April 25: Last Coffee Hour

It was the last coffee hour of the year!

I love when the flags are hung like this!

April 11: LAST Tax Workshop

Today is our LAST tax assistance workshop! WOOHOO! This is Wendy our volunteer intern this semester.  She's funny, and has been learning more and more about US sarcasm this semester.  She always pulls something out that seems to make us laugh.

April 10: VITA Certification

Today the IRS acknowledged (via the mail) my VITA tax volunteer status.

April 9: Post Defense Celebration

Today the staff celebrated my accomplishment (successful defense) during staff meeting.  Leslie got me those gorgeous flowers and pulled together the cupcake and other congrats stuff for my door! I am so grateful for this group of people I get to work alongside.  They are good people and I will miss them when I leave UGA and ISL.

April 5: International Street Festival

International Street Festival is a wonderful event held in downtown Athens.  Faculty, staff, students, and the community come out to celebrate a variety of cultures.  There are performances and musical acts, and 30 tables with international activities to try.  We had approximately 5000 people show up, and stay for the day.  It was a huge success and I'm excited to have been a part of it!

We couldn't have done it without an amazing group of volunteers!

April 4: Street Fest Loading

Tomorrow is our big event in downtown Athens and we are loading up all the vans with the materials...including a helium tank! Cory had to roll that thing slowly as it was heavy and awkward.

March 27: Tax Workshop

We hold a couple of evening tax workshops through ISL in order to accommodate students schedules.  This one was crazy busy.  Can you see the line on the other side of the wall?!  Luckily, we were able to help all of them in the time frame.

March 23: Global Leadership Institute

Our global leadership institute certificate (GLI) program ended with a half day capstone seminar.  Cory did such a wonderful job with GLI this year and I'm proud of these students for sticking with this and really investing in their learning around global social justice issues.

March 22: Indian Ethnic Night

Tonight I went to the Indian Student Association's ethnic night.  We had delicious Indian food and they put on a great show!

February 29: Ethnic Nights

Many of our student organizations host ethnic nights in the Spring semester.  Saturday night I went to two of them.  I started at Africa Night (which was awesome and funny) and after intermission I headed to Filipino Night.  Minh (VP) and Desiree (President) are two amazing students and they were really excited that I was able to make it to their performance.  They did such a great job pulling together their ethnic night!

February 24: Final Interview

WooHoo! The final candidate was on campus today for the iSL Director position. Today's candidate wasn't my favorite.  Although I think he had some good ideas for ways to enhance things in iSL, his approach and demeanor rubbed me the wrong way.  Good news, I think all three candidates could do the job.  Here's to hoping my favorite gets it!

February 23: Tax Training x2

Tax training is over!  This is the outrageous group of students who have willingly volunteered their time to help international students with their taxes.  If I have to spend every Friday doing taxes, I'm glad I'll be doing them with this bunch!

February 22: Tax Training

Cory cracks me up.  He's quite the ham.  We were moving all our food and supplies to the miller learning center for our first tax training.  By the end of the day, I was mentally exhausted from trying to fill my head with information about non-resident alien (yep, that's what the government calls international students!) forms the 8843, 525TV, GA500, and 1040NR-EZ.  I'm glad I've at least done my own taxes so I'm moderately familiar with some of the forms.

February 20: Taxes

Today we finished our preparations for tomorrow's tax training.  Here is the beautiful flyer we mailed out to all our students.  It's got  good information... in case you need to know about international taxes.

February 19: GLI Session

Yesterday was our first global leadership institute session of the semester.  The There were about 30 students there.  The discussion was around power, privilege, oppression, and what that means for leaders.  The students were really engaged.  I'm very excited about this group and the possibilities for the continued conversation as we have a couple more sessions and a leadership capstone 1/2 day retreat.

February 18: Budgeting

Every year students (and offices) go before the student fee allocation committee to request money. Each group had 15 minutes to present.  Therefore, we have to cover 28 student orgs, 6 large programs all in 15 minutes.  Yikes.  Moreover, we've made a plan to move some money around and make some major changes.  Anyway, this is what I've been looking at for the last few days. My head has truly been reeling and I'm tired of budgets.  Between this and data analysis, staring at computers and numbers, well...I'm about over it.  I'm glad by Wednesday afternoon this will all be over.

February 14: Friday Fundip

This year I gave out fun dip valentines.  Some were cherry flavored and some were berry which changed colors.  Three of the four grads got the color changing (it was ironic that Whitney ended up with the cherry and she was out of town).  Anyway, the three coined it Friday Fundip and sent me this picture.  I love working with these people!

February 11: Rescue Effort

Two weeks ago Atlanta shut down and UGA had a snow day. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take advantage of that snow day I was stuck in Austin.  However, this new storm has shut down Athens again.  I went into the office (as it didn't start accumulating until 11ish) to pick up some work, turn off my coffee pot, and rescue my flowers.

January 21: Heat Wave

My office has been getting warmer and warmer as the temperature outside has been getting colder.  This is not a bad thing, however, when your office becomes a little oven over the weekend and it starts to feel closer to 80, then it becomes problematic both  for working and for my chocolate.  Little did I know this wouldn't be the worst of the heat wave through the office!

January 14: Annual Report

I spent most of the work day compiling the annual report.  No, it's not due until July 1st.  However, I want to make sure that the transition to the new director is smooth, thus I'm doing all I can to help.  

The other thing I did throughout the day was hound Hank in the registrars office.  Last week I found out that they were waiting to pull my names and email addresses until I got IRB approval.  However, if they had read my request carefully, they would have known it was approved.  I even included the IRB approval number.  Grr.  Between this goof up, and them not allowing graduate students to request, I'm on my last bit of patience with them.  Hank told me he'd work to get me the sample.  At least he's followed through with emailing me about details.  This is a step in the right direction.  Thanks Hank.