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SEMESTER TWO BEGINS

This is my seventh week back in New York now, and lets just say its absolutely flown by. I don't know where the past seven weeks have gone - January did seem like it lasted forever, but February has absolutely flown by. 

There's no point in pretending the last seven weeks have been rosy, and I want to be completely honest and say that when I first came back off winter break I was very homesick. When you're so far from home every emotion feels a million times stronger, and its so easy to feel incredibly alone, and honestly, I found the first month of the semester really tough. I think theres a few reasons why I felt like this; I flew directly from an amazing family holiday in the Caribbean and so think I was partly experiencing some 'holiday blues'. Then the added shock of the huge temperature change didn't help- it was 30'c in the Dominican and -15'c in New York with about 2 ft snow - and I don't know about you but grim weather just makes me feel a little miserable. I started my new classes and I was immediately hit by a brick wall - I didn't think they could get any harder than last semester but they are so much more intense, and so much more demanding - and at first I just hated them. I'm definitely not good at coping with change and I hate not being good at things - and so new classes which I was struggling with and weren't enjoying didn't help. I think a final reason for the homesickness was basically because being here and studying abroad didn't have the same initial excitement that it had last semester - no adrenalin to keep me going and the curiosity of all the new experiences and adventures - and so honestly, in the beginning I really struggled. Seven weeks in, I'm doing much better and when I do think back to the first few weeks after Christmas I think 'oh get a grip!'. As well I think most people experience a fair share of 'January blues' in general after such a wonderful festive period, so I really should stop being so hard on myself! But ultimately I think its important to accept when you're struggling and know that its okay - its completely normal - and in time things do get better and easier - just like they have done.

So what exactly have I been up to? Well, not a great lot - with my classes being so much more demanding, I barely have enough time to do the work for my classes in time, let alone anything else! Although I've just said how bad weather can get me down, at the same time it has been incredible to experience such a snowy winter! I have never seen so much snow in my life, and it just looks so beautiful. The coldest temperature my weather app has said so far has been -25'c, but honestly it doesn't feel that cold?! A few weeks ago we got a winter snow storm warning, and rumours were going around that classes would be cancelled... and they were! I woke up at 5am to an email saying there would be no classes because the storm was expected to arrive at 10am- there was no snow at 5am at all! But it snowed the entire day - just five minutes walking outside in it and you were covered! We were meant to be helping out at the Study Abroad fair that day, and still went down to main campus to help out with some tabling - no transport was running so we walked it and they had just completely given up attempting to plough the roads. The pictures are incredible. Of course we took the opportunity to make a snowman too - it was tiny and took us hours?! I never realised how much skill they take!!! Maybe we just didn't have ideal snowman snow, I'm not sure! The weather is actually extremely temperamental. Last Wednesday it was TWENTY TWO degrees celsius - everyone was wearing shorts and t-shirts. Thursday? It was back to 0'c and we had at least 1 ft of snow- its bizarre! 

In the meantime I've just been doing a heck of a lot of work, spending time with my friends, and have been enjoying trying out new gym classes too. I would say I feel more like an actual American student this semester, and a proper member of this university - rather than just visiting and being an outsider as such. I think that in itself is pretty cool as in a way it gives me the real experience of studying at an American university. 

As I've said my classes are much harder - I'm studying Russian and post Soviet Union politics, Minority politics in the Middle East, American Foreign Policy and Introduction to Environmental Policy. My favourite so far is the Russian class; I've never learned anything at all about Russia and each class is so interesting. 3/4 of my classes do pop quizzes, which I do NOT like. I'm not good with the element of surprise and hate not been given the chance to prepare!! 

If you hadn't realised yet, I post on instagram stories a LOT, so if you should really be following me on there if you want to be really nosy. 

Snow Angels were made (obviously) 

Thats it on the update for now, I should be back with more posts from now on - I had an amazing weekend last week to tell you about and what should be a pretty cool weekend this week too. 

Elsie xoxo