T-minus two days!

I was feeling inspired a few weeks ago and decided that I wanted to get into blogging (@Mike/Kaele) and what better place to start that detailing my upcoming journey this summer. Out of boredom yesterday in between my hours of packing I also decided to design the above header, naturally. I am beyond excited for what is to come over the next month and a half!

In two days, myself and the Emory Women's Soccer team depart on a 10 day trip throughout Italy. As a team, we are venturing to Milan, Lake Como, Venice, and Florence-with some additional day trips to other places along the way. A group of us will be blogging about our experience which will also be posted on www.emoryathletics.com. We will be training and scrimmaging three Italian club teams, in addition to a line-up of other tours and excursions that are planned.

This guy was the man. His name is Albion and owns
 a shoe shop in Florence.  Perhaps we'll come across him again.

On May 24, I head from Milan to London where I will be studying abroad for about six weeks. I am so happy to have been accepted into this program through Syracuse University. After mulling through Emory's summer programs, I decided I wanted to branch out and look for further opportunities that fit my interests to get the most out of my study abroad experience. Throughout the college application process, Syracuse University, specifically their S.I. Newhouse School of Communication and the College of Human Ecology (sport management), was always at the top of my list. I began to look through their extensive study abroad opportunities and fell across the perfect fit. Not only did it align with my Italy trip perfectly, but it combined multiple of my passions into one incredible course.

From May 24 to June 30, I will be taking the course "London 2012: Global Games, Local Perspectives" taught by Professor Sharon Hollenbeck, an instructor at Syracuse and NBC's intern coordinator for the Olympics. In short, this program is about learning what goes into being a host city for the Olympics-financing, media, infrastucture, marketing, and more.  I could not ask for a program that aligned more with my interests of marketing, event planning, media, and of course athletics.

"This multi-disciplinary experience will focus on London's preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympics, looking at progress and issues as they are emerging for the host city and country. Students will get in depth, behind-the-scenes exposure to London's active building, financing, and planning for these huge events - from a sociological, political, management, sports and communications perspective."

I am so excited for both Italy and London, but in the meantime I must pack, attend graduation...and attempt to brush up on my Italian from freshman year. We'll see how that goes. I will do my best to update this blog throughout the summer, I'm not sure how consistent of internet access I will have but I figured this is probably the best way to keep people updated. I also just bought a Nikon D5100 so I will be obviously taking and many pictures as possible, so at the very minimum I'll try and update with those. Ciao! Cheers!