University of New England: Alexandra Panaitiu

Hi, everyone! I’m back… So, as I said last time, I am, as of now, going to slowly but surely introduce you to my UNE experience. In this post, I’m going to tell you all about a very recent event I attended, namely the “International, Multicultural and Exchange Student Reception,� organized by USM (University of Southern Maine), in Portland (at its 18th edition, in fact); the whole idea was to get high-school and college international, exchange, or visiting students from all over Maine together, to share impressions, get to know one another, have fun, eat, and win prizes:) Yup, there was a door prize drawing, among other things. And I even won something – a gift certificate consisting in 4 free season passes to USM sport events… which is awesome…except…I hate sports (no offence to anyone) and I am totally clueless to anything and everything sports-related. Well, not everything, I guess; I mean, I do know that soccer involves a ball, hockey involves ice, and other really sophisticated stuff like that :-D Anyway, it’s still winning something:) And another girl, Hannah, won 2 passes for…something…to do with…skiing…I think….anyhow, the idea is that there are a lot of winners at UNE!

this is the certificate

guess: which one am I? :)

Here’s the link, if you want to learn more about the event: http://www.wacmaine.org/

Other than that, the whole thing was fun, from the start. We were about ten students from UNE and Mrs. Donna Gaspar, from Student Affairs, took us in one of the school’s vans (Portland is about 20 minutes away). It was kind of funny that she had us fill out emergency contact forms and then told us it was her first time driving a van…hahaha…Seriously now, she’s great and we’re glad she took us (she had to postpone a flight to NY for that, too).

When we got there, we had to sign up and write our names on post-its, then tag them to our countries, on the corresponding maps (you can see that in the pictures). It was nice that under each country there was a small sticker with a few general guidelines regarding that particular state.

My post-it is at the bottom right corner

   

   

. It was really nice and educative to just go up and talk to people, learn where they were from, how they got there, hear different languages… For instance, talking to a guy from Peru I learnt that his boss was Romanian – I had no idea there were other Romanians in the Portland-Biddeford area! Or, there was and exchange student from Germany, who, with the occasion of this event, found out that Lithuania was in Europe=)) See, it was a useful experience for everybody there :))

We also talked with the teachers there, and some of the host families for the exchange students…Remember how I said that, if anything, the people here are incredibly friendly? Well, I was talking to a lady – a host for one of the high-school students – and, after roughly 10 minutes of conversation, she just invited me to Thanksgiving dinner…just like that… Coming from Eastern Europe, that’s just… so unexpected…I’m pretty sure that constantly coming across attitudes like that around here is going to slowly shape me in positive ways… And that’s part of what this college system is about, right?

Ok, that's all for today... But I have a busy weekend ahead of me, so there will probably be more "blog-material" soon enough. Till then, take care, everyone!
Anda.

Posted by Alexandra Panaitiu at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello, everyone!
If you're reading this, that means you clicked on the "Meet Alexandra" button, so let's do just that: meet me :)
First of all, my name is Alexandra, but I go by Anda, which is short for Alexandra - everybody calls me that, so feel free to do the same.
I don't want to bore you with a lot of details, so I’m not going to provide a full biography + a CV, spiced with a list of goals and achievements:) I'm just going to offer a short introduction of myself.
I am a freshman here at UNE, I'm majoring in Medical Biology and minoring in Philosophy (as of last week); also, I'm in the Honors Program that UNE offers and I work at the campus library. Oh, and as you may have figured out, I’m an international student – I was born and raised in Romania (if it makes things easier, I’m from Transylvania, which I’m sure most of you have heard about, and that is actually a region in Romania); I graduated from high school there in June and, shortly after that, I came here, to attend college. Actually, I’ve been here for a bit over 2 months and, honestly, I love it.
Now, from personal experience, I’m ready to bet that you’re wondering “How did she get all the way to Maine?�… at least that’s what most people around here have asked me (speaking of which, I’ve never met nicer people, honestly – if anything, this is a really friendly environment). Well, anyway, when they do ask me that, I usually say “By googling�… Yes, surfing the internet; a lot! I decided that I’d try applying abroad last September – little did I know what I was embarking on. When you’re a high school student in a small town of a country that’s not exactly well-known, no one’s going to prepare you to go off and study 7,000 miles away. So, I just started by searching words related to what I wanted to study (i.e., I want to be a geneticist some day) and, step by step, I got more and more familiar with the whole “college application process� and more and more involved; I took all my exams, wrote all my essays, put all the paper work together (that was a big amount of paper), mailed all my materials, and, in January, I received my acceptance reply from UNE; does it sound simple? Well… it’s not:) And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to become a blogger: thinking back, I remember how difficult it sometimes was and how I would have wanted to find more information from and about international students.
So, look at this as a sort of “mission statement� of mine as an ambassador blogger (catchy title, huh? ;) ): I hope to be able to help prospective students, whether international or not, to get an accurate idea of how college life is and what it takes to get (and stay) here. I’m simply going to offer glimpses of what we’re up to around here and try to answer some of the questions that you, as prospective students or as parents of the latter, may have.
Wow, that sounded so “official� – it’s not going to be like that, I promise, that’s what you have handbooks for; in my defense, it’s almost midnight and I’ve been studying for an exam :-D So, before I prolong this post so much that we all end up falling asleep (me typing and you reading), I’m going to call it a night:) And next time I post I’ll start letting you in on my experiences here, at UNE.
Take care, everyone!
Anda.

Posted by Alexandra Panaitiu at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)