the semester ahead!

"Chi sei tu?"

"Mi chiamo Sharon."

"Che fai?"

"Studio bambino psicologia e dramma e pre-medicina."

"Quanti anni hai?"

"Ho 20 anni."

"Di dove sei?"

"....."

The dreaded question, "Where are you from?" You would think that after two years of college life, I would be more prepared to answer this question that has plagued me since Welcome Week of freshman year. And still, with each new person who asks me the inevitable, I still have yet to come up with a brilliant response that properly explains my situation. Along with my seemingly ambiguous concentration in Gallatin (something to do with child development and drama, maybe"drama therapy," but I'm on the pre-med track, if the above dialogue didn't compute...), where I call home is also a bit ambiguous. I'm tempted to leave it at "I'm not from anywhere at all. I'm actually a modern day nomad. In fact, I have no home." But how unsatisfying is that? So now that I am at the risk of sounding quite long-winded, I shall quell your curiosity and explain why I consider myself a nomad.

My dad has been in the US Army for the last 23 years, cementing my life as a military brat from birth. Not quite as fascinating as I was making it out to be, but a good conversation starter. Of course that answer begs the question, "So where have you lived?" Born in Georgia (USA, not the country), I've lived in South Korea, New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington (state), Germany, and Virginia, ranging anywhere from 6 months up to 3 years. After graduating high school in Virginia, I moved up to NYC where I could possibly start considering as "home"... The day after I graduated, my parents actually moved again to South Korea and right before my sophomore year, they moved to Hawaii where they are currently (probably for another year or so). Hence, my difficulty in stating exactly where "home" is.

Deciding to study abroad during college was easy. Ever since I had heard about "study abroad," I knew that my first semester junior year was settled; I would be somewhere out of the country. Honestly, I couldn't imagine being in one place for a whole four years! (I become a bit antsy to move on at about 1 1/2 to 2 years... what I affectionately call "the nomad itch.")

So why Florence? Aside from all the fantastic stories I had always heard about Italy and my love of Europe and its culture (Germany was awesome and I never was able to explore Italy at all), the ultimate decision actually hinged on the classes. For the interests I had, no other site offered courses that I really felt compelled to take. This was before I decided to go pre-med... Now there's a whole mid-college crisis I won't get into right now...But now having been here for 3 weeks, I must say, I am quite happy with what may be my last real semester of "fun and freedom" before returning to NYU to tackle all those pre-med req's that I'm way behind on.I'm definitely grateful for the chance to satisfy my itch here in Europe and perhaps to contemplate a little more about how I really feel about my nomadic existence. Hopefully, this blog will allow some of those musings to come forth in writing. Til next time, Ciao!

Parque de Madrid: Es el Parque de Madrid Hola amigos! My name is Meena and I am currently studying at the NYU campus in Madrid, Spain! I am a third-year senior at Gallatin (IE. I took a bunch of AP classes in high school so I’ll end up having enough credits to graduate in the spring—at the end of three total years). I was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington DC. For a year during my toddlerhood I lived in the Dominican Republic but, other than that, I had a typical suburban upbringing until I came to New York for college. I chose NYU as a way to break out of the same-old high school routine going to a state school would have ensured opting, instead, to go in search of something new and exciting in the big city. Coming to Gallatin, I ‘pitched’ my concentration to the office of admissions as “the study of people”—arguing that while generally viewed as two completely separate entities, psychology and theatre were really just two sides of the same idea. I went on to say that while, conventionally, the former is thought to explore people from within while the latter interprets them from without, both able to be seen in light of the other—calling this combination the “study of people.” In the time I have spent at NYU, I think I have added communication to the aforementioned combo to create, what I hope will be, an interesting major which, if nothing else, will function as a pre-law major. Much like my decision to go to New York, I think a lot of my decision to study abroad came from a need for change. I want to study people—though, seeing as there are people everywhere, that didn’t narrow down my options. I think knowing Spanish is a strong asset; that, coupled with my dabbling in high school Spanish, led me to my decision to study in Madrid. Seeing as how I’ve been out of practice for four years, I feel that my Spanish is particularly lacking; as such, I am taking the Elementary Spanish Intensive as well as a class about the global economy. I may also add a class about theatre that I found out about at orientation. Additionally, we are participating in cultural activities for two more credits. Through these classes as well as my extracurricular life as a Madrileno, I want to gain a better command over the Spanish language as well as learn how people and their ways of life differ from the ones I am familiar with back home

Paris MeHi everyone, I'm John, nice to meet all of you.

I believe I'm the fourth person here from Paris, and I've had the chance to meet Hillary and Sam in person - I'm sure Dana and I have passed each other on the stairs but I don't believe we've actually met yet. Becca: hey! I forgot you were going to be in Berlin - that's awesome! We should meet later and hang out - Peer Educators fo' life yo!

Okay, having got that out of the way: I'm a junior in Gallatin. My main departments are French, Comp. Lit. and Classics, though I've taken a smattering of other things. My academic interest is centered on the relationship between a medium of communication and the message attempting to be communicated: if you write a narrative as a play or short story or a poem, how does that alter the narrative itself? And should you something from Latin to English or French, what can get lost in the message or appear that wasn't originally intended? And how do cultural factors influence our understanding of a character, or a plot development, or a phrase? These are some of the things I like to think about.

I've been in Paris for over 2 weeks now, and it's been a bit of a rough start. I found it super easy to move to New York from the mid-west entering college, so I (in hindsight, naively) thought that I had a innate knack for acclimating to big cities; in short, I was not expecting much in the way of culture shock. Navigating the city, speaking French all day, not having convenient internet access: these are just a few of the things that I have found much more difficult than I had anticipated. It's exhausting to think in another language for more than the length of your average class period - even 45 minuted can be exhausting, and now it's all day long. When I get to speak English, it's like this enormous weight off my shoulders. I don't like being that American, but it's just so nice to get to just think and speak and not have to translate in my head.

Of course as everyone's said, the food is fantastic. The buildings and views are beautiful, and contrary to all stereotypes, I have found the French to be abundantly patient and friendly. It's just truly amazing to me: I think we all try to be sympathetic to the plights of immigrants in the united states, but until you've lived somewhere where your second language is everyone else's first and vice-versa, you don't really get it (or at least I didn't.) I definitely have it much better than a lot of people new to a country: I don't have to find my own housing, and I actually have a fairly good grasp of the language, I have no difficulty reading signs or understanding what's going on around me, and I have some income from a work environment in (mostly) my native language which I had secured before I arrived. That's a huge leg up from so many people. But the loneliness, the isolation, the borderline psychological trauma of realizing that if you were in really bad trouble, there's no guarantee you could find someone to explain your problem to - there's this belief that everyone in France speaks in English, and while there is definitely a significant portion that speak some, most that I've encountered are far from fluent and there's still plenty that don't speak or understand any. They still try to help you anyway, which is very encouraging, but I just can't even fathom how I would go about doing this somewhere where English wasn't common and I didn't have a good base of people there to support me.

Kudos to all of you for deciding to study abroad, and I'm very curious to see where the class will go from here. Au revoir, John Q

First days in Paris: Algerian pastries from Bague de KenzaI arrived on Tuesday, and I’ve eaten a croissant almost every morning since then. I think you can imagine where I’m studying. I’m Dana, and I’m a junior in Gallatin. I can’t remember when I decided to study abroad in Paris, but I’ve been a Francophile since around the sixth grade, when I started studying French in school, and my infatuation with the French language and culture has only increased since then: I went through an intense French existentialism phase in high school, and about a year or two ago, I fell madly in love with Jean-Luc Godard. Now, I hope to see Paris the way the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague saw it. My concentration focuses on 20th and 21st century art, literature, cinema, and poetry; as so many friends and relatives have reminded me, Paris is the perfect place for all that. Really, though, I’m here for the food. A friend joined me for dinner two nights ago, and we went out and bought fresh tomatoes and garlic from the produce market, fresh ravioli from the pasta store, and fresh shrimp from the poissonerie (all of whom we had to rinse, de-shell, de-vein, and behead—it was a miniature French Revolution in my kitchen). On the street, Parisians walk around holding a baguette or three, sometimes with the top crust already bitten off (it’s not just a cliché!). Nobody eats on their way to or from anywhere. And many of the stores here close for a few hours at lunch time, so everyone can enjoy a relaxed meal. In New York and in central New Jersey, where I grew up, it’s so uncommon to take a few hours off to sit down and have lunch, to really savor the food. It’s a nice change, coming here. I’ve been trying to remember how to speak French, and for the most part I’ve been doing okay, although I couldn’t quite understand the crazy man on the métro yesterday, who smelled like liquor and sweat and kept asking me about discothèques and whether someone else was “mon mec” (“my boyfriend”). My classes will all be in French as well, though I’m not sure yet what I’ll be taking—hopefully I’ll be studying French cinema, theatre, literature, and art history at school, and I’ll learn a bit about French wine, cheese, and the art of being a flâneur on my own, as I wander around the city and settle in.

Hello Everybody,My name is Eli Wilkins-Malloy. I’m a junior, from Berkeley, CA, studying Latin American Studies in CAS. Since NYU has a program here in Buenos Aires, and I’ve always wanted to study in Latin America, it seemed like a good fit for me to spend my junior year abroad in Argentina. My classes here in BA are awesome. I’m only taking three (not including this class) and they’re all taught in Spanish: The Language of Buenos Aires, Argentine history and culture, and Borges and Argentine Literature. Another huge plus is that I don’t have classes on Thursday or Friday, on which days I’ll be interning for a very interesting organization called Fundacion Pro Vivienda Social that I found through NYU that has a micro-credit lending program for members of impoverished and lower income communities to have easier access to both obtaining and maintaining a home.

I’ve been keeping a journal here, and one of the first things I wrote about/asked myself about was what my expectations were for my abroad experience. Here’s something I wrote in the airport, waiting for my plane to Buenos Aires: “This is an incredible time in my life, as I’m about to go on what can be described as nothing less than a journey. I will aim to be as open as possible, soaking everything in, from the extreme to the mundane. I’m eagerly looking forward to the vast amount and incredible range of people I will meet and relationships I’m going to make, both lasting and random daily encounters. In short, I hope to embrace the spontaneous, because that is really my only expectation that I can control.” To add to that a bit, I think one of my other huge expectations is to really achieve a certain level of fluency in my Spanish. I’ve spent some time in Central America and taken many Spanish classes, so I’m definitely able to converse and get around, but I want to really be able to socialize and think in Spanish. Additionally, I think that this process of living in Argentina will not only allow me to learn and live a different culture and lifestyle, but will in turn strengthen my understanding of my own identity and background.

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“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Though completely and totally out of context, this opening line to the famed classic is incredibly applicable to my decision to travel abroad. My father told me, in the summer before going away to school, that one of his biggest regrets from college was not studying abroad. I told him not to worry, that I was certainly planning on it. Coming to Prague, however, was a relatively unplanned event. I wanted to study abroad this specific semester. I wanted somewhere beautiful, culturally engaging, and not too stuffy to have fun. I wanted somewhere cheaper than Western Europe. I got everything I wanted in coming to Prague thus far.

My pretense, of course, you know in those little essays we had to write in our applications to come abroad, was that I was coming because my concentration materials were experiencing a dearth of Eastern European influences, and I wanted to learn about Slavic mythology and folklore by coming here. My concentration is myths and morals in modern performative media, basically looking at how the American moral consciousness is developed through the tales that we tell via the mediums of film, television and radio.

And, though admittedly I’ve learned more about drinking and dancing all night than about the history and culture of Czech people, I’ve already picked up a few great tales about Prague and her people. On top of Vysehrad, one of the oldest sites of castle and church in the city, next to the proud gothic towers of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, there stands a statue of Premysl and Lebuse.

Premysl and Lebuse are the supposed founders of Prague. Lebuse was the third daughter of Krok, son of Ur-father Czech, after whom these lands are named. Krok had no male heirs and, seeing as her sisters were a witch and a crazy, Lebuse was elected to lead the Czech people after her father’s death. When it became apparent that her womanly ways and prophetic powers were making the people uncomfortable, she decided to get herself a husband who would rule beside her as king. She sent out a horse and determined to marry the man who returned on it. It turned out to be a peasant ploughman named Premysl, who ruled with her thereafter and gained greatness for the Czech people. One night soon after they were married, the prophetic spirit seized Lebuse and, rushing to the top of the hill upon which Prague Castle now stands, she proclaimed to the heavens, “I see a great city whose fame will touch the stars!” (Demetz 4-5)

So that’s what I’m about. I’m spending the next few months soaking up interesting stories, ancient and new, real and possibly real in some sort of way, hopefully one of which will be my own.

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I was born in Needham Massachusetts and lived there until I was three. I then moved to Teaneck New Jersey, where I have lived ever since. I am a Junior at New York University in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and was just the most recent Senator for the Gallatin School. In Gallatin, my concentration is entrepreneurship – literally the study of organizations, hBuenos Aires Highlights: Highlightssual definition and can be looked at in many ways. First of all, it is the combination of the three fields, business, psychology. and computers – that interests me the most. Second, the three fields lend themselves to what I eventually would like to do in life, which is run my own business. Third, if you put a Gallatin spin on my concentration it can be called how one does business, how one communicates and trusts those they work with, and how one uses technology to get an advantage in the work place.

This semester I am studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here, I will concentrate on learning Spanish. To facilitate this, I will live with a host family so I can truly immerse myself in Argentinian culture. Studying here ties into my concentration by being a great business asset and resume builder, as well as an important component of my education. I feel it is important to be fluent in another language no matter what profession one goes into. Spanish, particularly, will be a very important skill to have because by being able to communicate with others in their native tongue, I will be able to open doors that people who only speak English will not be able to utilize.

I am taking four classes while I am in Buenos Aires. I am taking Creative Writing, Reporting Buenos Aires, Spanish for Advanced Beginners, and The Art of Travel. All the classes are centered around Buenos Aires itself whether it be its language, culture, or how to write and talk about it. My hope is to be fluent in Spanish before I leave, but that is very improbable. However, combining living with a family and taking classes centered around the culture of Buenos Aires, I hope to become fluent in the culture of Buenos Aires. I want to understand a Porteno (Someone who lives in Buenos Aires) at his or her core. To be in their shoes, as one might say. I will let you know how my goal progresses as you continue to read my blog.

Hallo und guten tag aus Kreuzberg, Berlin! A little about myself: my name is Rebecca Shapey. I’m a lifeguard and I love to swim. I’ve been drawing and painting all my life and always carry a sketchbook. The last leisure book I read was Geek Love and it was horrifying, fascinating, and amazing. I was born and raised in Northern New Jersey (very different from the South, I promise) and have spent short periods of time abroad in Paris and Switzerland. I’m a first semester junior with a concentration in Language and Communication. As we know, there is always a back-story behind every concentration. I also would like to introduce you to languages (lowercase l) and Language (capital L), the difference between them forming the core of my concentration. The studies of written and spoken language structures, the systematic ways in which sounds and writing symbols are combined, and the ways these symbols form a coherent system of comprehension and production is generally called Linguistics. To my knowledge, it can also be split into several even more specific categories: neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics. This leads us straight into interdisciplinary, individualized fields of study. That is how I define Language, capital-L, in my concentration. Languages, plural-lowercase-l, is much more straightforward: French, German, Spanish, & English as obvious examples. These four are the only languages I have or am studying formally. I’m also familiar with Korean because my mom is from Seoul. I could devote another whole post to how much I love American Sign Language and can’t wait to do my minor, so I won’t go into it. German is a beautiful language although not the most endearing. It is systematic, straightforward, and reliable – all of which English is not, although they share common roots. At the Berliner Dom near Humboldt Universität One of my goals this semester is to become conversant in German. I’m a language nerd (if this hasn’t become apparent) and love to collect factoids on languages, so I also hope to pick up bits and pieces even if I can’t speak it. In addition to German, I’m also taking 20th Century History of Germany and a course called Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Berlin is one of the leading cities in the entire world for contemporary and street art, both of which I absolutely love. Expect photos soon from the East Side Gallery, which is a piece of the Berlin Wall that has been commissioned to various artists and devoted to the public. I’ll end on this note here. Until next post, tchüss!