Graduation, what a pride!

I can't believe two years went so fast.. it feels like just yesterday that we were in Lyon with a single bed for two persons, ahah! Even though the winter was long and cold, I don't feel like I spent 10 months in Macomb. We have made such good friends and have seen so many places during our stay that going back to reality will be a hard one.

The graduation ceremony at Western Illinois really was a great pride. I felt like all the energy we put in making this program work as far as we could has been successful, and it's a great feeling. Moreover, my parents, the Atlantis coordinators, and some students from DePaul attended our ceremony and congratulated us warmly. Wearing the cap and gown, and walking on stage has been a very strong moment, for me as much as for my father. Thankyou Western Illinois, Thankyou Atlantis!

Schools (almost) out!

Surprisingly, the finals week has been the quiestest of the semester! Most of my classes spread the work over the semester to avoid work jam on final week. I think I did pretty well on my exams, and I foresee four As and one B. Also, I would like to give credit to the outstanding professors that I have had in class at Western Illinois, and particularly to Dr. Don Johnson and Dr. Hongbok Lee. These two teachers are among the best I have ever had, and there classes were really interesting.

Now, its packing + celebration time before my parents arrive in Macomb for the graduation ceremony!

Bomb alert (again)

It is 8 a.m. on March 26th, and my landline phone is ringing, which is quite unusual since nobody knows this number. Generally, when this phone is ringing, I pick it up and listen to the robot encouraging me to go and support the WIU Leathernecks at their next game, but the season is over for months now.

No, this time, this is the University calling: they discovered two pieces of paper in Horrabin Hall announcing that "a terrible tragedy [will]occur Thursday 3-26-09". Then at 10:15 a.m., a piece of paper is found in the restroom of Stipes (where I in class), saying that a bomb would explode at 10:00 a.m. Fortunately, nothing happened that day.

This is not the first alert in Macomb. In October, two student have been arrested for driving at night with face masks, bulletproof vest, grenades, guns, and rifles with silencers. In December, there was a similar shooting threat found in the library during the first day of the finals' week. In February, an explosive device was found outside the Pace (one of the main student bar of Macomb). Even though most of the threats were obviously last resort action for student who did not study enough for a test or final, one cannot be somewhat worried. As these bad jokes multiply, people tend to ignore these threats. What if it happens someday?

Spring Break!

New episode of my journey through the U.S. and the college experience: Spring Break! This one-week holiday is the favorite time of American college students for several notorious reasons. Anyway,  I did not feel like spending a thousand dollar for an all inclusive vacation package to Cancun or Panama City, so I decided to do a quite different trip. Per, Max, Stephan, and I could not figure which destinations we absolutely wanted to go to (USA is a wide country!!), but we found a compromise between the two cities of New Orleans and Las Vegas. Since we could not decide which one of those two we would like to see most, we simply decided to visit both! Yehaw!

Actually, this trip was a triple city journey as we stayed a few days in Chicago. Apart from Max Percherskiy's birthday, we had the opportunity to see the green rivers of the city for Saint Patrick's day, which was pretty cool! It was also quite nice to be able to see a bit of the city and walk around without fighting against heavy snow and icy wind!! The weather was warm and Chicago instantly felt like a more pleasant city.

Direction New Orleans. First of all, I have to say that what I imagined of New Orleans was VERY different from the actual experience that we had there. I imagined it to be a calm city, still hurt in its feelings by Katrina (alright, it might still be true), with a lot of nice and calm jazz bars. Instead, it happened to be one of the most exciting party city ever, everybody was so excited about Saint Patrick's day that we met a lot of people from almost everywhere (China, Ecuador, Georgia, France, or Haiti!!). The bars and restaurants were far from being calm and jazzy, but instead very loud and animated. The weather was also very "tropical", very damp and hot, which gave it a special feeling. All of us were extremely happily surprised by New Orleans, and this is definitely a place I would want to discover further.

A very unpleasant Southwest flight later, we were in Las Vegas, the famous gambling city! I must admit that I was quite disappointed the first days, since I have seen the town over and over on TV and did not have this feeling of seeing something completely new. However, you cannot not be impressed by Casinos such as the Bellagio, the Caesar's Palace, or the Venetian. Besides the overwhelming facades, the interior were meticulously designed, the casinos are huge, and I thought that it was really beautiful despite its "fake" aspect. Fortunately, I managed to loose "only" about $20 dollars gambling there, not too bad! As our budget was running low because of New Orleans, we did not see any show, or did anything extraordinary, but that was a really good time, very refreshing! Perfect way to kick off the last 8 weeks of this program (Time flies way too fast)

Välkommen till Lindstrom

Last week-end, we have been invited by Connor to join the DePaul Atlantis crew to his cabin in Minnesota, in the small town of Lindstrom. Even though it is very far from Macomb, Linnea, Per, Stephan and I decided that it would be worth driving the 472 miles that separate both towns. Actually, the hardest thing was not to drive there but to rent a car! Our initial plan was to leave on Thursday evening with a rental car, and to drive back on Sunday so that we would have two entire days to spend there, but when we went to the rental agency, surprise: in Illinois, you need a major credit card to rent a car. EVERYBODY in the U.S. has got at least one credit card, which I think is terrible, but except for Per, none of us ever had one. Unfortunately, Per got his credit card stolen when he was exploring California. Anyway, the outcome was that we could not rent the car on Thursday as expected... we all felt so depressed because we got all excited about this week end! The train would have costed 200 dollars and takes 10hours so we decided it wasn't worth considering. Finally, we got some help from Chris Ramsey (thank you so much!) who called the agency, and we managed to rent a car on Friday morning! We were all so excited!

The road was fun, this was a sunny day so we enjoyed the landscapes of Illinois. A little too much apparently as we missed the exit to Moline and drove an extra hour past Galinsburg! We then got back on track and drove through the flat, truck-dominated state of Iowa. This was the first time I was driving in the U.S., and I must admit it feels safer than in France! ahah! At least as far as drivers are concerned, because infraestructures did not seem very reliable. The rest of the road was smooth had a little preview of StPaul when we reached Minnesota.

Connor's cabin is located in Lindstrom, a few dozens miles north of Minneapolis/St Paul. This town and the region in general is so funny, because it is litterally Swedish terroritory! Names of town sound swedish, the landscape looks like Sweden, and most of the people have swedish ancestries! It was really strange as I felt like back a few months ago when I was still in Sweden, and the reminiscence of many good moments came back to mind. It happened to fortunate, as Per was pulled over for speeding, but did not pay a dime because the police officer was Swedish and was so glade to meet a real Swede! In general, people seemed so nice in Minnesota. When we were skiing, many people asked us where we came from, and one of us said "Welcome to Minnesota"! 

The activities of the week end basically consisted of a bonfire by the lake on Friday night, skiing on Saturday (I tried snowboarding for the first time of my life and I wasn't quite successful) and then having dinner all together, followed by a night-long party! That was definitely a very good time! The road back to Macomb was a little more complicated as expected, as we got lost in the middle of Iowa and ended up a few miles from Wisconsin!! But at around midnight on Sunday we got back :) Even though we drove a lot to stay only a day, that was an awesome week-end, we discovered the lovely state of Minneapolis, and this was a good breathe :)

Merry Christmas

I decided to fly home for Christmas to see my family, eat good food, and flee from the cold weather of Illinois.  It is hard to believe, but studying abroad has also drawbacks alongside with its numerous advantages, and anybody should be aware that it involves important sacrifices.  I am not talking about "culture shock" but rather about being away from one's family.

Unless you worked hard for it - but let's be honest it's not the case of many, it is usually a heavy burden financially for your family to have you abroad.  This depends on the wealth of family and on the expatriation, of course.  Nevertheless, one thing stays equal for everyone whenever you are abroad: you are exposed to be dramatically powerless in the case something occurs to your family.  Loneliness, health problems, discords, tightened finance are some examples.  With your family, being abroad is like missing 5 episodes of Dallas in a row: when you come back, so much has changed that you don't understand anything.

I realized that I always took my decisions about expatration myself, not thinking that I could be a cog in the machine. Overconfident, probably selfish, I was looking up without knowing what was under my feet, and I let people down.  Semesters abroad sometimes make you feel like you'r in holiday and everything is "fun" or a "new discovery". Bad habit when you finally have to face the real world.

The coldest place on Earth!

Winter finally arrived in Macomb, IL! During the same day, the temperature dropped from around 6°C to -15°C!!  Today, the temperature reached -17°C and it felt like -25°C because of the wind. This is by far the coldest temperatures I have ever experienced.  Luckily, I found some warm coats and sweaters for a descent price during the Black Friday of Thanksgiving, and the cold is quite manageable as long as you walk fast to class. Despite the temperature, I managed to go to my finals and I think the results should be OK.  

The campus is now covered with snow, which is actually pretty nice!  I uploaded some pictures of the Fall and homecoming, and also some pictures I just took of the snow, check out my survival equipment!!