University of New England: Alexandra Panaitiu

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.