MeaganClem.com

I bought my plane ticket to Thailand today. I guess that makes it official! I’ll be leaving June 5th and returning on December 16th. That’s a long time to be abroad! As of right now I’m just flying with Jesse over there. Here’s our itinerary:

June 5-6 Atlanta - Chicago O’Hare - Tokyo Narita - Bangkok (yay!)

December 13 Bangkok - Tokyo for our 3 night trip

December 16 Tokyo - Chicago O’Hare - Atlanta

We’re mailing off our applications to SIIT tomorrow. I’m getting really anxious because my trip is 10 weeks away! 10 weeks! That really is very soon. I have a lot to do in the mean time, and that’s pretty scary as well!

The whole concept of Jesse and I spending 3 nights in Tokyo is intimidating. I think it’ll be a great learning experience for me. It’ll force me to use some Japanese, but tourists go to Japan all the time without knowing Japanese, so we’ll be fine.

Congratulations to the Spain and Puebla teams for the Fall! Audrey, if you read this, we’ll have to be pen pals. Jill will be in Italy for the summer - we can be pen pals too! It seems like we’re all going abroad this coming year. Especially all of the 05-06 Branch Barks!

I think I acquired a language partner today from Thailand. Her name (or nickname, really) is Nam, which means water, and she’s a student at Georgia Tech’s Language Institute. She’s already graduated from a university in Bangkok, so she’s here to work on her English, which I thought was very good. Hopefully we can hang out and talk about Thailand and Atlanta. I’m supposed to help her just by letting her practice English, and hopefully I’ll learn a bit of Thai! This is getting me really nervous about going though, because I realize that I’m going to have to work hard to get enough courage to just make friends with people with the language barrier. This should be great help!

I’m really enjoying “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”

It’s time for a policy forum update. This year’s topic was “The Impact of Information and Communications Technology on Economic Development, National Competitiveness, and Social Justice.” Sunday night we had a dinner with a speaker from the CSIS. We had some security problems before the event started, so it was delayed for almost 2 hours. In the end, everything went alright; dinner was wonderful with fillet minion and shrimp. I met Senator Sam Nunn and Georgia Tech’s President Clough as well. It was also a great time to meet other INTA students and grad students.

I made it to the forum around 12:30 on Monday, while everyone was at lunch, so Emily and I went to Barnes and Noble for a bit. When we came back, they allowed us to just sit in on the forum and listen to the speakers. It was so fascinating.
The panelists were:
Dr. Karen Mossberger - University of Chicago
Dr. Bart Cohen - Anti-Defamation League
Dr. Nancy Hafkin - Director of Knowledge Working, began the Pan African Development Information System of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa
Dr. Joseph Reid - Center for Disease Control
Dr. Sylvia Maier - my teacher and PURA advisor, Associate INTA Professor
Senator Sam Nunn

Tuesday’s workshop was wonderful as well, even though it required me being there at 7:45 am. It was held in the Wardlaw Center and there was a Conflict Reconciliation Workshop and the Gender, Empowerment, and ICTs workshop, which I was a part of.
Some of the many speakers at the workshop included:
Dr. Chetan Sharma - Datamation
Dr. Susan Schaefer-Davis - founder of the non-profit Women Weavers Online
Dr. Karen Mossberger and Nancy Hafkin again
and a lot more.
The workshop was great for me because it gave me the chance to network with a lot of these speakers, ask them how they got started with their projects, and get advice from them about my research project as well. I’m hoping to speak with a few of them later on concerning internship opportunities.

It’s definitely worth all of that preparing when I make a decent grade on something. Last week I had midterms in CS 1315, INTA 2100 Great Power Relations, and Japanese 2002. I found out earlier in the week that I had made a 94 on my INTA test, and with my 5pts extra credit paper, that puts me at a 99. I was really worried about my Japanese test once I go home and realized that I might have misunderstood the directions for an entire section. Turns out the average was an 80, and I made an 81. I’m really, really excited!

Spring break was great! I spent a lot of time sleeping and at Mystic Mountain coffee house working on different things for school. I went shopping on Thursday to the Mall of Georgia with my mom. We found an amazing business suit that I’ve been needing. It’s from Banana Republic and it’s gorgeous. I’ll be needing it for the Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum tonight and tomorrow afternoon. I saw Failure to Launch with Kristy. That was really fun and it was nice to have dinner at Monte Alban with her. It snowed on Thursday, and again on Saturday as I was leaving town. So much for a sunny spring break. It was freezing!

I’m back at school now, with a really short haircut, and working on PURA, Spanish (midterm tomorrow), and I’ll be at the Policy Forum dinner this evening.

I’m home, and I’ve been sleeping too much. I have a ton to do over this break, which doesn’t even seem fair. So far all I’ve managed to do is try on the 3 suits that I ordered to discover that none of them fit me how I’d like. It’s just frustrating. Aside from that, hopefully I’ll start on PURA today and get a lot done. It’s really scary to start writing. I’ll be going shopping on Thursday, and if it clears up outside, I’d like to play some soccer or run.  I think I’ll be at the coffee house a lot, so if you’d like to join me, give me a call.

I hope I don’t sleep all week.