Starting out

For the last (almost) three years, I have left my laziness and the typical excuse of having “no free time” put my blog on the back burner and almost completely forgotten about it. 

But now, after deciding to travel literally to the other side of the world on a whim (Thanks, Mike! Hehe), I thought it would be a good idea to tell my adventures to the world, as well as giving my blog one more chance. 

It all started with a quite typical phone conversation with my good friend Mike. What you should know about Mike is that he hates the cold winters of Boston and loves to travel more than anyone I know. With this knowledge in mind, it came as no surprise that he was going to study abroad, in Italy, during the upcoming semester. I, on the other hand, had never really gone abroad for studies, as the simple fact of being in Boston meant “studying abroad”. However, this time, I realized this might be my last chance to actually travel and try something new. 

Even before having hung up the phone, I had started eagerly searching for my new destination. It turned out the only exchange program suitable for me at that particular moment was in Auckland, New Zealand. As I usually love to make things more complicated or, as my father loves to say, “more fun”, I decided to take a chance and applied for the program. After a month of wondering, I learned I got accepted and at the same time realized what I was about to do. 

Fast forward a couple of months, and a lot of paperwork, visa requirements, travel arrangements, and of course anticipation later, I find myself standing at London Heathrow Airport, waiting for my next flight to leave. As of now, I'm pretty sure I have texted more than 50 people about my whereabouts, am still unclear of my living situation, dreading the 20+ hour flight ahead and can't keep contained my excitement for the  journey I am about to embark for. 

If you have read this until now, then I am happy to tell you to get ready for some (I'll do my best I promise) exciting blog posts and pics to come! Auckland, here I come!

Cheers, 

Emilie the French sorority globetrotter

When Neuroscience takes you to the land of Kiwis

Hello all! 

It's been a while since my last post but I now come with exciting news for the year to come!

As a child, traveling was a big if not the most important part of my life. From Europe to Asia, all the way to America and the borders of Africa, following my father's work was an exciting adventure that I will never forget. 

As I grew up and headed to college, my traveling didn't stop but definitely was kept mostly on the back burner. This is why I decided to switch it up a little next semester and head out to a brand new destination: New Zealand!

Land of the Kiwis (no, not the edible ones but the cute ones! see picture above), New Zealand will be the perfect next step for me. I'm excited for the overflowing opportunities to spend my time outdoors surfing, hiking or even bungee jumping (really looking forward to that one!) and to meet such a culturally rich community.

 

My host university for the spring semester will be the University of Auckland, where I will be taking sociology and psychology classes to help me advance in my degree. Located in the heart of the city, UofA is home to 40,000+ students and provides many research opportunities and a high quality education, which is definitely a huge plus for my future plans!

I chose this university in particular because of its reputation and for the opportunity to study subjects that are closely related to my major but are unavailable here in Boston. As a (fingers crossed) future psychiatrist, being able to learn about the sociology aspect of mental health as well as the processes involved in learning and motivation is a crucial part in my success. 

I cannot to wait to share my experiences with all of you so be ready for the next chapter of my adventures in College! 

Bye and Haere Ra :) 

https://www.pinterest.com/kiwiophile/save-the-kiwi/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-university-of-auckland

Tweet Tweet Twitter

Hi everybody!

I'm sure you all know about Twitter, a social network that quickly became the most famous of all. I went and investigate in order to create my own twitter profile and here is what I found out...

Creation

Twitter was created on July 13th 2006 by the Odeo start-up in San Francisco. The main founders are Even Williams and Noah Glass. At the beginning the project was to be able to explain what you were doing via SMS hence the tag line "What's happening?".

the Twitter name

At first the name was stat.us then Twittr to mimic the picture sharing website Flickr and then Twitter, their current name. They changed name because they wanted to find a logo which would sound like a phone vibrating. They wanted to adopt the name "twitch", but it didn't fit the targeted image. The team was looking for words that would sound alike and came up with "Twitter".

How can you use it?

Twitter was mainly created to send messages and say whatever you want from tonight's menu to the latest daily news. Most of what is posted on Twitter are messages like "tomorrow, I am going to the swimming pool" or "yesterday we had a math exam". This site is a communication tool.

How does it work?

Once you created your profile, you can post your own tweets (small messages) and you can see those posted by your "followings" (people you chose to follow). There are often more followers than followings, like a star who can be followed by millions when he only follows 46 people.

When there are too many messages sent at the same time or a power failure, a special picture appears on your page, it's the "Fail Whale". This picture represents a whale lifted by small birds with a net as you can see here.

This drawing was designed by Yinying Lu, an Australian artist who has her own Twitter account.

Who is on Twitter?

On Twitter, you can find whichever people you want of whatever age you want. But there are also stars and celebrities like Barak Obama, Jean Sarkozy or Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher who was the first person to reach 1 million followers.

That's it, now that you know more about this site, do not hesitate to open an account! It's very easy and it's a lot of fun.

My account name is emiloulie and I can't wait to see you there.

As we say "Happy twitting"

Emilie