Hello,

Every time I go abroad, I make an effort to keep a blog. Then that effort is abandoned months into my adventures. However, this adventure will be a shorter journey and less mundane (in relation to each other, not saying that studying abroad is mundane – although, at times it feels that way) than my other year-long adventures. This time it will be an intense thirty days through Poland with Go Global’s Witnessing Auschwitz: Conflicting Memories and Stories. 

I am no stranger to Go Global and their offices. This will be, as I mentioned, my third trip abroad on school related functions. Each unique and with their own challenges, but I don’t think I will ever be prepared for this one (from here on in, shortened to WA) and even during the program, so I hope that this blog can be both a way of sharing my experiences and a way to just get things off my chest and out of my head. I hope you won’t mind.

So before I start laying down and subjecting you all to my thoughts, it probably would be best to figure out who is writing to you. Hi, I’m Sara. I am currently a 4th year History major at UBC with hopes of going into Library and Archive studies for my masters. I would expand and start stating what my hobbies are, but frankly, I don’t really have them as my life revolves around balancing school, planning my next adventures and consuming as much caffeine as possible. So I guess you could say that playing travel agent and coffee tasting are my hobbies.

As I’ve now mentioned for the third time now, I have been/will be abroad for 5 of my 11 semesters at UBC (I feel like that could be a record?). I realize that this places me in an very privileged space among my peers so I will try to keep my complaining to a minimum because any complaint I have, in reality, can be counter-argued with “But…you’re in Poland/Australia/Spain”. Speaking of Australia and Spain, those were the other two places I’ve found myself. I say found because I never really planned out to go, it just kinda…happened. I applied to Go Global as a lowly first year at UBCO fully expecting to not get in, but I was accepted to my first choice of University of Melbourne for a full year exchange. That was semesters 3 and 4 of my academic career. Then for semesters 7 and 8, I again found myself abroad. I had applied on a whim for a job (through Arts Co-op) to teach English in Barcelona, again, fully expecting not to get hired, but it was hired on the spot so I spent the summer of 2014 figuring out student visas and languages I never thought I would have to actually use outside of the SPAN202 classroom.  I will speak more about these adventures as I count down the days until I start AW. As of today, I board a plane at YVR in 60 days to leave to Berlin for a few days before taking the train to Warsaw.

So welcome to my blog, I hope to spew words at you often…well, okay, like once and while until I get to Poland as there is only so much I can tell you. The next few posts will all be background info, and mostly an excuse to procrastinate. Like this entry and entire creation of this blog was.

Speak to you soon,

Sara.