Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Midterms and Life and College Oh My!

*cowers behind some form of notebook or other shield-like material* I'm sorry!  I know, I know, I'm a terrible blogger.  I honestly don't deserve all of you wonderful readers with your saint worthy amounts of patience.  I'm not promising anything about other blog posts, but I figured you all at least deserved something to let you all know that I have not, in fact, fallen off the face of the planet, knocked off by a 10 ton meterorite.  I am slowly working my way through some of the more detailed blogposts, particularly the one that explains those tantalizing photos that I teased you all with a couple of weeks ago and then promptly abandoned you.  Again.  I'm sorry!  Also, just to warn you ahead of time, this may be a really rambling post as I only got an hour's worth of sleep last night.  you have been warned.

It's crazy to think that it's already been over a month since I got here.  A whole month!  How is that even possible?  It still seems like I've only just got here.  So much has happened in that month.  I've met so many wonderful new friends, I've been to Greece, I've been in the middle of one of the craziest events of my entire life,  I've planned a trip to Scotland and London for Spring Break, heck, I've even had a midterm already!  I've even seen the resignation of an entire government just this morning. 

I've met so many friends here at AUBG.  I've met most, if not all, of the American student population.  Apparently there's only somewhere around 12-13 of us all told.  I find it interesting that when I was talking to them the other night that for almost all of them, AUBG was their third choice on their ISEP application, which I found interesting.  I met fellow WHOVIANS!  So excited I have people here who I can fangirl with.  I have made friends with more students from Kazakstan and Russia.  Oddly enough they know my room mates.  I've met a handful of students from the Netherlands.  I've met so may new people.  I've met a couple of Bulgarians, including Kristina who's quickly becoming one of my closest friends here.  We swap traditions and cultural information about our two countries and she's helping me with my Bulgarian.  Once you get the hang of the Cyrillic alphabet it's actually pretty easy to figure out, kind of like Arabic.  It's also lovely in the fact that it's phonetic, so spelling it and reading it is much simpler than the complicated mess that is the English lanuage.  Unfortunately, while I'm now able to read the labels, I still have no earthly idea as to what I'm actually ordering.  I have learned the words for the chicken filets in the cafeteria so at least I can order that without causing too much confusion.  Oh and in other exciting news, I FINALLY figured out what those cheese pastries things are that I've been eating for breakfast.  It's called Panitza bread, and apparenlty the Panitza cheese is very popular here in Bulgaria. 

Rambling, I know, bear with me.  I really started meeting everybody when I went to Greece.  I knew absolutely no body on the trip, except for the journalism professor I was sitting next to on the bus who I made friends with on the 2 1/2-3 hour drive from Blago (what I shall be calling Blagoevgrad from now on) to Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city.  She was one of the few of the group who was there to get her visa straightened out though so I was left on my own again, which for anyone who knows me, you know that this is ot exactly my favorite situation to be in, especially in a foreign city where I still can't make heads or tails of the signs.  I'm not much of one for just going up to people and introducing myself.  Networking functions terrify me.  As you can see I was not really all that happy with the situation and my first smog and mist impressions of Thessaloniki did little to improve my mood.  I'm not going to go on ad nauseum about Greece here though, you can read about it later once I actually get around to posting the piece I started.  Anways, the first part of the trip was a bus tour of the city seeing some of the main points of interest and taking some rather harrowing roads that needless to say were NOT made for large tour buses.  Once we got out and were able to see things, Thessaloniki began to show its more appealing, historical side that made it more interesting.  Around noon we were given free reign of the city for food and our own endeavours with instructions to be back at the bus in three hours and to stay in groups of five or more.  This was what I had been dreading.  Taking a complete leap out of my comfort zone, I introduced myself to a group of American and Dutch students and I have never been so rewarded in my life.  These are some of the most amazing people you could ever hope to meet.  The lunch we had (after walking in circles for an hour) will forever be one of my favorite memories from this trip. Altogether there were three Americans, three Dutch, and one Latvian student sitting in a heated patio in Greece laughing and talking over Greek Soulvlaki and Gyros (which were amazing by the way).  It was from there that I met so many other people.

Life at AUBG is about what you would expect normal college life to be.  Late nights, early mornings, noisy neighbors who enjoy slamming their doors just a little too much at 3 am when you're trying to sleep.  Classes, homework, papers, camp-outs in the library.  There are some slight differences from back home though.  I'm still amazed at the slack attitude about alcohol here.  I get email from the Student Government all the time about different drinking events and parties and such, some of which are even sponsored by various university organizations.  This would never happen back home and it's still a little bit of a culture shock from back home.  Another variation is all the languages, there are so many.  Back home at Queens you might here the five or six Brazillian guys speaking Pourteguese or the Korean students speaking Korean, but here I can be sitting in a classroom and not understand a single word of what's being said around me.  It's both amazing and a little isolating.  It kind of makes me feel a little inferior in a way in that I know enough of Spanish and Arabic to be conversational and enough Danish to introduce myself and get to the bathroom, but here are these students who are not only fluent in their native tongue, but they are profficient enough in English (one of the hardest languages to learn) to take university level classes in it.  Wow.

College life has certainly caught up with me as you can tell from my lack of postings.  Although with my rather severe case of insomnia lately I really don't have an excuse since I might as well be productive when I can't sleep.  I had my first midterm this morning.  To be honest, having a Microeconomics midterm at 9am on an hour's worth of sleep is an interesting experience.  I'm still amazed that I remembered everything, even some of the things that I hadn't studied for!  All of my classes seem to be going well so far, although we're moving into the barbed-wire No Man's Land of the semester where anything goes.  I've got two papers coming up in March and April and a midterm for my History of Islam of class on Monday!  I still can't believe Spring Break is only a little over a week away already.  I can't wait!  Myself and my friend Austin, another American exchange student from Iowa, are traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland for six days and then to London, England for two days.  I am beyond ecstatic.  I have been dying to go to Scotland for the last two years now.  That was where I really wanted to study abroad, but alas, the only ISEP university was a technical science school that wasn't what I needed.  That's alright though, I'm quite enjoying my time here at AUBG. 

Now about that government resignation thing I mentioned earlier.  Here in Bulgaria all the electricity companies are foreign based and operated, meaning they pretty much hold a monopoly on the prices and such.  (My microeconomics class is paying off!)  Recently all of them raised their prices and there have been mass protests throughout Bulgaria.  We have had a few around the main campus here.  Apparently, according to both national and international media sources, they recently shifted to being more about the right wing government in general.  This morning while I was eating breakfast in the canteen I saw a government official from the Cabinet giving a press statemet.  I didn't know what it was until one of my friends posted a news story on Facebook later.  Apparently disgusted with the allowance of the increase in prices and when police and protesters turned violent in Sofia the Prime Minister and the entire Bulgarian government resigned saying that they have failed the people with the power granted to them by them and now they were giving it back to the people.  The result of this is that the elections which had been scheduled for July are now taking place very soon.  We shall see what the next Ministerial Regime holds in store for Bulgaria. 

So with all these words I feel as if I've said everything, yet nothing.  I'm not even sure if any of it made a lick of sense, but right now I'm just glad to have something written.  So until next time!

Geronimo!
~OwlHeart


Saturday, February 2, 2013

What Have I Been Up To?

Hello everyone,

  I know, I know, I haven't posted in a while.  I figured to appease you somewhat I would leave you with a teaser of what I did today.  *crossing my fingers* Hopefully I might have something for all you patient readers tomorrow.  In the meantime enjoy!.




I know, you're probably wondering what on earth is this?  Just a little way to keep you hanging on. Until next time!

~OwlHeart