Happening Lately At Franklin

Why hello there! Happy December!
I can hardly believe that November is already over, where did the time go?? I have final projects due this week, final exams next week and then in 13 days I will be back state side for the holiday break! I can hardly believe it! November was filled with some awesome activities around campus too, here is just a brief recap:

At the beginning of the month Franklin hosted its 5th annual Be The Change Social Justice Conference. In addition to a weekend retreat, the conference included a week of thought provoking activities open to all students. I was asked to speak on religious tolerance as part of an evening activity for one of the nights. We had some awesome discussions and I was so happy to participate! The theme of this years conference was "finding your roots" and all of the weekly events focused on this in addition to raising awareness and empathy in the community for a variety of social justice issues. 

Shoutout to these lovely ladies who also spoke on the subject of religious tolerance with me ^^

Also shoutout to my roommate Marina for taking the two above photos! 

Want to learn more about Franklin's Be The Change program? Click HERE for more photos of the event and HERE for a review of this years conference. 

And what would one of my blog posts be without a gorgeous nature photo? Lugano is just too beautiful! This shot was actually taken with my iphone on an afternoon run around Laghetto Muzzano (a tiny lake near campus) a few weeks ago before the first frost. 

But I digress, back to talking about on campus events.. 

The TANDEM program! Another awesome on campus initiative hosted an evening get together for Franklin and USI (the local Swiss university) students. TANDEM is a language learning initiative that pairs two native speakers (of different languages) based on their desire to learn the other's language. So American students wanting to learn Italian (for example) are paired with Italian-speaking Swiss students who want to learn English. It is an awesome program that seeks to facilitate language learning in a more organic way. Plus it has resulted in many cross-cultural friendships! 

You can read more about it by clicking HERE and if you are a current student interested in joining click HERE and join the TANDEM program facebook page 

Also during November we saw the first snow in the mountains, nothing more than frost in Lugano yet, but it was still exciting! Winter is definitely around the corner! 

And of course November (for Americans at least) is synonymous with Thanksgiving! Because a "trip home" is at least a nine hour flight for most students, Franklin always has tons of fun activities going on around Thanksgiving time for students to participate in. You really see the "franklin family", as I like to call it, come out. We celebrate as a community of people who all have left their families behind to be on a grand adventure. On Thanksgiving Eve Franklin hosted a gourmet Thanksgiving dinner for interested students, the highlight for me definitely was the pumpkin pie! I have yet to see canned pumpkin here in Switzerland so I can only assume that it was hand pureed.. This most likely explains the questionable pumpkin filling to crust ratio. But hey, beggars can't be choosers, right? I was just happy to see there even was pumpkin pie. The turkey was perfectly prepared, not even a little bit dry, so that more than made up for it! I love thanksgiving because it is a time to reflect on everything I am grateful for, I blogged about it over HERE , if you are curious. 

Moreover all weekend long there were student organized potlucks, "friends-giving" dinners, daytrips to the Alps, to christmas markets, and even a Lord of the Rings movie marathon! 

If you couldn't guess from the photo, I opted for the Alps daytrip ^^ We took a train (well six to be exact) up to the Top of Europe at Jungfrau. It was freezing cold, it was a long day (16 hours!) but the Alps are pretty rad!! So no regrets. 

November was a busy month, that is for sure! I hope that it was just as exciting for you all! I know many readers had a chance to look at the Prospective Student FAQ post and I hope that many of you submitted Franklin Applications yesterday! If not, don't worry, the priority deadline is past but you still have until March 15th to apply for regular admission for Fall 2014.