Hello Everyone!
Seeing as how this is my first blog post, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Devyn Lempke, and as of right now I am a junior at Augsburg College. If you're not familiar with it, it's a private Lutheran college located right outside of downtown Minneapolis. I spent this past summer doing a 400 hour research project on the history of my school, so I could go on and on, but I'll spare you for now :) I'm a history major and linguistics minor, and after completing my undergrad degree I'm hoping to go on to graduate school. I also want to make it clear that I am a woman, you wouldn't believe how many people who meet me expect a man, because of my name. Thanks mom!
Today is Tuesday, January 7, and in exactly two weeks I will be embarking on the greatest journey of my life (so far). For the next four months I will be living in Leiden, Netherlands, a town about 42 km south-east of Amsterdam. My abroad program is through Central College Abroad, a school based out of Iowa. My program isn't based around anything specific, so I'm free to take any kind of classes I want. As of right now I'll be taking four classes, two through my abroad program and two through the college in Leiden, Leiden University. All together I'll be studying Dutch, the Netherlands and it's European context, Hinduism, and the History of the Middle East since 1500.
Right now I'm feeling all sorts of emotions. Time has flown by so fast since I was accepted into my abroad program, and sitting here now it's hard for me to believe that I'll be on a plane out of this country in only 14 days. I'm extremely excited, but I'm begun getting pretty nervous too. The idea of being in a country where I don't know the language, customs, or a single person is very intimidating, and knowing that all of my family and friends are across an ocean (and several time-zones) is also daunting. I'm a fairly adaptable person, however, and I know that I will do just fine. I'm very excited to travel, especially to Germany and maybe France. These last two weeks are going to be spent working as much as possible to save money before I leave, and spend time with friends and family. I should probably start packing sometime soon too :)
That's all for now.
-Devyn