I’m already here for more than a week! The first couple of days were rainy and misty because of a storm in Florida. Now, the weather is much nicer–I’ve been to the pool on Clairmont Campus on Sunday. Every building is air conditioned; not an urban legend indeed that you really need a pullover inside.
Atlanta Midtown Skyline at Atlantic Station
I did a lot during the last days: I’ve been to Maggie’s, a small neighborhood bar which is much rather a student’s bar (I bet you can’t graduate form Emory without having been there), to a house-party, to a kitchen-drinking-party, to Atlantic Station which is a shopping/entertainment/dining area (to which an Emory Shuttle runs on Saturdays), we played Nintendo Wii, we had dinner at the oyster-bar Six Feet Under, we played tennis, we were hanging out at the Clairmont swimming pool, we’ve been to the night club Opera, and last but not least: we had a few onboarding classes.
Last week, I traveled to Salzburg and Vienna to enjoy the Austrian way of life one last time for the next months. I just walked through the cities and enjoyed the sights, coffee and dinner. On Wednesday I had the last party with my friends. Florian had his guitar with him and we sang Austrian songs. We spent the end of the evening at Rox. Thank you my friends for coming!
So I am in Atlanta with a bulk of luggage, a lot of pictures from Austria and a head full of nice memories from my homecountry and time with my friends!
The last few days a lot of work for my exchange program was completed. On Tuesday last week I got notified that I will receive full credit for all GBS (Goizueta Business School) Emory courses making them transferrable to my curriculum. Having that prerequisite completed, I applied for the exchange scholarship right away. On Monday morning, not even after a week, I got an email that my application was accepted. They handled it quite promptly!
My appointment at the consular section of the US embassy was last Friday. They took all my ten fingerprints! Today I got my passport with the visa returned. It’s looking stylish! 😉 I also purchased a translation of my driving license.
The last major thing is to find an apartment. Work in progress…
This evening it was the last time to go out for karaoke with my friends in Austria before I leave to the US. It was great! We had no camera with us. So here is a picture from a former karaoke evening.
One of my last steps for my year abroad is to apply for a visa. It is a lot of paperwork, and I am going to have a personal interview at the embassy, which I arranged today. So the next days I’m going to collect all the informations for the forms, going to a photographer and pay the fees. The whole procedure for the non-immigrant visa application can be read here.
The last days I got my courses and an Emory e-mail address assigned. I got almost all courses for which I subscribed. Sadly, I didn’t get the most important one, which is Strategic Management. But there is still a chance to get into this class in the Add/Drop/Swap-Week – the first week of the semester. Anyway, at this time I’m subscribed at the following courses:
Marketing Strategy (Marketing)
Ideation (Marketing)
Negotiations (Organization and Management)
Consulting (Organization and Management)
Leading and Managing Change (Organization and Management)
Business Communications (Communication)
I have to decide on four courses which is the usual workload of the students at this university. So I’m going to drop two or three of them–depending on the Strategic Management course…
