Welcome. Bienvenidos. Welkom.

Congratulations!

You’ve decided to study abroad, one of the most exciting, adventurous and educational experiences you may have during your time at Marquette.

The Office of International Education is setting up this blog as a platform — if you so choose — for you to share your experiences with your peers, your professors, your family, students who are thinking about studying abroad and anyone else interested in life overseas.

It’s your choice to blog or not while studying abroad. Blogging isn’t for everyone. Others may find that they’d rather join the discussion by commenting on others’ posts or forwarding links on to friends.

But if you do decide you’d like to share your experiences here, we’d like to help you and others to get the most out of it.

Here’s how it will work: The format will be a group blog, and we’d encourage each individual to write at least one entry during the semester about his or her experience. Posts will be marked with their authors, and if they choose readers can subscribe to RSS feeds or automatic e-mail updates for the entire blog or just individual authors.

Example of a Twitter feed

In addition to blog posts, each student will also be able to update the site in short snippets through a Twitter feed that will appear on the right column of the page. In essence, these are “micro-blogs” of 140 characters or less that can be updated by sending a text message.

So if you see something incredible on the streets of downtown Madrid, you can let people know about it — or even send out a picture — without having to track down an Internet cafe.

Ready to get started? Read on for tips, techniques and guidelines to get the most out of this blog.