Rubric: A New One by fanny stray

Hello everyone! I am a new face here on the CIE blog. My name is Fanny Stray and I’m from Sweden. I applied for Maryville College last winter and during this spring. I’m only going to stay here for one semester, so I’m going to enjoy this time as much as possible.

Here, in Maryville, my major is International Business but back home in Sweden my major is Informationdesign. It’s basically how to make information more approachable for your specific target group in Public Relations. Quite different from International Business, don’t you think? I just wanted to study something different while being in America.

It has been one month and three weeks since I arrived to campus, and it feels like I’ve been living here for much, much longer. There was so much to do here the few weeks before the school officially started and now there’s even more to do with classes and homework! However, that is not what I’m going to talk about in this post. I want to tell you how my trip here to Maryville was, or at least what I can remember from it.

I left my family by the gate in Stockholm Arlanda in Sweden around 7am. My plane was leaving around 9 am, but they always want you to check in early if problems arise. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I let some tears appear when I said goodbye to my mother, father and younger sister; but that is long forgotten now.

My first flight was eight hours, from Stockholm to New York. New Ark airport is definitely one of the biggest airports I’ve ever been to. You went from different gates with train! How ridiculous is that? My second flight from New York to Washington D.C. got belated due to bad weather, but after two hours of wait I could finally board the flight to the capital of the United States of America. From Washington I took a flight for McGhee Tyson airport and I landed in Tennessee around midnight. I was a day too early for the International House to bring me to Maryville College, but sliding down into the hotel bed in Jameson Inn has never felt better. When I arrived at Maryville College at noon the next day I got welcomed by Kirsten Sheppard and since then everything has run smoothly around me.

So that’s me, a new one. I’m a Swedish exchange student, here in Maryville College, for one semester and life has never been more perfect.