<Dustin's Summer>

	How I spent my summer… Dustin Clauser Junior, Aerospace Engineering Warren, Ohio “Do you have a letter?” “No, no one told me I needed one.” “Then I’m sorry but I can’t let you in the country.” My jaw drops and I just stand there in front of the lady behind the desk. No one said anything about a letter and now I’m standing on the doormat to England, over 3,000 miles from home, with no idea of what to do. “Next please.” I step aside as my two friends that came with me realize what’s happening. “What are we going to do?” I ask them. Just then my roommate Dave started to pull out his laptop. I ask him what he’s doing, but he just looks at his computer as I start to have a panic attack. I notice that he is pulling up e-mails that we got from the coordinator of the whole summer study abroad program, Heather. He finds one e-mail and shows it to the lady that is standing between us and the best summer of our lives. “I guess this will work but next time come prepared,” the lady says to us as she stamps our passports. Our first story of the summer is about how it almost didn’t happen, that’s how we all knew, right away, that this was going to be the summer of our lives. I have never been outside of the U.S. borders my entire life until the summer of ’05. I didn’t know what to expect. Will people there know that we’re Americans? Will they care? I’ve seen movies and heard stories from people, so I thought that I would be prepared but I was mistaken. I didn’t really know until I got there, and even then, I could tell you how I perceived it, but it won’t have nearly the effect as you personally going and experiencing it for yourself. It was beyond my wildest dreams, and I would do it again in a heartbeat! We traveled to Oxford, England to study for six weeks, taking two electives. We had class Monday through Thursday, which left us a three-day weekend to do anything you wanted. There were about 30 students from Florida Tech with a wide range of different majors and personalities. At the end of it all, we all became friends and now we can always say to each other, “Hey remember in Oxford…” There is a college in Oxford called New College, because it was the newest addition to the 30 or so other colleges in Oxford that were built over 300 years ago. That’s older than our entire country! The history “across the pond” is mind-blowing. It really puts into perspective how young and new America is compared to the rest of the world. When we traveled to Paris, Edinburgh and Bath, we got to see for ourselves the history and culture that you only get to read about in America. This experience was truly something that I would recommend to every single person. We really don’t know how good we have it here in the States. For some reason, they fear ice over there like it is the plague. I never saw an air conditioner. Mountain Dew just can’t be found anywhere; trust me—we searched for six weeks. But these are small prices to pay so that we could say that we celebrated Dave’s 21st birthday at Stonehenge. Do you know anyone that celebrated a birthday at Stonehenge? I didn’t think so. But Stonehenge was one very short stop on our tour of the rest of the world. You really just have to have an open mind and try to experience all that you can. We experienced things that you probably have never heard of, try punting for example. If you type “punting” into MSN.com’s search engine and click on the first link you’ll see a few pictures of it. But its things like punting that you don’t get to experience in America. These are my final words of advice—travel the globe and see the world! There is so much more out there for you to experience, learn and live!

Dustin

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How I spent my summer…

Dustin Clauser

Junior, Aerospace Engineering

Warren, Ohio

“Do you have a letter?”

“No, no one told me I needed one.”

“Then I’m sorry but I can’t let you in the country.”

My jaw drops and I just stand there in front of the lady behind the desk. No one said anything about a letter and now I’m standing on the doormat to England, over 3,000 miles from home, with no idea of what to do.

“Next please.”

I step aside as my two friends that came with me realize what’s happening.

“What are we going to do?” I ask them. Just then my roommate Dave started to pull out his laptop. I ask him what he’s doing, but he just looks at his computer as I start to have a panic attack. I notice that he is pulling up e-mails that we got from the coordinator of the whole summer study abroad program, Heather. He finds one e-mail and shows it to the lady that is standing between us and the best summer of our lives.

“I guess this will work but next time come prepared,” the lady says to us as she stamps our passports. Our first story of the summer is about how it almost didn’t happen, that’s how we all knew, right away, that this was going to be the summer of our lives.

I have never been outside of the U.S. borders my entire life until the summer of ’05. I didn’t know what to expect. Will people there know that we’re Americans? Will they care? I’ve seen movies and heard stories from people, so I thought that I would be prepared but I was mistaken. I didn’t really know until I got there, and even then, I could tell you how I perceived it, but it won’t have nearly the effect as you personally going and experiencing it for yourself. It was beyond my wildest dreams, and I would do it again in a heartbeat!

We traveled to Oxford, England to study for six weeks, taking two electives. We had class Monday through Thursday, which left us a three-day weekend to do anything you wanted. There were about 30 students from Florida Tech with a wide range of different majors and personalities. At the end of it all, we all became friends and now we can always say to each other, “Hey remember in Oxford…”

There is a college in Oxford called New College, because it was the newest addition to the 30 or so other colleges in Oxford that were built over 300 years ago. That’s older than our entire country! The history “across the pond” is mind-blowing. It really puts into perspective how young and new America is compared to the rest of the world. When we traveled to Paris, Edinburgh and Bath, we got to see for ourselves the history and culture that you only get to read about in America. This experience was truly something that I would recommend to every single person.

We really don’t know how good we have it here in the States. For some reason, they fear ice over there like it is the plague. I never saw an air conditioner. Mountain Dew just can’t be found anywhere; trust me—we searched for six weeks. But these are small prices to pay so that we could say that we celebrated Dave’s 21st birthday at Stonehenge. Do you know anyone that celebrated a birthday at Stonehenge? I didn’t think so. But Stonehenge was one very short stop on our tour of the rest of the world. You really just have to have an open mind and try to experience all that you can. We experienced things that you probably have never heard of, try punting for example. If you type “punting” into MSN.com’s search engine and click on the first link you’ll see a few pictures of it. But its things like punting that you don’t get to experience in America.

These are my final words of advice—travel the globe and see the world! There is so much more out there for you to experience, learn and live!