Pre-Departure

In less than four short weeks, I will be embarking on what I expect to be the most exciting and memorable journey my life has taken me on thus far. Traveling has been one of my greatest passions since I was a little boy, and this summer will afford me the opportunity to visit many places I have only been to in my dreams, and experience cultures I have never before been exposed to. In March, I found out that I was fortunate enough to be selected by the COL/LBREF to spend a month studying at the University of Westminster in London. My experience with this scholarship so far has been incredible, and I encourage any students studying in Arizona who want to study abroad to ask me for more details and consider applying!! So if any of you readers are interested, send me a message next fall and I will give you all the details. :)

Since I am planning on spending my junior year abroad, I thought that this trip would be a great to to explore other universities in Europe to see where I might want to study. In the seven weeks I will spend in Europe, I will be visiting about a dozen universities (far more than I looked at for four years of undergrad in the US!!) to see where I may want to study junior year. I will also be reunited with my German American Partnership Program buddy for the first time since after freshman year of high school. I will be spending the first portion of my trip traveling completely alone, staying in hostels and backpacking for the first time in my life. I cannot even express the pent up excitement I have about this independent experience. I hope to meet many great people, and see places that look like nothing I have ever seen before.

Below I will highlight my itinerary for those of you who may want to find entries about just a certain segment of my journey. Feel free to comment on my posts or e-mail me at ernst@email.arizona.edu at any time while I am gone. I may not respond immediately, but I promise to try my best to get back to you at some point!!

On June 18th I will be flying nonstop from Phoenix to London, and will be spending the seven weeks following in Europe. I land in London on the 19th, will be taking a night bus to Edinburgh, where I will be arriving at the crack of dawn on June 20th. I will spend two days there, exploring the medieval architecture and checking out the University of Edinburgh, before continuing on to St. Andrews. I will only be in St. Andrews for one night, probably just barely long enough to take a campus tour of the University of St. Andrews. On the evening of the 23rd, I will take a train back to Edinburgh, where I will fly from Edinburgh to Dublin (my flight was only like twenty dollars!!). In Dublin, I will be looking at Trinity College and the nearby National University of Ireland at Maynooth. Early on June 25th, I will fly to Frankfurt, followed by a short bus trip to Mainz where I will be staying with Julia, my German exchange partner, for about a week!! I have not seen her in four years, and I am extremely excited. While in Germany, I will also look at universities in Konstanz, Stuttgart, Tuebingen, and perhaps Freiburg. On July 3rd, I will take a train to Paris where I will spend the next eight days exploring all that France's capital city has to offer with Julia Ushakova, the other UofA student studying at the University of Westminster with me. For once I will not be looking at universities!! On the 11th, we will take a train to London where we will meet up with the others in our program. I will then spend roughly four weeks taking a course on Jack the Ripper in London, and will take trips to Cambridge, Oxford, Leicester, and East Anglia to look at other schools. I hope to see many shows and spend all of my free time exploring what is as of yet unknown to me. This will be an adventure I hope to remember forever.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!!

---Jason