Hi.

If you are ever in Bratislava, please send me a PM and we can hook up. I'd like to meet you.

Re: EU citizenship. The point is not free movement for me. Rather I'd like to have it for my kids and have the option in the future to work as I'd like. Also, they will have tuition discounts and waivers at university or grad school if they will prefer to study in Europe. By the time I'm done school and residency in the states the restrictions will have been lifted.

Also, should I choose to take some projects with some of the consulting firms, I need an EU passport so I can work on multinational EU projects. The ones I've worked on to date were a nightmare - always hiding behind someone else and trying to dodge the auditors re: who was doing the work. North Americans are not welcome on EU projects. So, it would be helpful for that reason as well.

Re: California. We didn't look at it and don't really care too much about it. We now have 2 kids from California in our class and thus we are working on it. It seems to be quite a bit of paperwork. We have time to get it done and it's secondary to loans for sure. Progress to date is that the forms have been ordered. After exams we will have the first meeting of the new year to deal with this again. After that we will be meeting and splitting up tasks. I will set up bi-weekly reporting back to the others. I take minutes. Put names and timeframes to promises - who will do what. etc. The admin. finds it irritating I'm sure, to have everything recorded formally, but I think it is the only way to get something done here (aside from Bribes). AND I did bring back a nice bottle of crown royal for the man....

I agree people should be made aware of California issue prior to enrolling. If that were the biggest issue confronting new students, it would be a dream. We have other issues.

Re: loans. This is the big one and we should have DOE approval & Stafford flowing by end of term. Next will be CANHELP and Teri etc. This is really critical.

The reason (they say) that Comenius is behind is that they never had any North American students. And they are right, why bother if no-one from that region is attending the school. That is changing and thus, they are addressing these issues.

If I had one recommendation for the school: Hire an administrator/international relations director/marketing guy!!! Don't continute to hope your department heads have time to do any sort of thing in this area. The school will never grow for this fact alone.

Ciao. S-