ABOUT ME
This portion of my site will provide information about my international travel experience as well as links to the travel blog that I maintained while living abroad
If you know anything about me you have to know that I love to travel! Throughout my lifetime I have traveled to 6 countries including England, France, Africa, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. I traveled abroad during my Junior year of college with a study abroad program called Academic Programs International. I have a huge goal of traveling to another country before I begin working a full time job one day. Wish me luck! Also, feel free to check out my travel blog that I kept while I studied abroad!
Academic Programs International
The program that I studied abroad through is called Academic Programs International (better known as API). It took a LOOONG time to decide to study abroad through this program and there were earlier times when I looked at their program and passed by them because I didn’t think that they had the best fit. This was because I had originally planned to study abroad in Costa Rica or some other tropical country and they didn’t have the best program for those types of countries. I eventually changed my mind and decided to travel through API because they worked out the best for the classes that I needed to take and they had a good price compared to other programs that would go to Spain. Needless to say, it ended up being a great decision because API was tight partners with JMU and they had endless amounts of students who have studied abroad with them who were from my university. This meant that I got a better financial aid coverage, an extra scholarship from API, and the whole process was more smooth overall. Is God good or what!
I would definitely recommend the program to anyone out there who wants to study abroad before they graduate. They offered us lots of free trips, excursions, and there were so many great perks that came along with traveling with this program. After I graduated I even led a presentation in front of a group of undergraduate students to inform them about the fun and experiential learning that one can encounter by studying abroad. It was definitely an experience that I will never forget and one that I hope to experience again before I start working full time.
THE UNIVERSITY
The university that I attended in Spain is called the Universidad Pablo de Olavide. The university concentrates on Spanish Language, Business, and Applied Social Sciences in Seville, Spain. I chose to attend this university so that I could take international businesses classes in English at the university. The classes that I will be taking are International Management, International Marketing, two classes worth of Spanish, and an elective. In order to take these classes and ensure that they would transfer into my university once I returned to the United States, I had to first get all of the classes that I was interested in taking approved by specific professors at my university. This was a major pain in the butt! If I wanted to take a business class in Spain, I had to go to the College of Business at JMU and talk to the director of the business program about the class that I wanted to take, show them a syllabus, and pray that they would sign in approval of me taking that class for credit at my school. Then I had to repeat this process for any Spanish class, political science, history, art, etc class that I would be interested in taking when I went abroad. This required a new level of patience that I didn’t know I had lol. There would be so many times when people wouldn’t be in their office for me to talk to them, I would have to wait forever just to get the opportunity to speak with them once they were finally there, and there were times when a class I wanted to take got denied by an academic professor who didn’t seem to be in the best of moods that day. But I got it done and it was all worth it!
Don't forget to check out my travel blog that I kept while I lived in Spain!
Academic Programs International
The program that I studied abroad through is called Academic Programs International (better known as API). It took a LOOONG time to decide to study abroad through this program and there were earlier times when I looked at their program and passed by them because I didn’t think that they had the best fit. This was because I had originally planned to study abroad in Costa Rica or some other tropical country and they didn’t have the best program for those types of countries. I eventually changed my mind and decided to travel through API because they worked out the best for the classes that I needed to take and they had a good price compared to other programs that would go to Spain. Needless to say, it ended up being a great decision because API was tight partners with JMU and they had endless amounts of students who have studied abroad with them who were from my university. This meant that I got a better financial aid coverage, an extra scholarship from API, and the whole process was more smooth overall. Is God good or what!
I would definitely recommend the program to anyone out there who wants to study abroad before they graduate. They offered us lots of free trips, excursions, and there were so many great perks that came along with traveling with this program. After I graduated I even led a presentation in front of a group of undergraduate students to inform them about the fun and experiential learning that one can encounter by studying abroad. It was definitely an experience that I will never forget and one that I hope to experience again before I start working full time.
THE UNIVERSITY
The university that I attended in Spain is called the Universidad Pablo de Olavide. The university concentrates on Spanish Language, Business, and Applied Social Sciences in Seville, Spain. I chose to attend this university so that I could take international businesses classes in English at the university. The classes that I will be taking are International Management, International Marketing, two classes worth of Spanish, and an elective. In order to take these classes and ensure that they would transfer into my university once I returned to the United States, I had to first get all of the classes that I was interested in taking approved by specific professors at my university. This was a major pain in the butt! If I wanted to take a business class in Spain, I had to go to the College of Business at JMU and talk to the director of the business program about the class that I wanted to take, show them a syllabus, and pray that they would sign in approval of me taking that class for credit at my school. Then I had to repeat this process for any Spanish class, political science, history, art, etc class that I would be interested in taking when I went abroad. This required a new level of patience that I didn’t know I had lol. There would be so many times when people wouldn’t be in their office for me to talk to them, I would have to wait forever just to get the opportunity to speak with them once they were finally there, and there were times when a class I wanted to take got denied by an academic professor who didn’t seem to be in the best of moods that day. But I got it done and it was all worth it!
Don't forget to check out my travel blog that I kept while I lived in Spain!