Study at the Rome Center in Fall 2021 - Applications are OPEN!

Applications are open now for the Fall 2021 Semester in Italy through the U of A Rome Center. The deadline to apply is soon!

Visit the Rome Center Global Studies Program Website and Application to learn more.

The city of Rome, with its rich cultural resources, offers an endless source of learning opportunities for students from all over the world. Students are invited to view the city as a laboratory, where they can examine historical Rome and review the evolution of an urban context over 2,000 years in development. The semester program offers students an extended opportunity to explore the city's unique stratification and uncover the very different, and sometimes contradictory, transformations the city has undergone.

Situated in the heart of the city, the Rome Center is just minutes from the Vatican, Piazza Navona, and other legendary sites in Rome. Students live in close proximity to the center, tracing the paths of ancient Romans and centuries of Christian pilgrims as they make their way to classes each day.

Courses are offered from faculty traveling with students to Rome, as well as on-site local faculty. The great variety of coursework on offer will allow students from many majors to complete substantial credit towards their major/minor requirements. Check the 'Academics' tab for a full list of courses.

Program Features:
-Accommodation in one of the best neighborhoods of Rome
-Complete support from our Student Services Team
-Optional Weekend Excursions in Italy led by program faculty

See our Rome Center COVID Operations Plan for more on how we are responding to the ongoing global pandemic.

Learn more about the University of Arkansas home in Palazzo Taverna and our housing for students in central Rome on the Rome Center Website.

Ask Me Anything: Women Abroad #HogsAbroad

What it is really like to study abroad as a woman? Join the Office of Study Abroad in celebrating Women's History Month on Monday, March 29, at 4pm for an “ask me anything” panel discussion featuring three study abroad alumnae. This virtual event will be an opportunity to hear about their personal stories and their advice for students looking to study abroad in the future, from choosing to take the leap, to traveling abroad, to leveraging those experiences post-graduation.

Meet our panelists:

Ayesha Erkin

Class of 2015
Architecture major, double minor in Sustainability & Historic Preservation
Studied abroad in Czech Republic and Italy
"Studying abroad not only expands your mind, but also your network. I absolutely loved being in new countries, but the people I connected with are still friends 7+ years later."

Rachel Pohl
Class of 2020
Civil Engineering major, double minor in Mathematics & Sustainability
Studied abroad in Belize, Italy and Denmark
"Studying abroad challenges you to get out of your comfort zone and learn about others, their communities, and their cultures. I cherish each opportunity to study abroad because it grew my appreciation for others and for our similarities and differences we all have."

Thea Winston
Class of 2018
Accounting major, minor in African & African American Studies
Studied abroad in Vietnam, UK and Brazil
"Students should study abroad because it makes you so much more aware of the world. Sometimes, in the U.S., it can feel like we're in our own little bubble, but the world is so much bigger. Studying abroad, and truly attempting to learn while there, provides a new perspective and is an invaluable experience."

Click here to register and submit questions: https://uark.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYodu-sqTotHN0nFjiWcIatwjggHfdteznx. Our panelists will take questions from attendees during the event as well.

Ask Me Anything: #StudyAbroadSoBlack #StudyAbroadDay #HogsAbroad

What it is really like to study abroad as a Black student? Join the Office of Study Abroad in celebrating Black History Month & National Study Abroad Day on Monday, February 22, at 4pm for an “ask me anything” panel discussion featuring three Black University of Arkansas study abroad alumni. Our panelists will share their own stories and take AMA questions from attendees. This virtual event will be an opportunity to hear about their personal experience abroad and their advice for students looking to study abroad in the future, from choosing to take the leap, to traveling abroad, to leveraging those experiences post-graduation. Meet our panelists:

Cordarius Enright
Class of 2016
International Business
Studied abroad in Panama and Vietnam (and Europe, pre-University)
“Not only was I the first in my family to attend college but, I was also the first to visit a foreign country. I was nervous yet optimistic for both experiences. Because I took a leap of faith, studying abroad in college has been one of the most impactful moments in my life. The best advice I can share: just do it. Your future self will thank you.”

MyKayla Bowser
Class of 2022
Clinical Mental Health Counseling
Studied abroad in Italy (U of A Rome Center)
“Studying abroad meant conquering many firsts for me. It was my first time getting on a plane, going out of the country, getting on a boat and a train, and even going to the beach. I'll miss the smell of orange trees in Sant'Angelo, climbing St. Peter's Dome, and walking across the Ponte Sisto to class every day. It was an experience I'll cherish for the rest of my life. But most importantly, it gives me a perfect reason to go back!”

Tamara Kuykendall
Class of 2020
Educational Studies
Studied abroad in Belize
“Can You Belize My View? The Cloudy Weather Couldn't Ruin My Day! We visited the Mayan Ruins at Xunantunich, and it was a very refreshing experience! Climbing the Ruins was a little challenging, but the view at the top was worth it!

I gained a deeper passion for education after having the opportunity to educate the Dangriga students about the importance of emotional awareness and self-care. Higher education is where I belong!"

Click here to register and submit questions: https://tinyurl.com/StudyAbroadAMA. Our panelists will take questions from attendees during the event as well.

Achieving Professional Goals Through a Virtual Internship in Engineering #HogsAbroad (Virtually) in Germany

Blog post courtesy of USAC

Max Hedman, a computer engineering major at the University of Arkansas participated in USAC’s Global Perspectives Virtual Internship in Summer 2020. Hear how Max used this opportunity conducting research with a professor in Lüneburg, Germany to establish himself in his field of choice, network with professionals, and reach some pretty exciting career goals — all before graduation.

Why did you choose to participate in a virtual internship?

I was originally planning to study abroad out of country in order to strengthen my language skills. However, my plan was interrupted by COVID. I heard about USAC through my school’s study abroad office and I thought that taking a virtual internship would be a great way to participate in another culture while still improving my engineering skills.

How does a virtual internship fit into your academic and professional goals?

Academically, I was able to branch out to a different field of engineering that I had never worked with before, but had always interested me. The skills that I learned have already helped me out in my classes, and it gave me taste of what working in a professional setting is like.

What organization did you intern with and what is their primary function as a company?

I did not intern with an organization so much as with a professor. The purpose of the internship was more of a research internship with the end goal of generating novel ideas worthy of a paper. We performed tests using an advanced control scheme that we built in Matlab Simulink that simulated the pathing of our test robot, the Robotino.

What were your responsibilities? What did an average day look like for you?

First, as controls engineering was a new topic to me, I worked with the professor to learn the basics of control theory and in particular, SMC (Sliding Mode Control) and MPC (Model Predictive Control). My typical day during this phase of the internship would consist of educational zoom meetings and also self teaching of subjects like differential equations and linear algebra, math subjects that I had not taken in class, but would need for the project we would build.

Second, we built the program. The Simulink file that we started with was the results of the some of the professor’s work with his graduate students. This phase consisted of deriving equations which and then implementing them into Matlab Simulink. This was the most difficult phase as we had to root out and search for errors and figure ways to solve them when they became apparent. Most of what we built, we built while in a zoom meeting, so we could both see what was going on. This was a very satisfying part of the internship as many of the bugs we would find would take 10+ hours to solve. This was great as the problem solving feel of the entire thing is one of the reasons I want to be an engineer.

Third, once the program was mostly finished, barring several non-critical bugs, we started to put a lot of work into the paper. The professor and I both wrote different sections and made many edits until the end product was perfect and ready for submission into the conference.

Some of the work you did during your internship was published. Can you tell us more about that project?

The work that we published was a control scheme for an omnidirectional mobile robot. The control scheme used MPC (model predictive control) in order to generate an optimal trajectory that the robot would attempt to follow by using SMC (sliding mode control) which is a corrective, robust control strategy that compensates for error (both externally caused and natural physical limitations). The result is a low consumption scheme that can compensate for error and work around constraints (which can be implemented in the form of a cost function).

The paper has not been published yet as the conference is not until March, and papers are published in the conference proceedings, but we have submitted the paper and are waiting to hear if it will be accepted. The conference is tough to get into, but I feel we have a very strong subject for the paper, with a good simulation results to back it up.

Did you have to overcome any cultural obstacles during your internship (such as language barriers or different approaches to office culture)?

Due to the one on one nature of my internship, there were not too many cultural issues. The professor that I worked with was incredibly helpful and supportive.

One of my hobbies is languages, I like to learn all sorts of new words and learn their etymology, so it was very cool to learn some (very very little) Italian during the internship. I feel like breaking (even if ever so slightly) a language barrier makes the entire situation much more welcoming and I was glad to be able to expand my horizons to learn more about different cultures.

What are the benefits of a virtual internship?

The best part of a virtual internship is the convenience of it. I have found it far easier to schedule emergency meetings or to work parallelly (keeping in mind we worked on a computer simulation) in a virtual environment. I think this is a smaller point, but having experience working in a virtual environment will be quite important for my field as going into the future a lot of my work will be online, and I won’t always be able to meet clients in person.

What was the hardest part of your internship? How did you learn to overcome or manage this hurdle?

The hardest part of my internship had to be the building and testing of the program, although it was satisfying when we figured it out, many errors were very difficult to track down due to the size of the program. Additionally, because of the nature of simulating with multiple feedback loops, a small error in one spot may cause the program to completely crash or project error somewhere else.

What was your favorite part of your internship?

My favorite part was working with the professor, you can tell that he has a love for the subject and that he has a love for teaching. If I had to give a specific moment though, discovering that we had been using an incorrect constant and finally solving an error that had been in the program from the start was amazing. I remember it well because we solved it on a zoom call where we had a mini celebration afterwards. I remember saying “cross your fingers” before we tested it. Truly an awesome moment.

What is next for your academic career, and what are your professional plans for after graduation?

While I am still taking classes and working towards my major, I plan to take as many internships, study abroad opportunities, and co-ops as I can. I really want to gather a lot of experience so that I can better know what to expect (and do a better job) when I graduate. After graduation, I am hoping to work with a company (maybe even one that took an internship with) until I understand the field better and then I would like to start a cybersecurity consulting firm. I do have to admit though, while these are goals that I would like to work towards, a lot can change by the time I graduate, so I feel like the best plan is to look out for special opportunities and be ready and able to adapt if necessary. As I have been told before, sometimes the best engineers are the ones that can learn to climb the ladder sideways, branch out to different things.

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Learn more about USAC’s Global Perspectives virtual internship program.

Interested in pursuing a virtual international internship? This innovative program allows students to put accessibility and mobility concerns aside to develop meaningful professional connections with international companies, NGOs, health and education organizations, and so on. Although it’s not a substitute for a traditional on-site experience, these programs provide a project-based pathway for students to connect with international organizations. Learn more about options to internationalize your degree plan by adding a virtual international internship to your semester.

Critical Language Scholarship Webinar Thursday, October 29

The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is a fully-funded intensive language and cultural immersion study abroad program for American students at U.S. colleges and universities. Each summer, students spend eight weeks abroad studying one of 15 critical languages, 9 of which require no previous language study. The program includes intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to promote rapid language gains.

The application is now live and available online at: https://www.clscholarship.org/apply and an overview of application tips can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WENN81o9WS

With the summer 2021 application closing on Tuesday, November 17 at 8:00pm Eastern, program staff are hosting one final information session for students in Arkansas to learn more about the CLS Program and the application process. This session will be on Thursday, October 29 at 12:00pm CDT and the registration link can be found at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Kwsz0FTOQRWfwqeFHhgQ_A

Wrapping Up #HogsAbroad in Australia

Hey there blog,

I’m starting to wrap up the semester. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I was sad. We have finals coming up in a few weeks and then it’ll be time to go home.

Last week, Austin, Christy, and I went on a little girls trip to Singapore. It was unreal. It was about an 8 hour flight to Changai Airport. After the flight from Dallas to Sydney (about 17 hours), any flight seems short.

Singapore Airport

The Singapore airport was unreal. It’s been ranked as the world's nicest airport and after walking around, you can definitely tell why.

We walked around the city and did all the typical touristy things like going to the Gardens by the Bay and the museum.

Garden by the Bay

On Saturday night, we decided to do a once in a lifetime thing. We booked a room to stay in the famous Marina Bay Sands hotel. It’s ranked as one of the most iconic hotels in the world. I’m not sure how many times in this life I’ll get the opportunity to be in Singapore so we thought it would be such a fun memory to have.

Roof Top Pool at Marina Bay Sands

The hotel was lovely and the pool on top is absolutely unreal. It was such an amazing experience and trip. I’m so grateful for all the memories and opportunities I’ve had by studying abroad.

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Junior Donna Quedens is spending the spring 2019 term in Australia through our U of A Exchange program at the University of Newcastle.

Read more from Donna at https://lifedownunder.blog/

Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/

The Great Ocean Road #HogsAbroad in Australia

On the second half of mid-semester break, some friends and I traveled along The Great Ocean Road. To start off our journey, we walked around Melbourne. I got to see the tennis courts where The Australian Open is held. It was really cool to see the courts because I have seen them on T.V. so many times.

The Great Ocean Road is an Australian National Heritage listed 243-kilometre stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia. We stopped along some beautiful places. Some of the best places were The 12 Apostles, London Bridge, The Tree Top Walkway, the Thunder Cave, and Umpherston Sinkhole. We just drove along the road, stopping wherever we pleased. It was not as structured as New Zealand like in my last post. All-in-all, such a fun way to spend my last week of vacation. Below are some pictures from the trip.

School has started back up, and now I'm off studying again.

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Junior Christine Rheinberger is spending the spring 2019 term in Australia through our U of A Exchange program at the University of Newcastle.

Read more from Christine at https://crheinberger16.wixsite.com/website/blog

Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/

Interested in becoming a HogsAbroad Social Media Ambassador like Christine? Contact Katie at ksabo@uark.edu.

Hallo, aangenaam! #HogsAbroad in Belgium

So today marks three days of classes in Belgium, and we have learned so much! The phrase used in the title of this post means “Hello, nice to meet you!” in Dutch, which is part of what we learned on the first day of class. We had an introduction to some basic Dutch vowel sounds and a crash course on simple communication, like how to order food and drinks (super important haha). Another part of class this week that was really interesting was learning about the fermentation science behind beer making, and then getting to try out different beers to see how the methods affected the taste of the beer. This was the perfect way to experience so many Belgian beers! We’ve also been learning about Belgian history, Belgian plants, and how they recycle their water.

In our lectures we learned that Belgium has several sustainability labels on their products, such as Animal Welfare, so shoppers here are very informed on what products they’re buying. On the raw materials side of things, we learned there’s an abundance of farm animals in the country. Therefore, Belgian farmers have used the waste produced by these animals to fertilize their fields, which has really improved the quality of the soil. Wastewater is also recycled using constructed wetlands, which is helpful because there’s currently a shortage of water due to a lack of rain this past winter and summer. This water goes towards plants like Brussels Endives, Brussels Sprouts, and Azalea Spp. Moving on to our tours, we’ve visited VIB (Flanders Institute of Biotechnology), De Oude Kaasmakerij, and Fromunion. VIB contained a lot of high tech methods for tracking plant water levels, weights, and growth so that humans didn’t have to do so much manual work. This freed up their time to work on transporting certain DNA traits, like resistance to the heat or cold, to their plants to start tracking and breeding into future generations. De Oude and Fromunion were both about cheese production, which has been transformed into a highly efficient process with the help of machines.

I’m pretty curious about how important the sustainability practices we learned in class are in the eyes of citizens and government officials in the country. From what I’ve observed, I’d say there’s a lot of money that goes into this, and it makes me wonder about how much of the country’s budget is put toward supporting the people researching or implementing them. I’m also curious about how many students choose to go into these kinds of fields compared to others. For example, do more of their students choose to study agricultural or business topics? We have a pretty good amount of students going into agriculture at Arkansas, so I’d like to find out what Belgians typically like to study.

Speaking of differences between Arkansas and Belgium, they are seen in the little things as well as the blatantly obvious things. Starting with the blatantly obvious, the architecture is the complete opposite of anything we have in Arkansas. This is because most of the buildings here are older than Arkansas itself (older than the United States actually haha). It’s like stepping back in time to the 1500s with all of these towering Cathedrals, the castle, and the cobblestone streets. Everywhere you look is full of history, and it’s like being inside a movie set. I expected this, but was still blown away by the details in the buildings that simply just aren’t seen anywhere in America. The second big difference is the multilingualism of almost everyone in Belgium, which was what we learned about prior to the trip. The country itself speaks French, Dutch, and German, and pretty much everyone can speak English. This is great for us as tourists, but makes me wish Americans had more opportunity to practice speaking other languages than English. We take Spanish or French in high school for two years in Arkansas, but then forget it all, which is a shame! Some smaller differences that I’ve experienced are the bathrooms, the food/restaurant side of things, and the transportation. To sum it up quickly, bathrooms here are the BOMB.COM (the walls go all the way from ceiling to floor with no holes between the doors, so get it together America), the stoverij, chocolate covered waffles, Belgian fries, and beer are A+, there’s no splitting the bill (bring cash and get Venmo), tipping is not a thing, and literally everyone rides their bike to get where they wanna go. There are others, but this blog post would be way longer than it already is. I guess you’ll just have to come here and experience it all yourself!

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My name is Brooke Larkin, and I’m an Industrial Engineering student at the University of Arkansas. For the next two weeks I’ll be posting about my experiences and thoughts on everything I do in Belgium. Thanks for checking in!

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Senior Industrial Engineering major Brooke Larkin is spending the May intersession 2019 in Belgium with our U of A Faculty-Led: Sustainability in the Euro Food System with the help of our Office of Study Abroad Scholarship and the College of Engineering.

Read more from Brooke at https://sites.uark.edu/brlarkin/

Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/

Are We There Yet? #HogsAbroad in Belgium

Alright… here we go. Finals are almost over, and soon I’ll be in Belgium participating in the last class of my college experience! This will be my first time abroad and I have so many things I’m looking forward to seeing and doing while there. I specifically chose this study abroad because I am very interested in observing the similarities and differences in how safety, sustainability, manufacturing, and continuous improvement are approached in Europe compared to what I have experienced in my internships at Tyson and JB Hunt. Tyson in particular gave me some experience in high volume production plants within the food industry that put a big emphasis on minimizing waste and using every part of their raw materials that they could to be turned into a marketable product. As an Industrial Engineer, I get the chance to apply what I’ve learned in many different industries, and this look into food production, biofuels, and sustainability will give me insight into industries that I have yet to experience.

One of the plants we’ll be visiting on our trip is called Eco Treasures. This company takes the leftover pulp from the fruit juice industry and breaks it down into fruit seed oils and powders, which can then be used as food supplements, natural colorants, and cosmetic products. Basically, they use everything they can get out of this leftover pulp and turn it into products that can be marketed. Things that would seem like waste to people are repurposed into products that have value, and I’m very excited to see the technology used in the manufacturing process that makes all this possible. The manufacturing and ergonomics behind these sustainability processes is what I am most familiar with as an Industrial Engineer, so learning about supercritical CO2 extraction and cold pressing in the process will be very interesting to me. I’m also curious to see if the layout played a role within the design of this particular plant in order to eliminate unnecessary wastes of time or movement. Visiting all the plants/facilities on the itinerary will give me the chance to see new perspectives on how problems and processes are approached, and it will be interesting to see if these plants/facilities in Belgium operate in a similar fashion or if they are unique to their own areas.

I won’t only get new perspectives while in Belgium. There will be plenty of new foods, drinks, and architecture to experience as well! I’m definitely ready to see if all the hype about Belgian chocolate is true since I have the worst sweet tooth on the planet. In addition to that, staying in a place that looks like you’re hundreds of years in the past for two weeks is going to be surreal. Just meeting people from the university and the city will be a great source of knowledge about the culture of Belgium and I plan on taking advantage of that as much as possible. I want to learn some of the language, go to the most popular places, and be the most obvious tourist ever. So, until then, I will be packing my bags to max capacity (while still managing to forget something) and anxiously waiting for the day we fly out. Goodbye for now!

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My name is Brooke Larkin, and I’m an Industrial Engineering student at the University of Arkansas. For the next two weeks I’ll be posting about my experiences and thoughts on everything I do in Belgium. Thanks for checking in!

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Senior Industrial Engineering major Brooke Larkin is spending the May intersession 2019 in Belgium with our U of A Faculty-Led: Sustainability in the Euro Food System with the help of our Office of Study Abroad Scholarship and the College of Engineering.

Read more from Brooke at https://sites.uark.edu/brlarkin/

Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/

Been a Minute #HogsAbroad in Australia

New Friend Down Under

Hello Blog.

It’s been a minute. These last couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy. We had our mid-semester break and I got to do some traveling and I can’t wait to share some of it with you all.

Camper Van in NZ

First week of break, a few friends and I went to New Zealand. We rented a camper van and traveled around the south island. New Zealand is beautiful. Words and pictures just don’t do it justice. It should be on everyone's travel bucket list.

Arthur's Pass

Heli-Hike on Fox Glacier

Fox Glacier

Fox Glacier

We flew into Christchurch and drove to Arthur’s Pass and hiked up to a waterfall. The next day we went on a helihike where a helicopter flew us out to a glacier and a tour guide walked around with us. I got to sit shotgun in the helicopter which was pretty cool.

Nevis Swing

The next day we drove to Queenstown where I swung on the Nevis Swing. The views were amazing. I've come to realize that I'm quite the adrenaline junkie so this was really fun.

Kayaking Milford Sound

The next day we went to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is the prettiest place I have ever laid eyes on. We kayaked across the sound and got to take in all the views from the water.

Week 2: Great Ocean Road

Great Ocean Road

We drove back to Christchurch and flew back to Sydney after a week in New Zealand. We then had about a two day turn around and we flew to Melbourne to drive the Great Ocean Road.Road Signs Down Under

Road signs Down Under

This was my first time driving on the left side of the road. It was quite stressful at first but I got the hang of it pretty quick.

Great Ocean Road

Great Ocean Road

New Friend Down Under

We drove from Melbourne to Adelaide and stopped to do a treetop walk and look at views such as the 12 Apostles along the way.

We got back to Newcastle late Monday night and it was back to school and real life Tuesday. I’ve had an amazing two weeks but it’s nice to not live out of a suitcase for a while.

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Junior Donna Quedens is spending the spring 2019 term in Australia through our U of A Exchange program at the University of Newcastle.

Read more from Donna at https://lifedownunder.blog/

Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/

Sleep is for the weak #HogsAbroad in Australia

Wow! I did not realize I had not posted in a month! This past month has been hectic, and it does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon. I had a lot of homework, assessments, and quizzes to do at the beginning of April. School picked up heavy because mid-semester break was coming. 

The second week of April, I went on a weekend trip with Don and Ace.

The first day of the trip, we walked around Sydney. I got to see the Sydney Opera House, along with Chinatown and Bondi Beach. It was so fun to just walk around. We even took a ferry to go to different places in Sydney.

On Sunday, we took the train to hike Blue Mountains. It was absolutely beautiful. Before we hiked, we went to The 3 Sisters lookout. To start the hike off, we took the Giant Stairway, consisting of 998 steps. Even though we were going down the stairs, it was still exhausting. I can not even imagine what it was like to go up. After taking the journey down, we walked around to see waterfalls and great views. The hike back up was not as bad because there were little lookouts to stop at and walk around.

This past week, mid-semester break started. Me and some friends went to New Zealand for the week.

Our home and vehicle for the next 5 days, was this bright green camper van. There were 2 beds, so the 5 of us were nice and snug at night for sleeping. In the van, there was a stove top, sink, and kitchen supplies. Kevin and Ethan were the best drivers ever, driving us along the south part of New Zealand. Our flight landed in Christchurch. We stayed in a hostel that night, picking up the van in the morning. From Christchurch, we drove to Queenstown.

In Queenstown, some of us did the Nevis Swing (the biggest swing in the world). It is a 134 meter drop. It was only scary for the first 2 seconds because we were just free falling. After the free falling was over and all the screaming was done, Ethan and I just looked around at the pretty views as we swung back and forth. Once the swing slowed down, we got reeled back up. It was exciting having a little adrenaline running through our veins. I know I was a little scared, but I think my mom was way more scared just watching the video I sent her.

The final 2 days of the trip, we turned in our camper van for a smaller car. We stayed in hostels again. We were supposed to go to an observatory for stargazing, but it was cloudy. Instead of stargazing, we stayed in and played cards. It was kind of nice to stay in and relax. We had been driving around so much, constantly having something fun planned. We had an early flight of 6:30 am back to the Sydney airport. Since it was an international flight, we got to the airport 3 hours early just to be safe. I do not think anyone was feeling too great getting up at 3 am, but we all got to sleep on the plane. Once we landed in Sydney, we took the 2.5 hour train ride back to Newcastle.

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Junior Christine Rheinberger is spending the spring 2019 term in Australia through our U of A Exchange program at the University of Newcastle.

Read more from Christine at https://crheinberger16.wixsite.com/website/blog

Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/

Interested in becoming a HogsAbroad Social Media Ambassador like Christine? Contact Katie at ksabo@uark.edu.