International student now in his final year at UAA

Hey everybody and welcome back to school. I was asked to be a part of this blog and share personal stories and experiences connected with UAA.

I know everybody is "excited" to be back to school, since summer was so "boring" in Alaska right? But on a more serious note, I think it's way too early for school to start, it seems like it was last week that we just got done with finals, and now another semester is starting? Plus, if you stayed in Alaska like me the whole summer, you know that we didn't get too many sunny days, so it seems like summer lasted only a couple of weeks. It is what it is, and we have to start school no matter how badly we don't want to.
 
Before I go any further, I wanna introduce myself. My name is Gor Galstyan. This year is my senior year at UAA, and let me tell you, I couldn't be more excited. For some people it takes only 4 year to graduate, but it's gonna take 5 years for me, since I had to take whole bunch of ESL classes in my first year of college.

I came to Alaska as an exchange student in 2006, and stayed here for one academic year. At that time, I was a high school student attending South Anchorage High School. After my school year, my host mother asked me if I wanted to come back to Alaska and go to UAA, and if I did, she said it would be okay if i stayed with them the whole time I am in college, that way being able to save lots of money on room and board, and of course I agreed and to this day I am still living with my host family, who have become like my own family during these past five years.
 
In this blog, I am mainly going to represent the UAA Campus Bookstore, where I currently work. Actually, this was my first job when i was hired in 2008, and I am still working here 'til this day. SOME of my coworkers are pretty fun and the job gets pretty exciting most of the time. I have met lots of new people and made new friends.

I still have a lot of fun stuff to write about both about UAA, The UAA Campus Bookstore, and other very helpful and resourceful organizations and clubs in UAA, but I don't want to write it all down in my first post. Have to save it so everyday I have some interesting information to tell you guys. Please keep checking and I promise you will get some helpful information out of it, specially if this is your first semester or if you are an international student, 

I will give you lots of new information and tell you ways to make your college experience more fun. After all, not everything is about studying and learning, we also have to make it fun and have some real college experience. Thanks for reading and keep in touch.