Hello everybody!  My first geoblog entry.  Yay!

My name is Melanie Versaw, and I am a junior at the Penn State University majoring in both Marketing and Advertising.  I will be traveling to Ireland for the spring semester to study at the University of Limerick.  I chose to study abroad because everyone who hasn’t says they regret it.  Oh, and I didn’t want to graduate early. 

I leave relatively soon (January 18th, to be exact).  I am not prepared.  And that’s fine.  I like spontaneity. 

Most of my posts on here are going to include a lot of photographs.  Though I am not a photography/arts major, I am the Photography Editor of Onward State (an excellent PSU news blog), and I want to focus a lot of my time abroad taking photographs and bettering my photography skills. Also, pictures speak louder than words.  So hooray for photo blogs!

I tend to be a rather sarcastic person, which can influence my writing quite a bit, so watch out for that.  I do think this will be a fun experience, though.  I used to be a creative writer, but since I joined so many activities at Penn State, I hardly have time to write during the school year; I’m excited for this little blogging opportunity.  Random fact: I am obsessed with semi-colons. 

Today it is snowing in State College.  I wonder if it’s snowing in Limerick.  Does it snow in Limerick?  …like I said…SO unprepared.  But I cannot wait to go.  It will be a blast. 

I’ll update you on the fiasco I like to call packing sometime in the near future.  First, I must fight through this week (I am throwing a $30k concert tomorrow) and finals week.

^this is me

^this is where I am going

^sample of my concert photography and me hoping there is good music in Limerick.

I will hopefully get fancier with my photography as I learn. To bring up an awesome nerd moment:  the geoblog website isn’t letting people upload photos via the image uploader.  My immediate reaction:  “You can just use the HTML coding.”  Excellent, Mel.  Excellent.

Cheers,
Melanie 

Location: State College, PA