Fun fact: Week three has turned out to be one of the best thus far. It contained some of the most amazing, beautiful, and informative days that I can ever remember having. And since it is my duty to help you, readers, vicariously discover the joys of being abroad, I will do my best to share my experience with you.

In my last blog entry, I had so much to say that I forgot to mention a funny story that happened on my way back from Spain. After our long journey, from Granada to Madrid to New York, we got off the plane exhausted but glad to finally be home, or at least in the U.S. (Some of us had long car rides, or connecting flights before we would finally be at our own houses.) But before we could get through customs and through the gate to see our anxiously waiting families, we had to wait for the bags to arrive on the conveyer belt.

Hi Everyone! I'm Dave James and from March 4th until August 5th I will be studying abroad in Hamburg, Germany. Before I go any further I should make a disclaimer. The German Department at Bucknell has asked me to write a blog about my experiences in Hamburg--but in German. So, well, if you don't read German you may be out of luck. Try finding someone who does know the language, or, even better, learn German! I will only provide an extremely condensed English version of my blog at the end of each entry.

There are three subjects to this blog, but the first two go hand in hand. I have made the observation that Athens is a city of little old ladies and stray dogs. Both of these subjects are absolutely everywhere. It's not just Athens though. I think it may be all of Greece because both were highly prevalent in Nafplio, but we'll get to that in a later post.

I can't believe I've only been here two and a half weeks. I have established a routine that feels so natural and even got to play tour guide for one of my best friends from Bucknell who was visiting these past few days. While I'm continuing to find new places and figure out where everything is in relation to each other, I am also really feeling like I'm getting the hang of life here.

It's crazy to think that tomorrow I will have been in Bath for two weeks. It has been a whirlwind of activity, as I suppose the first few weeks are for anyone. We had a week of orientation, a trip to Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Lacock, and our first week of classes. And on top of all of that, I have been out and about exploring Bath with my housemates, and the local LGBT life with another girl on the program. (It's exciting how much there is to do!). And before I even arrived in Bath, I had a lovely few days staying with my uncle and family in Canterbury.

Dear Blog,

It's me, Dave. How are you? I'm good, thanks for asking. Sorry I've been neglecting you these past few weeks, I've been quite busy. Anyway, remember my last post that pertained to my travel plans? I lied to you, Blog. My Spring Break itinerary has drastically changed since then, so I'll take this opportunity to update you.

This weekend our group took its first trip into the rolling countryside of Toscana to explore and enjoy that beautiful little medieval gem called Firenze (Florence). We took the city by storm, going on a handful of tours, seeing more artistic masterpieces than most can hope to see in a life-time, and (of course) scourging the street markets and shops for leather goods. I had a great time myself, wandering and shopping, being an adventurer and seeing the sites. So here are some snap shots of the wonderful things I saw and did on this marvelous adventure...

Well, I'm leaving for the airport in 20 minutes, so I thought I'd write a short update before I left. Studying abroad has turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. When one imagines studying abroad, one thinks of walking through the streets of London or laying on a beach in Australia. They do not think about banking issues, cell phone issues, or visas. Even packing turned out be be a bigger project than I had anticipated. I now have two bags weighing a total of 100 pounds that I can kind of carry. I'm told that I'm going to have to carry my bags up stairs in Melbourne? We'll see how that goes.

It has been awhile since I last posted and much has happened. The Bucknell program took us throughout Spain after our intensive language class had ended. We toured Segovia, Salamanca, Madrid and Toledo, while eating and sleeping on Bucknell's credit card. This is a very long entry, about 1,319 words of my entertaining prose so I will be thrilled if you at least look at the pictures. We hopped on a bus early on a Thursday morning, with our homemade bocadillos (sandwiches) in hand and we were off to Segovia.

I'm writing this entry for two main reasons: 1) To publicly enjoy the fact that while the temperature at Bucknell was in the single digits, it was in the low 40s here and I got to explore some really beautiful parts of the city without my winter jacket; and 2) Because I imagine when I get back from my short study tour this weekend I will have too much to write about at once.

The last two weekends we (aka Arcadia students) have gone on trips to some of the more interesting places in Greece. Our first weekend, and the end of our orientation period, was spent in Nafplio which is in the Peloponnese. Our second weekend, which was organized by Arcadia but not sanctioned or chaperoned by faculty, was to Delphi in the mountains.

After all the hustle and bustle of traveling to Florence last weekend, I decided that it would be nice to keep it local this week. It's also getting to that point in the semester where I've realized that there may be more studying to studying abroad than I thought there would be, so I've spent a lot of time taking notes, doing homework, and organizing myself. In truth, midterms are only two weeks away(!), and the only way for me to make sure I can recall all the amazing things that I've learned thus far is to start studying now. But having all this work to do doesn't mean I haven't been having fun, too!

Hello from Down Under! My travels got off to a rocky start when my luggage didn't get checked all the way through to Melbourne, but everything worked out. The greatly anticipated 16-hour flight was not nearly as bad as I expected. Although the seats seemed even more cramped than a regular flight, we were fed constantly, slept half the time, and we had tons of new movies and TV shows to watch on demand. I was actually a little disappointed when the flight ended and I wasn't able to finish the movie I was watching.

Wow, today was busy! I ended up meeting up with a few friends this morning and we spent the day exploring Sydney. In the morning we met at Victoria Park where the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival is taking place. This morning there was some sort of dog show going on. We then walked to Darlington Harbor where they are celebrating the Chinese New Year. We watched a few dragon boat races where the rowers were all breast cancer survivors. Our next stop was the Maritime Museum. By this point, we were pretty hungry so we started heading away from the tourist area looking for something cheap.

This is an e-mail the director of our program sent to us on Friday to warn us that there was call for snow this weekend:

This last week has been amazing! I feel like I've said that a few times before, but I guess there could be much worse things than having multiple great weeks. I got to see Danish countryside, bond a whole lot with my News Media class, have substantial conversations with a few Danish students, get hands on experience in the media industry, and celebrate my 21st birthday!

So I am still a bit behind in my blog, but I'll bring you all up to speed. On Saturday, Feb. 9, (that sounds so formal, but I cannot figure out a good way to say "not this weekend, but last" for the life of me), Trina, Sofia, Vicki and I went to Cadiz for Carnival. Now, Carnival is not what a carnival is like in the United States. Even though there were cotton candy stands and clowns involved, Carnival in Cadiz has nothing to do with an amusement park. In Bucknellian terms, it was almost like House Party weekend and Halloween at the same time, with less Public Safety officers.

Ich bin sehr aufgeregt! Ich gehe morgen! Die Vorbereitungen brauchen viel Zeit: man muss viel einpacken, Reisezeitpläne überprüfen, viele Formulare ausfüllen, Tätigkeiten in Hamburg suchen, und mögliche Reiseziele auswählen. Ich hoffe, dass ich nichts vergesse... Mein Flug geht um 8:10! Ich gehe zuerst mit meinem Bruder nach München, von wo wir mit dem Zug nach Augsburg fahren werden. Wir werden meine Gastfamilie von 2004, die Schwarz's, besuchen. Am Dienstag fahren wir nach Innsbruck, Österreich für eine Woche in die Alpen. Aber es ist genug mit den langweiligen Reiseninformationen. Warum habe ich mich entschieden, in Hamburg zu studieren?

Without a doubt, my tutorial in Oxford is going to be a highlight of this semester. Every Wednesday, I take the train from Bath to Didcot Parkway, where I change trains to Oxford. Then I walk to my professor's house for the tutorial; a one-on-one session where I read my work, we talk about poetry and poets, and he gives me writing excercises. I was a little nervous the first Wednesday, intimidated by the thought of a one-on-one session with an Oxford professor. But the first session was great! And the one I've had since went really well too.

It's been a while. I have only been in Sydney for about a week, but it feels like so much longer. I have continued to spend a lot of time in the city, which is always fun. I went to the botanical gardens to watch the "Royal Rendezvous" of two cruise ships, the Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Victoria. The entire shoreline of the harbour as far as I could see was packed with people and the harbour was full of boats wanting a closer view. The sky was full of helicopters patrolling the area and taking footage from the sky.

I have heard from numerous people that Prague is their favorite city they visited when in Europe, and after spending last weekend there I can definitely understand why. It was unbelievably gorgeous, a whole lot of fun, and if I didn't love Copenhagen so much I would wish I were studying in Prague.

Some weeks it feels like I will not have enough content to write an entry and then I realize how much I like to talk. If you ask my parents, I am quite good at talking on end. (Once, when I was about two or three years old, I talked the entire 140-mile trip from Allendale, N.J., to Mystic, Conn. I guess I was too cute or to far away in the back seat for my parents to quiet me down).

I also hope that some readers of this blog are planning to study abroad and that they can learn from my experiences and my mistakes (when, and if I make one). And for those that are not, I hope you learn some things that you would not normally find in a guide book.

Anyway, back to Spain.

This morning, about 12 of us met at the center to go on a Zaharplasteio Walk. Basically we visited some of the best sweet shops in Athens. Kim, our student activities coordinator, described it as a "bar crawl only with sweet shops instead of bars." Each place had a specialty. We visited the best place to get loukoumades (honey donuts), a gelato place, a bakery well known for its milk-based desserts and one of the most famous chocolate shops in Athens.