Welcome to my travel blog. It's a standing tradition of people in my friend group when one of us goes away to study abroad (Ireland, France, Spain, Amsterdam and Morocco off the top of my head) we start a travel blog so everyone back at home can keep tabs on them and live vicariously through their blog posts. And now FINALLY it's my turn.
This blog will be a way to tell the story of my experience in a new, beautiful place learning how to work in a way I never have before, in close quarters with people I only kind of know. I hope to share some revelations about travel, food, culture, experience and hard work. Also, it will chronicle the long, arduous process of even getting into a study abroad program. And before you say it, yes I know I borrowed the title from "Where The Hell Is Matt?" because I hope to one day dance across the planet like that lucky guy.
I am in the Landscape Architecture department at the University of Washington. For those of you who don't know, Landscape Architecture is like architecture, except the idea is to create space and place through plants and land form. It's likely all your favorite parks, public spaces and plazas had a Landscape Architect involved. Think of it like the Architect designs the building and we design most everything else, from the stormwater management, to bioswales, considering habitat, the systems involved to make the place successful and how our site affects other places around it. That's LA in a nutshell.
And this year I was accepted to get to go do it in foreign country. Croatia here I come!
From what I know so far the program isn't your average study abroad. It's going to be an intensive couple of months living and working in a small, walled, medieval city with weekends off to get in as much travel time as possible. The professor in charge will be our guide, boss and tutor and will henceforth be referred to Winterbottom, as that is his name and I've always had a hard time undoing the training of public school to NEVER refer to a teacher by their first name.
Winterbottom will be leading a small group of Landscape Architecture students (18 are accepted at this point) to go to the town of Bale in Croatia to do a Design/Build. Where, you guessed it, we will be designing a public space for the town and then building some of its elements if not all of it. I have been told that its a lot of fun but also a TON of work, mentally and physically. We start our work day at 8:00am, end at 5:00pm and then have classes in the evening during the week. Winterbottom suggests getting our bodies as physically strong as we can this summer before we go to keep us going all fall.
I'm a pretty strong chick but I'm nervous about how much work it's going to be.
I'm a pretty strong chick but I'm nervous about how much work it's going to be.
But despite nervousness, a currently stunning lack of funds, and a finals-depleted amount of physical stamina, I'm going, and it's going to be amazing. And I'm excited to share it with you :)
