Thoughts

Now that I am home for the summer I am beginning to sort through things in my life. I am getting ready to go to Meadowood which is a Speech and Hearing camp that I work at all of July. That is something that I am really looking forward to this year. I always loved camp as a child and for me this is a way to still "go to camp" and get payed for it. It is a fantastic opportunity and will really help me on my Peace Corps application.

Unfortunately, it looks like I will be changing my plans on my study abroad program. Because of my recent upswing in Theater positions I believe that taking a complete year off my Junior year would be foolish. I am being blessed with an incredible amount of opportunities right now. Turning them down would be illogical being as that I have worked hard to gain them. So because of this I have come up with a solution.

1) In order to stay on top of theater classes I will not be taking a foreign language...(yet). I will be studying in a country that will be teaching me another language and have a program for beginners in that language or be an English speaking country.

2) My program with have to have a theater curriculum available for me so that I can continue to receive my theater scholarship money and training.

3) I will only be taking a semester abroad rather than a year. The program must have a semester option, Fall preferred, that is affordable to me. This means below $9,000.

These options currently lead me to the following countries: Greece, Australia and New Zealand among a few other depending on the program. Greece would be wonderful. I would be all for that. That is the brith place of theatre. Australia and New Zealand are not bad either.

Still...all of this seems so much less glamoures than living in Europe for a year and tuoring. I really should not stress it but I feel as though college is a place to learn about making choices. There are good ones and there are ever better ones. Being a little bit picky will probably pay off. In my reseach however I did find an ultaimite dream. The Moscow Art Theatre has a semester program for acting students. It costs $18,900 not including food or visa. Oh it would be so amazing. That right there is my dream. Click hear for the link.

I will keep you updated as plans evolve.

Happy Wandering,
CCosner

API, Oregon Abroad, AHA...Oh the choices!

Over the past several months I have been trying to decide what study abroad program I want to apply for. This has been a rather overwhelming task. First, one has to decide what they want to study and then where they want to travel to. How long do you want to be gone, a fall, an entire year? How much do you want to pay for the "experience of a life time"? All of these questions aside and then you have scraped the surface of the Study Abroad Program world.

So finally after a good amount of searching I have managed to find my program of choice. I will be traveling to Seville, Spain during the academic year to study Communications through Academic Programs International.This is a reasonably priced program with an initial cost of $17,500. In comparison my tuition currently at EOU is $18,500 which is considerably cheaper than many state colleges. I will have to pay for my plane tickets. This will probably the most costly part of the trip. The dates for the upcoming school year are September 14, 2009 to Late-May, 2010. The cost also pays for two excursions, one of which will be to Paris, France and another will be to a city in Spain.

Right now I have put together a binder to hold all of the information about my excursion. My goal is to be totally prepared by the time that I need to apply next spring. I am super excited for the next couple of months.

If you are interested in the API programs click here.

Happy Wandering,
CCosner