Pre-Departure Orientation

I'm going to blog about this now while it's still fresh in my mind. I got out of the pre-departure orientation about 40 minutes ago and it was actually more informative/useful than I expected it to be. We went over the basics and strongly emphasized safety and what to do in the event of an emergency abroad. We also went over how to avoid getting pick pocketed, blending in with the locals, communication with those back home, managing money and things of that nature.

There were maybe 15 or so of us there and we got the chance to introduce ourselves to each other and say where we were going. To my surprise there were five engineering students in the room! I was not expecting that and apparently neither was another student who said she expected mostly hospitality and liberal arts students to be studying abroad. Ha!

It was really cool to know where everyone was going. Lots of UK students (which is to be expected), a couple going to Austria, Sweden, a student who speaks not one word of Mandarin but is going to Hong Kong anyway (that will be interesting), Ireland, Australia etc.

So yeah that was that. In the end we all got sweet UCF study abroad t shirts and country specific travel cards!

-SX