Let's start from the beginning.

The University of South Carolina has a program called National Student Exchange (NSE) that allows students to swap campuses with other students across the nation. It allows me to pay tuition, get scholarships, and be an in-state student at USC while taking classes and attending another school. This semester I decided to participate in NSE at the University of the Virgin Islands - St. Thomas.

Why St. Thomas? Because it sounded awesome. The beach has always been a love of mine that probably stems back to family trips every summer to Topsail Island. There's something special about the atmosphere of the beach that's highly addictive. The laid back attitude and the warm weather drew me in and now I'm hooked. Unfortunately, I never seem to get to be at the beach as much as I want. I always leave wanting to turn right around and go back. I've had the thought that since I love it so much, why don't I live there? In theory that sounds like it would be perfect, but there's something that puzzles me with this situation. Will the allure fade with time or will I wake up every day just has happy as I was on the first? Similar to how a good song can be ruined if it's overplayed, I don't want to ruin the beach by living there. So the next four months will be a test trail for what could potentially be my life. I hope by the end of my semester in St. Thomas I'll find the answer to that.

Some goals while I'm in the the islands:
1- Find out if the beach is only special because it happens once or twice a year, or if it's special in and of itself
2- Experience the culture
3- Make permanent friends with the locals so I have a place to stay and an excuse to come back
4- Learn the guitar
5- Workout
6- Grow out my hair

One of the requirements of the NSE program is to maintain a blog to document my time here. This is my first blogging experience, so bear with me. My idea is to update as needed, and not on a routine basis. Let's see how it goes.