There are some themes and key political terms that overlap with some of my political science classes, and one that has been brought up multiple times this week is Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilzations." This is a theory which basically states people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary cause of conflict (post-Cold War). This theory has obviously been criticized by many theorists, and is just one of the many theories that we have been talking about lately. In one of my classes today, a Youtube video was shown called "Stop The Clash of Civilizations." I thought it was really thought-provoking, interesting, and overall really well done for a youtube video, so I figured I would post the link for all of you to check out. It's only about 2 minutes long, so I urge ... read more

Lately I've been doing too much reminiscing on facebook of my time at Iowa and was getting a little sad that I won't be there for all my friends' senior years, that I missed rush week for Alpha Phi, that my friend Kate got engaged and I can't be there to see the ring, AND that I'll be missing another wonderful season of tailgating and Iowa football. But don't worry - I keep reminding myself how incredibly lucky and blessed I am to be having this crazy, amazing experience and then I'm back to smiling... so these thoughts of jealousy towards my fellow Hawkeyes only last a couple minutes, or until the next good looking Aussie walks by :) Last weekend was a blast! I spent it in the city again with my friend that live ... read more

Friday: No class! Yay! My friend from the study abroad program, Ami, came up to visit me at school and we just hung out around the mall and then went to my friend Nick's place for an Entourage marathon and we had apples with nutella (my personal fave) and he made awesome quesadillas for us. Later, we went to the administration building (where I spend a lot of time... they have a flat screen tv, a wii, ping pong table, and a pool table...) So Ami and I went to the Admin bldg and met up with my neighbors and watched the (insanely long) but AMAZING opening ceremony for the Olympics (anyone else see it??). It was super fun, then Nick, Ami, and I ended up falling asleep off and on in there on the bean ... read more

This week has FLOWN by! I can't believe I start school in TWO DAYS! Wednesday night I went job hunting, which was a little harder than I thought, but for now I am filling out two applications and will be searching some more this week. After the job searching, I went and met this guy Thomas, from Denmark, that I had been talking to on facebook through a Macuqarie group. Me and him went to the soccer fields and watched my neighbors play soccer for awhile. ((I have been talking to about 10 people for the past couple months on this facebook group who are all here, and I've met about 1/2 of them so far, all of who are pretty cool)). Then Wednesday I hung out and partied with the neighbors and we went to ... read more

I'm finally here!! Moved into my apartment this afternoon and it's AWESOME! I will take pictures and put them up once I get my room all set up, and if anyone wants to buy me a heater, that would be MUCH appreciated because once the sun goes down, my room turns into an icebox!! My apartment is SOOOO SO nice. Nice and spacious, 5 bedrooms total. My room is huge, I don't know what I'm going to do with all this space - and my bathroom is big as well! I have only met one of my roommates yet, but apparently they are all Asian girls. I thought I was going to be living with guys and girls, so I was a little disappointed at first, but then I realized that this is going to be ... read more