Home sweet home

I cannot even begin to tell you how busy I have been! I thought I was really on top of things as I went into my last week at work and at Stonehill but I couldn't have been more wrong. But before I jump into that let me recap...I had a week off to pack and get ready to go and I spent most of that week in Rhode Island getting ready to go, but then I came back to school to work for one more week before heading home. That week flew by so fast and before I knew it my car was packed with the last remenants of my room and I was on the road headed to Rhode Island for one last weekend. I had some last minute packing and unpacking and repacking to do but my friend Kacie and I had a pretty busy weekend celebrating her 20th birthday!

As soon as I got to their house friday night I got all dressed up to go out to Foxwoods. We went to see a Cirque de Soleil show called Cirque Dreams Pandemonia. The show was absolutely amazing, and of course it is always fun to get to dress up. Here are some pictures of us before the show and after with some of the actors.

After the show Kacie wanted to go to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, and since we were celebrating he birthday we headed over there. While the food was good my favorite part is when the waitresses embarras the birthday girl...but you do get a free dessert so it was obviously worth it.

Kacie with her birthday brownie fudge sunday...SOOO good! :-)

Just because we celebrated Kacie's birthday Friday night doesnt mean we were all done celebrating. Saturday night we had plans to head into providence to eat at Fire & Ice and then head down to water fire. I love Fire & Ice cause you get to pick whatever you want from a huge buffet and then there are cooks who cook everything together. It's quite Yummy!

Me, Kacie and Mike, Kacie's boyfriend waiting for our table.

After dinner we walk along the water to see the waterfires.

As if we had not had a bussy weekend already I finished up packing Sunday morning so I could spend the afternoon in Newport with Kacie and our friend Christy. We all wanted to get chowder from our favorite resturant the Black Pearl right on the Harbor before I headed home and they went back to school. We had such a nice afternoon it was the perfect way to end my first New England summer.

Monday Morning we woke up wicked early so I could catch my 8:30 flight out of Boston. Since then I've been home just relaxing and running lots of errands to finish getting ready to go...10 days!

Enjoy your last days of summer!

Countdown: 20 Days!

So my days here in Mass are becoming numbered. I just started my last week working for the admissions office yesterday after my week off to get ready to go. It was a really busy week but also a lot of fun. I got to go see State Radio with my boyfriend, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. I haven’t been to many concerts and I didn’t know a lot of songs by the band but it was a lot of fun even though it was a rainy day. The rest of the weekend I just relaxed and worried about getting my visa Monday. You may not know that you have to get a Visa to study abroad and this has been by far the most stressful part of getting ready to go abroad. Of course I had to add extra problems to the mix because I am supposed to get my Visa in Texas because that is where I am a permanent resident. As you know I have been living on campus this summer so that was no way that was gonna happen. So I hoped and prayed that I wouldn’t have any problem when I went to go get it. After about an hour of waiting in this tiny jail-cell-esk room my name was finally called. While the guy did make fun of me about being from Texas five minutes later I was all set. I still have to go back this week to actually pick up my Visa but its definitely nice knowing that it is finally all taken care of.


I spent the majority of the rest of the week in Rhode Island with my friend and her family packing and unpacking stuff from my room here at school. I am proud to report that with a few minor exceptions I am almost entirely packed and ready to go to Italy. I did somehow manage to fit everything I think I need into to suitcases…I actually have some room to spare! (Thats me with everything...2 big suitcases, 1 carry on and 1 personal item! ) I’m sure it will be full by the time I come home. While all the packing was making me really excited about going to Italy I also had to say goodbye to my boyfriend this weekend. I got to spend the weekend with him down on the Cape where his family has a house. Being down there is always a lot of fun and relaxing…plus I got to work on my tan for just a little longer. But Sunday when I came back to school I had to say my first real goodbye. As much as I’m looking forward to being in Italy I am not excited for more goodbyes—they really suck!

*only 20 days but whose counting ;-)

The Countdown Begins-31 Days!

Packing my life into two suitcases is proving to be more challenging than I originally thought! I'm used to going back and forth between home and school so I thought I had gotten pretty good at this whole packing thing but I'm quickly finding out that I'm wrong. I don't know what it is about packing that is so daunting but anytime I start I just get overwhelmed! So far I have only got through preliminary packing of my fall/winter clothes, I've resorted to just leaving the rest strew across my room for now. I still have two and a half weeks till I actually go back home to Texas; I keep telling myself that's plenty of time to finish everything I need to do.

This past weekend I took a break from packing to spend some time with my friends who are finishing up their summers here on campus. My friends who were doing the SURE program, our summer undergrad research experience wrapped up their final week this Friday. To celebrate our friend Patrick, who is interning for the summer with Pumel in NY, came down and we all hung out till the the wee hours of the morning. It's weird knowing that I wont see many of them again till spring semester! Here are some pictures of our night!

This is us on the way to pick up our friend Patrick at the T stop....we didnt really leave room for him in the car..oops!This is Patrick, Sam, and Pat once we got back to Stonehill.

On Saturday afternoon my friend Steff had a BBQ at her house, which was great because I also got to see some of my friends I haven't seen since school got out. The rest of the weekend I spent in New Hampshire. My boyfriends, brother's, girlfriend's family (did you follow that??) has a house up on Silver Lake. I had never been to NH before and it was absolutely beautiful. It was such a relaxing and fun weekend! Getting back to school on Monday came as a reality check of how much I still have to do! While I'm still not even close to being ready to leave, the Umbra-Institute is almost ready for us to arrive. We got our pre-departure handbooks the other day. It is pages and pages of info we need to know before we go like different clubs and activities at Umbra, info on housing, safety info and all sorts of other things we will experience during our time in Perugia! Everyone I'll be spending my semester with arrives in Rome on the 31st of August. From there we take a buss to Perugia and spend the first night meeting everyone over a welcome dinner. The next day we move into our apartments and start our three days of orientation! After that we have a week of intensive Italian before the rest of our classes start, hopefully I'll be speaking Italian in no time. Once regular classes start I'm also taking a History of the Roman Empire class, one on contemporary Italy, a food and culture class, archeology, and Italian. Enjoy the last few weeks of your summer!

Ciao!

Hey everyone thanks for stopping by! My name is Sarah Morales I am getting ready to start my junior year here at Stonehill. It is actually pretty scary knowing I only have four semesters of college left! I love being here today as much as I did the day I visited during my senior year. Stonehill has really become my home away from home…sorry mom and dad! The community here has given me the opportunity to do a lot of different things here on campus. This past year I became a resident assistant which was a roller coaster of fun exciting times and a bit of sheer craziness. This year I also tried my hand at intramural beach volleyball. I played back in my junior high days and wasn’t so bad, but let me tell you that unlike riding a bike it doesn’t just come back to ya. In all honesty I spent a lot more time as a cheerleader than actually playing but it was still a lot of fun. This year I got a taste of traveling abroad when I traveled to Peru as part of our HOPE alternative spring break program. And of course I love being a student ambassador and showing perspective students around campus, I’m sorry I won’t be there this semester to meet a lot of you.

So are you wondering where I am gonna be this semester? I will be studying in Perugia, Italy and hopefully traveling all over Europe! Words cannot describe how excited I am especially because I’m going with, and rooming with one of my friends Sam Ennis. This is us down in Rhode Island a little while ago rocking our Stonehill gear.
If you ask anyone on campus we are pretty much inseparable twins I couldn’t imagine going without her. She keeps reminding me how few days we have until we leave—just over a month. It finally just hit me the other day that I will be missing out on some of my favorite Stonehill activities like Welcome Back Weekend, Mr. Stonehill, the first snow and all that other college stuff you can’t help but love. That’s not to say I’m not wicked excited about Italy!

For those of you who may never have heard of Perugia, it is right in the heart of the country. It is known for being a typical Italian town right in the mountains. I stole some pictures off the school's website so you could check out some of the views!
Not to bad right?!? While I'm at the Umbra-Institute I'll be studying history, food, and of course Italian since I don’t really speak any so well will have to see how that goes. I do know one key phrase though...non capisco!--I don’t understand!