Today has started with strong rain. We became sad at one point only because we enjoy sunny days at UCF campus and because of the outdoors activities we planned for today. Our mood suddendly became better after the warm coffee and a loto f ideas and volunteer discussions with Vu Tangstudent and volunteer at UCF. At the afternoon, after the raine stopped, we went to campus sightseeing and history learning with Vu, who was incharged to take a campus tour with us. She showed us different things and explained how UCF works with their student sin a way that they're not only becoming good students but also good and quality people. They perceive creativity as something very important and they are trying to encourage it with delightful working area and by enocuraing students to create their own ideas and projects.

When we entered the Student Union building, we were all curious if there is any stoty bout the logo enclosed with the ribonns. The we found out about the old legend which says the if you do the step inside the enclosure, you might never finich the college. At the end Vu adviced us to stick to that rule, the same as UCF students, because you never know. ;)

Monday morning has started the same as for UCF students, standing at the bus station, waiting for the bus to the main campus. After extremely fast morning coffee while catching wireless in library, we went to the sightseeing of library and education about their dana bases, which was delivered from lady who was born in Croatia, Zadar. We saw the UCF online archives and had a nice talk about USA and Croatia, and  Laila Miletic-Vjezovic has promised to visit us in Croatia soon.

The lunch was extremely interesting and delightful. We spent our lunch time in discussions with dr. Elliot Vites (Interim Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Studies) and dr. Rick Schell (Associate Director for Public Services) about the topics regarding entrepreneurship, international cooperation, our universities, faculty and our plans and desires for future. As always, such nice company makes the time running really fast, and it came time for presents. Dr. Rick Schell has immediately put on his new FOI t-shirt and wished to all of us to spend nice time on Florida.

Third meeting was with International services center, with Chris Legoullon (ISC Recruitiing Coordinator) and Mark Hartman (ISC Associate Director), where we discussed about UCF opportunities that might be interesting for international students. After the great presentation and many questions, we delivered promise FOI gave 2 years ago and gave them Croatia flag, to have it in their flags collection in office.

The end oft he day was also int he UCF spirit, helping others. We found out the TOMS story and went to buy ur own pair of TOMS (http://www.toms.com/). We bought them in WHOLE FOODS store (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/) which has humanitarian tone, ecological products and a lot od ecological and healthy food, which reminded us once more that man feels the bas when he does something for others.

Our free Sunday was reserved to spend some time with McNair students. After waking up and short sightseeing of downtown of Orlando, w event in front of the theater where McNair students were waiting for us with amazing surprise – going on show to see musical Wicked. After three interesting hours of musical and round of applause at the end performers came back to the stage and presented to us beautiful and creative gesture. Throughout all their shows, they are trying to make a difference and help the community. After every show, all the performers are gathering in front of the theater in order to encourage people to donate money for fighting against the AIDS and breast cancer. The name of the program is Broadway Cares, and during the show they manage to collect even huge amount of money. When giving their donations, people have chance to win some stuff with logo of musical. Once again, we managed to proof that big heart of even one person can make a difference. And when there is more people united in purpose, then this difference can make a lot of positive changes in their community.

Today we managed to spend really interesting day with a lot of nice moments. Since we found out that UCF is well known in the field of Hospitality Management-u and its quality, we went to Universal Studio Park in order to relax and learn something useful regarding that field on practical examples, both at the same time. Since we had interesting meeting regarding practical experiences of their students during our first day at UCF, we found out that Universal Studio is also one of the opportunities which has been offered to students to go and gain practical experience there. It can be good opportunity for students in terms of the good organization and handling big number of people coming there. The day was really educational, interesting and special, especially because we had a chance on special way to find out something about the quality of the services and collects tongues of good case practices to use them once. 

Hello everyone!

We're done with our first day on our trip, still under excitement mixed with a lot of emotions, which is really hard to conduct in few sentences and photography’s.

We spent really intense day at the University of Central Florida, where we had chance to go on a lot of meetings with people who are working at the different centre, each one with their own purpose.

First meeting was with Experiential Learning and Career Services. There we had chance to meet two person who work with students on different activities.

First one of them, Ulla Isaac, is Acting Director in Experiential Learnings showed us through her presentation how students are getting chances for experiential learning in the fields of their interest and fields they are planning to work in during their future life. She mentioned how it is the best to have a combination of theoretical knowledge from the faculty and practical knowledge when going on internship in the company. She highlighted the importance of having good and diverse CV in order to find the job easier.

After the interesting presentation on the third floor of the building, we went to the first floor in order to listen the presentation delivered by dr. Bill Blank, Director of Career Development. Throughout his presentation, we managed to find out how they are preparing their students to successfully find their desired job and to stay at their work place as long as they would like to. On the second floor of the building there is a lot of the rooms where students can practice their interviews and prepare better.

After the lunch we went to the Recreation and Wellness Center, where students can do the sport they like, take a rest from their studying or just to do what they like.

The last meeting of the day was with dr. Maribeth Ehaz, Vice President Student Development and Enrollment Services.  First we introduced ourselves, then we talked about their Knights helping Knights Pantry center, which was invented and developed by the students in order to help the students with bad financial situation. We continued our conversation with discussion about the importance of volunteering and being part of different students’ activities.

Between every meeting we had chance to see some parts of the campus, and the last party of the day was dinner and discussion about the interesting day we had.

Hello everyone!

My name is Neva and I am student at Faculty of Organization and Informatics, University of Zagreb. I'm really proud to be one of the students who are going on University of Central Florida to present our research papers. The topic of my research paper is Information Fluency and Cultural Diversity: Importnace of informal education in international environment for developing Information Fluency skills.

One more day and we'll be in Orlando.

Looking forward to see you all!