Happy Holidays!

The winter break is almost over and it has totally flown by! I flew home from Leicester via Shannon Ireland, where I stayed with my Irish cousins for a few days, which was very cool. I got to see the house that my great-grandmother was born in!    

She was born behind that red door, and the house is still in my family. It was pretty cool to learn more about my family’s history and even the cousins I had never met before I came to stay with them were amazingly kind and hospitable. On one of our drives through the mountains, we stopped at the top to take in the view. Ireland is definitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

Then after getting home, it was a whirlwind of finishing up essays and seeing friends and family!

We baked some delicious Italian pies, which are basically giant calzones- some were sausage and ricotta and some were tomato and cheese. All were delicious! We used to use about 40lbs of dough (making 40 pies- each is one pound of dough) but we usually do about 15lbs now. My cousins are all young so we usually make some of the pies half-sized and I think we ended up with about 25 pies.

And of course I was so happy to see this one!

And now, as the break draws to a close, I have still more work to do. I have another exam paper to write for one of my physics classes, and I need to sort out both housing at Holy Cross next year and my class schedule for this upcoming semester!

Finding housing for senior year at Holy Cross when you’re studying abroad is a confusing and challenging ordeal. Even if you make plans before you leave, when some people in your group study abroad and some don’t, those plans change, and then there’s a scramble to find a group when you get back. The deadline for housing isn’t until March, so hopefully it’ll all work out well.

For my classes next semester, I realized that the huge-lecture-hall style doesn’t work for me to learn physics, so I’m planning to take only humanities courses next semester. The way I had planned my schedule before coming to Leicester, I would take two physics classes last semester (which I did) and one would count as an elective and the other would count as my Thermal physics requirement. However, that didn’t work out, because although I got my courses approved before I left, they weren’t approved when I emailed them halfway through the semester! So it turns out that both of the classes will count for some credit- but both will count as general elective credit, and the thermal class wouldn’t count for Thermal physics. So next semester, I’m planning to take classes that will count for my core requirements and not try to count anything for my major, which means that I’ll have four classes I need to finish senior year for my major.

I’m not sure if I want to go back, because I miss Holy Cross and my friends and family from home when I’m gone, but I know I have to, so I’m going to try to make the best of it. Which brings me to the subject of my next post: what I learned my first semester of study abroad! So more later!

xx Michaela

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