I found out shortly after Spring Break that I am the newly-elected Student Body President at USCA. I don't remember if I said this in a blog before, but I was appointed to be the Vice Presdient when Paige Jeffcoat took the Spring Semester off to do an internship in Disney (she definitley got the better end of that deal!). VP was fun, but I'm very excited to see what we can do next year. I have an amazing executive to work with (Kati Leonard and Adam Shults) that I know I can count on and our senate is absolutely amazing! I'm really looking forward to leaving our mark on this campus that we all love so much!

I found out shortly before the end of the school year that I am the Vice-Chairperson for Aiken Unplugged. I am very excited about this because the exec of AU is really committed to bringing music to campus that students want to hear. I am also very excited to still be working with the Pacer Union Board next year! I found out that I will, again, be the treasurer for the Student Alumni Association! I'm very excited about continuing in this role. I also applied to be on the first Dance Marathon committee, and I was recently notified that I will be the Family Relations Committee Chairperson! I'm so excited. Dane Marathon will be supporting CMN which is my sororities national philanthropy, so this is a cause that is definitely near and dear to my heart! Speaking of my sorority, I can happily report that we were named Organization of the Year and Greek Organization of the Year and Female Intramural champions. Members of my chapter were also named Outstanding Chapter President and Greek Woman of the Year. There were also several women from my chapter that have been invited to join the Order of Omega (including me). The Order of Omega is a national Greek Honor Society! A few of us were also inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, a student activities honor society. It's definitley wonderful to be in such a great chapter and I wouldn't trade these women for the world!

I went to the Southeastern Panhellenic Conference in April with the Vice President for Recruiment for the USCA College Panhellenic Assocation. Our advisor went too, and being there made us all realize how lucky we are to get to work with the Panhellenic women at USCA! Our girls are truly wonderful and our Panhellenic is outstanding!

This semester has also been very exciting for our campus. We finally opened the USCA Convocation Center. This is a building that has been talked about since before I even got to USCA! It's so amazing to walk into this building and think about all of my friends and classmates that will get to play in this outstanding facility. We held our first-ever Commencement ceremony in this building and it was so incredible! I sat on the platform as the new Student Body President and, I must admit, it made me so much more excited to be graduating next year! I can't wait!!!! :)

I applied for classes earlier this semester too, and I LOVE MY SCHEDULE! I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I will be in class from 9:25 am until 4:20 pm. It's going to make for a long day but I HAVE A 4 DAY WEEKEND! :) I love my life!

Now for the really exciting stuff...

On May 12th, I left to go on the USCA School of Business Administration Study Abroad trip to Slovakia (Stara Lubovna and Bratislava) and Austria (Vienna). Our trip started out kind of rough. We had a 3 hour delay in Atlanta, and did not leave until 11:30. We landed in Paris on the 13th, but we had missed our connecting flight to Vienna. At this time, Air France split our group of 30 into 4 smaller groups. The first group got on a direct flight to Vienna...well most of them. One of our students left her passport on the plane and had to wait with another student for a different flight Vienna. We didn't know when these two girls would get to Vienna, but the other three groups were sure we would beat them there! The other three groups were then given boarding passes to go to Dusseldorf, Germany and then to be connected to Vienna. We didn't realize it initially but we were all on the same flight! It made us feel much better! We got to Germany and realized that we had been scheduled for a flight that we couldn't make. We stood in line for almost an hour, just for them to tell us we missed our plane. We went to the Air France desk to get scheduled on a new flight. At this time, we asked them to check on the girl that left her passport in the airplane in Paris, and, surprise, surprise, she had gotten on a direct flight to Vienna...looks like she was going to beat us there! At this point, we were starting to question whether or not our luggage was following us. We asked Air France to check, and we were told that our luggage (all 15 of us!) was still in PARIS! We were told we probably wouldn't get it until the next day but we needed to check on it when we got to Vienna. We finally got on a plane to Vienna, and landed at 11:00. With no luggage, and the rest of our group waiting on us for the last several hours, we were all EXHAUSTED...and we weren't done yet. We filled out the necessary paperwork in the Vienna airport to have our luggage delivered to us and they said it would be sometime the next day.

We then went outside and got on a charter bus that had been waiting on us for almost 10 hours. We started our 6 hour bus ride to the other side of Slovakia. In Slovakia, the sun comes up between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning. It was around this time that the 15 of us with no luggage realized that we had been travelling for 2 sunrises in the same clothes. WOW! All we could do was laugh, really. We checked in to our hotel in Stara Lubovna at 5:30 and slept until 12. We then went rafting. We FINALLY got our luggage that night around 9 pm. The next day we started business visits. We went to US Steel in Kosice and then we went to Whirlpool in Poprad the next day. We left Stara Lubovna for Bratislava the next day. Bratislava was AMAZING! We stayed in the Carlton right in the middle of everything. Every restaurant, club, and store, was within walking distance of our hotel. We continued our business visits, and had an AMAZING time. There was a group of girls on our trip that kinda stuck together. The eight of us met 3 different bachelor party groups! Apparently, in Europe, it's really cool to make outrageous t-shirts for bachelor parties and make a weekend of it! It was fun! We definitley got spoiled in Bratislava!

We then went to Vienna, and we were all really excited...until we got there. Our hotel was several minutes outside of town and there was not really anything within walking distance. There were only 3 restaurants to choose from. We did find a really cool restaurant that had a waiter that had studied in England for a few years. He sounded just like Stewie on Family Guy! It was awesome. It was really funny because there was a group of 8 or either 10 of us and when our food came out we played "pass the plate" so we could all try what everyone else had ordered! Other than this, we were all very frustrated. If we wanted to go in to town to do anything, we had to get on a bus (16A) go to a tram stop and get on the Tram (67 to Reumanplatz) then we got off the tram at Reumannplatz and got on the subway (U1) and then we went from Reumannplatz to Stephansplatz. SO CONFUSING and it took us an hour to get anywhere! Needless to say, we usually got a big group together to hang out in the hotel (we went on the roof)! We were in Vienna for a week. We had fun, but it was really exhausting to have to ride so much public transportation and I swear we walked 3 miles a day to get to business visits from our public transportation stops. Vienna is a beautiful city, but please stay in downtown if you ever go! You'll have much more fun!

We left Vienna on Monday, May 28th (YAY MEMORIAL DAY!) We flew from Vienna to Paris, and encountered a short layover in Paris. We then flew from Paris to Atlanta. I was lucky enough to be seated upstairs. A group of us had a small gathering upstairs and it was so much fun! We met an awesome flight attendant named Bruno that I hope we wil be able to keep in touch with!

We landed in Atlanta around 6:30 and I was so excited to be back in America. Europe is really fun and something that I think everyone should experience, but it really makes you appreciate things like ice, sweet tea, free ketchup, free refills and the english language! :) My mom, my best friend and my brother picked me up from the airport and then we went home!

The next day was pretty uneventful...I slept most of the day! I was woken up around 1:30 Wednesday morning though. My parents woke me up to tell me that I was on a flight with a guy that had a rare strain of TB. WHAT ARE THE ODDS! To be honest, I was surprised it happend, but not surprised that it happened to us! After all the bumps in the road, this was just icing on the cake. The next day I went to the health department and got tested for TB. I found out then that the guy was sitting on Row 51...so was I! We found out later that he was actually on Row 30, but that was not until after I had panicked! Wednesday night, my friend Beth got a phone call from CNN saying they wanted her to be on the air the next morning to be interviewed about being on the flight with the guy with TB. Beth called me and Jason to see if we would go with her, but Jason and I were not expecting to be on the air at all. We got to CNN the next morning and were sitting in the make-up room with Beth and then a producer came in and said "Which one of ya'll was sitting next to the guy?" Jason and I looked around and then told her that we were. At this point, we still thought the guy was seated on row 51, because we had not heard differently. One anchor said "I want them" and then away we went! We were interviewed by CNN, then Fox news called...then CBS, then NBC/MSNBC, then the Associated Press, we did phone interview after phone interview for radio stations and newspapers. It was a rollercoaster and we were exhausted. Jason and I stayed in Atlanta for 2 days doing interviews. We finally came back to South Carolina on Friday and got our TB tests back, and luckily we were both negative on our skin tests! I went to work to see everyone and it was so nice to see familiar faces and hear familiar voices. This whole thing was stressful, but it doesn't at all change how lucky and blessed I feel to have had such an awesome experience in Europe with so many amazing people that I can now truly call my friends.

I slept a lot Friday evening/Saturday morning, and I'm really glad this whole thing is over! I was really tired. Now, I'm just working and enjoying my summer! In June, I'll be a Pacesetter for the first orientation group, and I'll do that again in July and August. I'll be a recruitment counselor again for sorority recruitment and I'm very excited! I move back to Aiken into an apartment with Mel and Heather in a few months and I CANNOT WAIT! The three of us are going to have so much fun and I'm so excited!

This may be my last post here....sorry they've been so spread out, but I hope you've enjoyed reading what I have to say! I guess what I most wanted the readers to get out of this is that I love USCA, and it is an amazing place to be a student!! Hope that some of you decide to come here because I promise that will be one decision you won't regret!

LOTS OF LOVE! HAVE A GOOD SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!