Looking back on my experience as a participant in the NACLE exchange program, I feel a sense of great accomplishment and satisfaction. The accomplishment comes from the culmination of all the planning and effort that I undertook to be a part of the program. The satisfaction comes from the memories that I took away from my stay in Montreal.

Last fall, I packed up my belongings and drove off to the Great White North in my modest pickup truck, not knowing what the semester had in store for me. A latent sense of anticipation and a touch of anxiety were my only companions as the miles clicked by toward my final destination. However, upon arrival in Montreal, I knew that I had made a wise choice in coming. What a spectacular opportunity to be able to spend the semester in one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and international locations in North America.

When I first sit eyes upon the campus of McGill University, I was imMediately struck by its strange mixture of urban and collegiate atmospheres. It was physically located in the middle of downtown Montreal, next to both the financial district and world-famous St. Catherine Street, yet it retained the elements of a traditional college campus. Indeed, the university was composed of stately buildings interspersed with green areas and many old trees. My first priority was to find housing, and I was lucky enough to locate a reasonably priced room in a boarding house. The house was located in the suburbs, so I took the subway to school every day. To be able to commute on the subway was a new experience for me, but like most things in Canada, the underground system was clean and efficient.

The classes I took were excellent, and I tried to choose those that focused on the international trade issues associated with NAFTA and its related agreements. Private International Law with Professor H. Patrick Glenn was one of the highlights of my stay. The substance of the course dealt with jurisdiction and choice-of-law in a hypothetical North American Lawsuit. Law and International Trade with Professor Armand DeMestral examined the panel decisions of disputes between NAFTA members as well as some WTO cases. This class particularly focused on the unique aspects of International Trade Law, with extended discussion of Most Favored Nation and National Treatment status. To round out my program, I decided to take Intellectual Property and even Roman Law. The latter is admittedly not a relevant subject in modern common law jurisdictions, but it was extremely interesting to study it against the background of modem civil law.

All in all, I came away from my NACLE experience with a new outlook. Among the many benefits I acquired include 1) a broader understanding of the common goals between the U.S. and Canada, 2) a clearer notion of why our economies are so closely linked, and 3) a deeper insight into the unique dynamic between Americans and our neighbors to the north. Though we are culturally so similar, in many respects we deal with each other at arm's length.