The answer is: it takes only couple hours. A lot of students assume that applying for the study abroad takes a lot of work. Well, I have a good news. I just finished my application and it does not require that much work as one would think.
Firstly, pick a program. I do not count this as a work because it is fun to surf through tons of amazing programs in a lot of different countries.
Fill out the Study Abroad approval form. This form takes about 15 minutes to fill out. It asks you the basic information about major, minor, name, GPA or what type of program. Also you need a student and professor recommendation, which is something that you ask for. The part of the student approval form that takes longest is student essay, which is about 500 words. In the end, it takes you 80 minutes of your time.
Thirdly, get approved. No work for you.
Next, finish the application for the organization that arranges you the study abroad. This application takes longer than the approval form, but it is not as time confusing. I spend about 120 minutes in total.
Adviser fills out her/his part of your application online, so it does no take you any of your time.
Fill out the forms for Health Center and International Office, which takes about 10 minutes.
Then you wait to get accepted into the program, so the application (paperwork, essay, and online work) comes down to just about 210 minutes of work. That is only 3.5 hrs in 1 or 2 months. That is not that bad right?
My first semester, I lived in Scott Hall, which meant I had to eat in the Phelps Dining Hall. Phelps Dining Hall is mostly for freshmen and sophomores. The second semester I moved to Cook Hall, so I gained an access to Cook Dining Hall. In order to be able to eat in Cook Dining student needs to have certain amount of credits or to live in Cook Hall. This results that only the upperclassmen and Cook Hall residents are the only ones who are eating in Cook Dining Hall.
Phelps Dining Hall.
In my opinion both dining halls provide a very good standard for a college dining in the terms of food quality, but there are few differences. Phelps Dining Hall is about twice as big as Cook Dining Hall, which reflects in the number of options. In Phelps there is bigger variety of food and drink options. Cook Dining Hall does offer that many options. There are multiple “stations” but it is significantly smaller than at Phelps. That being said, based on multiple students’ opinion, Cook Dining Hall’s food is slightly better in taste. Some students assume that since Cook Dining Hall is cooking from less students the food tastes better than at Phelps. I would agree with this statement, but there are some nights when I wished I went to Phelps instead going to Cook.
Phelps Dining Hall.
In the end, the food in both dining halls is very good, so I would say it is a win in either way. The difference is only in who is able to go to Cook and who is not.
A lot of you know that this week the Republican and Democratic primaries took place in Michigan. From the Democratic side, Sanders won, and Trump won it from the Republican side. Definitely, this post is not to discuss politics, but to show an interesting connection between United States of America, France, and Germany.
I am assuming that all of you know that on November 13, 2015, the Paris attack happened. In December of 2015, in France, the regional elections took place and the party called National Front or “French Nationalists” won by 30%.
The national flag of France.
In Germany 3 days ago, “ A new nationalist party that is challenging the German government’s welcoming stance toward migrants has come third in municipal elections in a central region, one week before three more important regional votes, preliminary results showed Monday” (The Washington Post).
The national flag of Germany.
Here in the United States, Donald Trump is winning in almost every state with his very nationalistic motto “Make America Great Again” and other very nationalistic opinions.
The national flag of the United States of America.
It is really fascinating how people of three western world countries – economic powers – show significant support to candidates who are very Nationalistic. Is it just a lucky coincidence or are we living in Nationalistic era? Is the end of Globalization and the begging of Era called culture separations and how to build a wall?
As of Monday, Hope’s campus has come back to life.
The snow has melted, students are studying in the Pine Grove on blankets or in hammocks suspended between trees, frisbees are flying, and students have said good bye to winter parkas and hello to shorts and t-shirts.
Little signs of spring are popping up around campus.
While the outdoors are pleasant and inviting with its 60-degree weather and sunshine, the demands of this time of spring semester can be pretty stressful and all kinds of busy.
This week alone, my calendar is filled with a couple meetings and four different interviews for an assignment for my Writing for Media class that is due next week. And and every student could tell you about assignments that are soon due, exams to study for, speeches and presentations to prepare, plus trying to figure out scheduling and making appointments with advisors to prepare for next fall.
It’s a busy time of year.
It’s also this time of year, when life feels a little extra chaotic, that I tend to recognize all the little things that make the day to day rush a little easier. From professors responding quickly to emails and friends willing to study with you to encouraging words from advisors and the weather making it easier to want to go outside to get to your next stop for the day.
Even though this kind of busy is stressful at times, overall it’s a good kind of busy. And through it all I just try to remind myself to recognize the little things and enjoy this last stretch before spring break.
Good luck in your last stretch before spring break and thanks for reading!
~Erin
You can find more thoughts and pictures about life at Hope from my perspective on my Twitter (@HopeErin18) or Instagram (@e_delaney333) if your heart so desires.
Dance Marathon is coming up this Friday. Last year, I participated as dancer for the full 24 hours. This year, I will be a “moraler” for an eight hour shift on Friday night.
Orange Leaf, a frozen yogurt shop downtown Holland, has been running a competition this year to see who can earn the most money in receipts for Dance Marathon. Part of the purchase goes to the fundraiser and the winner gets $500 donated to their team page at the end.
Some friends and I from last year’s Dance Marathon!
The store set up a bracket with teams facing each other a few weeks ago. Now, the week of Dance Marathon, there are only two teams left for the final round. One of those teams is my sorority.
While we really want to win, we know that at the heart of this competition is the kids. No matter what sorority comes out on the winning side, we know that it all goes to the same place, to benefit the lives of the children suffering from diseases they cannot control.
If you’re in town this weekend, go check out Orange Leaf to help raise money. I’m not going to tell you to put your receipt in my sororities bucket, but at least put it somewhere so that the funding counts.
I really admire what the Holland community has been doing to support Dance Marathon. This week is also called Blitz Week, where various Holland chain restaurants donate a portion of your sale to Dance Marathon.
It’s so cool to see the community coming together for such a good cause.
The annual International Food Day will be held on February 25 in Maas Center Auditorium from 6 to 8 p.m. The public is invited. The food will be available in exchange for tickets that will be sold at the door. Entry is $5 which will pay for 5 tickets; extra tickets cost 50 cents.
This is what everyone else saw. An enjoyable, easy-going evening with a bunch of friends and foods from around the world, courtesy of Hope’s students.
On the other end is a battlefield.
Gather the troops. I was invited by a friend to join the Korean booth to make Korean food. There were five members, give or take two. My friend basically lured me in because those who contribute to the fair get free admission, free tickets and possibly free food from friendly booths. In reality, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
The Plan. The Korean members called their mothers for tips on what would be the easiest yet most delicious thing to make for roughly 200 to 300 people. After throwing around ideas at a Kletz table late into the night, we decided to go with kimbap, Korean sushi rolls.
Disaster. But alas, we were betrayed by our brethren; two decided to switch over to Kenya [Update: We have found peace over free food]. New members joined.
Let’s go shopping!!! One member went home to Chicago over break and was able to buy a majority of the Korean ingredients that we needed. In the midst of this, we realized that bibimbap, a mixed rice dish, was the better option. We hunted down the remaining ingredients at Meijer (Did you know that one of the ingredients is Sprite? Interesting…)
Chop Chop. I was absent during this period but I heard the other members spent two to three hours chopping vegetables. A lot of vegetables. We also may have stolen a few cutting boards, knives, and bowls from HAPA (bless them).
Pregame Warm-up. Before heading to the kitchen, we met with International Food Fair organizer Habeeb Awad to discuss what we wanted to place on our booth and decide how many tickets our food would cost. We decided on 2 tickets but realized later on that we probably looked like high-end cuisine because only one other booth priced their food 2 tickets; the others offered their food for 1 ticket.
Cutthroat Kitchen. We shared the Scott Hall kitchen with Sweden who was making smörgåstårta, a delicious, sandwich cake dish, along with an assortment of chokladboll,a.k.a. chocolate balls. The strange aroma of chocolate, meat, fried eggs, and fried vegetable filled the entire hall.
Thanks, HAPA. We also may or may not have taken a few rice cookers 🙂
The Poster. Another member and I scratched this up in about two hours — we are very proud of it.
Final Touches. One of the members’ mother came over to help us wrap up. We packed the ingredients into the car and drove over to Maas Auditorium to set up the booth.
300 people is a lot of people to squish into humble Maas.
Feeding Time. Two hours of picking up vegetables with gloved hands and smiling at potential customers and ten minutes of wandering around and looking at the absolutely amazing food the other countries made later, we fell exhausted onto our chairs.
Fun Fact: Hanguk means Korea in Korean
Pig Out. Not a scrap of bibimbap survived that night. What a tragic fate for our poor bibimbap as we wolfed the rest of it down and shared it with wandering booth workers.
After Party. The rest of the night was spent cleaning up the carnage that was the International Food Fair and dancing to international music. We carried our dirty dishes back to Scott Hall to wash and sing along to Disney princess songs.
The last place I visited on my mid-term break was Northern Ireland. Leaving Austria on Wednesday and flying out of Munich Airport in Germany on Thursday, it was a crazy week already. Then right on the tail end of leaving my parents in Germany (not to be seen for another seven weeks) the IES program took us to Northern Ireland. Truthfully, I underestimated just how much traveling I would do during break, and how jam-packed this trip would be. But my excitement outweighed my tiredness and I was ready.
It was so much fun to go on a bike ride where so many filming locations took place!
We got to the bus stop on Friday at 7 a.m. From there we headed into Northern Ireland to the place where most of the Game of Thrones TV show is filmed, Winterfell Castle. We did a bike tour and learned archery there. It was so much fun! After that, we went to St. Patrick’s burial site and headed into Belfast to get to our hotel. After a dinner out on the town, it was time for bed.
Great view, huh?
Another early morning was in store for us as we got on our bus to depart for the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge at 8 a.m. This was my favorite part of the trip (I’m always a thrill seeker) and the weather was perfect for what was in store. Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge is a beautiful suspended rope bridge that was originally used by fisherman over 300 years ago!
These stones were cool to look at but slippery with the sea spray!
WOW such beauty.
After our Giant’s adventure, we headed back to Belfast to eat dinner and head to bed once again.
Every year, there is new graffiti on this wall, and every year there are new messages concerning peace and taking down the wall.
Sunday was our last day in Belfast City and we didn’t have to be at the bus until 11 a.m. Taking advantage of the late start, some of my friends and myself headed to St. George’s Market to check out some local venders. It was basically like a small-scale Eastern Market (for those of you from Detroit), and it was awesome!
Next up was a tour of how the Northern Irish Troubles affected Belfast. For those of you that don’t know about the Northern Irish Troubles, I would highly encourage you to look them up. It is such a recent wound for the country and I know that I didn’t realize how horrific and recent it actually was. As a part of this tour, we got to see the Peace Wall and the division of the city which is the Catholics and Protestants.
The next tour was a tour of the Queen’s Palace, Hillsborough Castle. She stays here quite often with her family, and it was one of the best castles I’ve been to in my time here. Then it was finally time to go home and recuperate from traveling. It was an absolutely fantastic Midterm Break!
Thanks for listening to my adventures, until next time!
In my current English class (English 113), which is also required to take in order the graduate from Hope College, we got an assignment to write a personal essay.
Firstly, I did not know what to write about, so my first couple paragraphs were about the European migrant crisis. Since I am an European it could be considered “personal” to me that a lot of refugees and economic migrants move to my homeland.
After hearing other topics of personal essay from my fellow students, I had to change it to something “more personal.” Also, my professor indirectly encouraged me to write about my story how I came to the United States in the age of 15 years old, so I did.
I was really surprised how much I was able write about it. Now it is 10 pages long (double-spaced). The story is starting by the moment when I am on my way to the airport in the morning with my mom in July 2010. How I am struggling in with the adaptation to the college preparatory school system in the beginning. How I am transferring to different high school from Colorado to New Hampshire, until now, Hope College. Also I include quite a lot of personal stories and some funny story that happened during the six years living in the United States, which leads me to a question, what would you write about in your personal essay?
This is where my two lives connected. My U.S. hockey team (red) traveled to my hometown in the Czech Republic and played my former Czech team ( white).
Yesterday, I had really busy day. Before taking the written driving test, I declared a major in Political Science and a minor from Philosophy. I will be still declaring a second (double) major from Management and a second (double) minor from Economics this Friday. Eventually, I am hoping to bump my Philosophy minor to a third major since the difference between minor and major in Philosophy is only 8 credits, but for now I wrote it as minor for now. Either way, is there a best time to declare a major/minor?
I think that there is a one moment that should tell a student that one should declare a major/minor, and that is when one decided to do internship in that field.
In my opinion, and many would agree with my that declaring a major the second week of freshmen year is not really smart idea because a lot of students still are not so sure about their career focus. Also, waiting for the last minute to declare the major/minor is, well, not a clever idea because major/minor is recommended/required in some cases in order to do an internship. If there is anything that can make a big difference in one’s after college career than besides grades, honors programs, student position or study abroad then it would be internships. So, if one decides to do an internship in certain department that means the one is dedicated enough to study the department therefore one consider declare the major in that field.
Of course there are exceptions like everywhere, but if one is working 40 hours a week in the summer in a certain field for a couple weeks or months, it may be a good idea to declare a major in that department.
Yesterday, I went to apply for a Michigan Driver’s License. I was quite excited about it because only 3 years ago, I was in progress of getting the Czech Driver’s License, so I was wondering about the difference.
I went to the Secretary of State offices in Holland, a place where people apply for driver’s license and other vehicle related things like a license plate. I showed them my paperwork, I got in the line and in 10-15 min they called me.
Michigan Driver’s License
Next, I received a written test. It has 40 + 10 questions. First section of 40 questions were based on actual driving and problem solving. The second section of 10 questions were about the traffic signs. It took me about 20 minutes to finish it. The requirement is at least 30 out of 40 correct in the first section and 8 out of 10 correct for the second section. Even I just came to the office and did not really prepare for it, I pass it right for the first time, so this or next week I will be going to driving test. But I was really surprised about the question. Except 5 questions from the first section, which were asking about certain number and rule, rest of it was common sense. I do not want write specifically the questions, but here is an example of what kind of things the questions were targeting. What would I do if I am driving and my phone rings? Or what will I do if someone will ask me to change the radio station while I am driving in a busy traffic?
I thought it was super easy. In Czech Republic we have to learn a lot of rules. Rules that we have to memorize because they are very specifically written in order to prevent confusion and potential crashes on the roads. In Czech people get only 25 questions but there are over 800 different questions that people can be asked from. All questions are based from a handbook for drivers with all the rules and solutions for solving the intersections Questions that I got yesterday, were just common sense. I thought it was very interesting to see the difference in how written driving tests differs by country.
