10-13-2015

I started this blog in the summer with the intent of documenting all my Austin experiences while I held a intern/research position at a university. As you may be able to tell, I didn't really accomplish that. I actually do have posts/things outlined to write for the first two days (as if that really counts for anything given that this was out of a 7 week program) but after that I gave up. Overall, I had a good experience but I wish I had taken the time to really delve into the little things which made my perspective unique.
Anyways, I pretty much almost forgot about this blog until one of my friends texted me at 1am (thanks Elise! and no, that's not sarcastic!): 'Valerie! Are you gonna start an adorable travel blog when you go abroad so we can follow along with your adventures? This just occurred to me and I felt the need to ask despite it being one in the morning!'
I had actually toyed with the idea of a blog for study abroad, but knowing how consistent I am with personal projects (I officially 'start' one, do a thing for it, and then put it aside and completely forget about it for about a year and then realize I didn't do the thing and get sad about it while sighing 'oh well') I didn't think this would pan out too well. But Elise suggested pictures, which I had actually thought about too. I was thinking something along the lines of one picture a day would be a cool way to keep track of my adventures.
Which, I guess I should explain my future adventures! I've been approved for a one semester exchange student program in Nanchang, China for Spring 2016 (next semester!). It doesn't seem like I'm going to be able to obtain computer science elective credit from it, which was one of my original aims (oops..) so I guess that means I will have a stressful senior year to look forward to, but I'll worry about that when it actually happens. The tentative start date for classes is February 29th, 2016, so I'll probably leave about a week before. I'm pretty excited, but also kind of nervous and in disbelief that I actually signed up and have been accepted and pretty much overall that this is probably going to be a thing.
I suppose I'll end this post here so I can actually work on an essay that I've been struggling with. However, I am going to Pittsburgh in about a week, so maybe I'll upload pictures from that just to get the feel for what ~blogging~ is like. (Do I need to have a charming mug of coffee-something by me as I update my blog? Isn't that what all sophisticated bloggers do?)