Well, as promised, the level of procrastination in my studies has significantly increased as the number of days before graduation has decreased. Since I am currently putting off studying the subjunctive verb tense in Spanish (a topic which I repeatedly have nightmares about), I’ll take this opportunity to tell you more about myself.
I was born and raised in Abilene, Texas and graduated from Abilene High in 2006. After my graduation, my senior trip was a 2 week tour of Europe with a group from my high school history classes. We started off in Italy and visited Rome, Florence, and Assisi and then made our way to Lucerne, Switzerland. From there we took a bus to Paris, where I officially ran out of money, and then took the Chunnel to London, where I begged my parents for more money via a 4 minute phone call from a hotel room that would turn out to cost about $40. This was a particularly momentous occasion in my life because it not only showed me how much I love to travel, but also created a deep-rooted fear of using hotel phones in Europe.
Me in Paris. I was smiling because I had not yet realized that I was out of money...
I entered Baylor University in the fall of 2006 and have been here ever since. I’m an International Studies major and have a minor in Spanish (which would turn out to be a masochistic decision… who knew that learning another language would be difficult?) As much fun as Waco is, my first 2 ½ years here only increased my desire to get the heck out of Texas. Finally, my opportunity to escape came last spring during my junior year when I decided to study abroad in Madrid, Spain at Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus. During my time in Spain, I lived with an awesome Señora named Carmen, I learned how to thoroughly embarrass myself with my botched Spanish, and I had the opportunity to travel all throughout Spain and to parts of Europe. I visited Amsterdam, Athens, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Moscow (where I lost my passport and barely escaped… it’s a really entertaining story that would probably make a decent Lifetime Movie).
Me in front of Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow... something I will never fully understand.
Last fall, as I was trying to figure out what to do with my life after graduation, I received an email saying that a Cultural Embrace representative would be at Baylor to talk about opportunities abroad. Since I knew that I’d already missed the deadline to take the LSAT and apply for law schools for the fall of 2010, I figured that going back abroad would be the thing to do during the year before entering law school in 2011. After the presentation, I was fairly positive that this was the company that I wanted to work with in deciding what to do and where to go abroad.
Over the past few months, I have made the decision to teach English in Chile through Cultural Embrace so that I can work on my Spanish while imparting wisdom upon the niños there. Although I was a little nervous about the prospect of teaching English since I’ve never done it before, I was comforted by the fact that I will be working alongside a Chilean teacher in the classroom; basically it’s like having teaching training wheels. I can’t tell you how excited I am to get down to South America and throw myself into the Chilean culture. My dealings with Cultural Embrace so far have been great. Even when the earthquake hit a few months ago, they were in constant communication with me to help me figure out what would happen next. Their mission statement of “discover the similarities, share the differences” is something that I have found to be true in all of my travels abroad and is something that I can’t wait to apply to my time in Chile!
So, next time you hear from me I will (hopefully) be a graduate of Baylor University and will be prepping to take the LSAT in June (ugh.) and for my trip to Chile in July (yay!!). So, until then, I will leave you with the philosophical question of the day:
Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?
-Caroline
Advisor Abroad in Chile
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