Bloomsburg University.  Day One.

After living in an apartment for the past year, it was a blast from the past of sorts to wake up in the dorm here at Bloomsburg.  Sure, I'm a student at Millersville University, but Northcumberland Hall is reminiscent of any residence hall: too-firm matresses, fluorescent lights, a long maze of hallways, and of course those beautiful bathrooms.  But unlike the typical college student, I'm more than thrilled to be staying in this dorm.  Because staying here in Northcumberland for these next four days means I am a part of the PASSHE Honors Summer Grand European Tour.  And I'm thrilled to go to Europe.

My lifeline for the week -- ID pass to eat at the Husky Lounge and get into the dorm

Today was our first full day in the program.  We started the day off working with the QUEST organization at Bloomsburg, getting to know the people we'll be living, learning, and travelling with for the next three weeks.  We played name games, communication skills activities like lining ourselves in birthday order without speaking, trust exercises playing with mouse traps, and wacky activities like navigating blindfolded people around obstacles and balancing all 28 of us on a very limited wooden box...or attempting to at least!  Needless to say, we were all laughing by the end and felt a lot more comfortable around one another.

Later on in the afternoon, the real work began.

The trip to Europe is centered around two courses: Music of Western Europe and Global Media & Society.  First up was Music, where we had Dr. J for a 3 hour long class jam-packed with basic music concepts.  Dr. J definitely knows a lot about music, and you could tell he enjoyed what he taught.  He showed us YouTube clips of the different sorts of things he was talking about so that we could actually listen for the examples in the music.  He also made sure to vouch for the cello throughout his lecture, his instrument of choice.  Somehow we got through 5 chapters of material in just 3 hours, although Dr. J made it known he was hoping for 6 chapters. Oh well, I'm sure he'll make up for that tomorrow.

I was really looking forward to our Media class, which we had later on in the evening after dinner at the Husky Lounge.  Dr. Magolis seems like a pretty cool prof who went through different avenues of schooling and careers before finally arriving at teaching at the university level.  I'm someone who doesn't necessarily use the computer for much more than school and Facebook, but I've always been interested in what else you can do--this blog for instance.  I'm actually writing this as an assignment for class, but I'm hoping to give more to it than just something to check off a list and get a grade; I want to be able to look back on this summer and everything I'm going to experience.

Already we have lots of work to do--particularly 6 online quizzes for the Music class. Woo!  These next few weeks are definitely going to be a whirlwind with the condensed workload for taking two classes, not to mention traveling to 5 cities throughout 3 countries!!

So we'll study hard now, put a lot of the work in, so that when we leave for London, Salzburg, Vienna, Venice, and Rome, we can focus on being fully emerged in the culture there and enjoying what I'm sure will be an unforgettable Adventure Abroad.

Looking forward to another busy busy day tomorrow at Bloomsburg.

Until next time.