That’s odd just thinking about it. All of you, both my newest and closest friends all at once, are about to learn about my travels abroad just as I experience them; so I hope you all are ready for a wild ride. To start, this is my first time doing any sort of blogging, so any critiques or suggestions along the way are completely welcome. With that, I guess I’ll set some ground rules for myself, a sort of constitution to stick to, both to remind myself and for you all to help me out.

1. Be completely, dead honest about my experiences. I’m pretty reserved when it comes to spilling my guts, so this blog will definitely test me on that, but it won’t work (both for me and you) if I’m not straight with you all the time on this.

2. Keep up, don’t let the blog fall off after its initial opening. I hope my last pictures and entries are as interesting and fun as the first few.

3. Remember that this stuff can be remembered forever, so I’ll be careful what I add just in case I have any

ambition to start a Samotny 2032 campaign run.

So now that the lines are drawn, welcome. Seriously, thanks for checking this out and being a part of BlogAbroad.com. This is going to be an awesome experience and I’m really excited to be part of a great team with some innovative plans. By that little banner on top, you can tell I’m headed to Prague in a few days. I can’t wait. I’ve done a lot of traveling in Europe, but only the western countries, so I’m really eager to see central and eastern Europe and maybe head into Russia as well. Part of the reason I chose Prague is because of its proximity to so many other countries that I haven’t had the ability to explore yet. I hope to do a lot of traveling on the weekends to see Berlin, Munich . . . the list goes on.

When I first thought of studying abroad, I looked into what I thought were the most obscure countries that I wouldn’t ever have the ability to live in again. Argentina, Brazil, and China topped the listed, but I soon had to knock those off because I quit taking Spanish after my second semester in college and never even started with Chinese. So then I moved onto London, Rome, Australia, and Prague, mainly because these places offered courses that would help me graduate with an economics degree.

To be honest, going to where everyone else seemed to be headed isn’t my style in the least, so London, Rome, and Australia were off the list, and every time I mentioned Prague to someone I was showered with rave reviews. From the beauty to how inexpensive it was to the ability to travel, everyone said it was a great place to visit, so I figured living there couldn’t be all that bad either. In the end, Prague fit really well because the program that Emory University uses, CIEE, has a bunch of economics courses and a few anthropology-related classes to keep my interest and convince the academic departments that the trip would be worthwhile.

I spent a bunch of time on the CIEE website checking out the program and talking with a few buddies who had studied there in previous semesters, and everything seemed to really work out. So for the past couple weeks of winter break I’ve been catching up on some Prague reading and learning a little about the city, the culture, and some history so I can be a little educated when I get there.

Now that all my friends are either back at school or abroad by now, I’ve got nothing left to do but pack up my clothes and get ready to head off to the greatest semester of college.

JS