After I fell sick in Hanoi for over a week (the entirety of my stay there), I was glad to have a change in scenery once I was finally in recovery. Studying with IHP requires a lot of stamina in order to travel so frequently. For someone like me who has not traveled much, our travel days are exhausting. Our journey from Hanoi, Vietnam to Rabat, Morocco began on a Friday afternoon. We checked out of our hotel at 1:00 p.m. and drove…
A few weeks ago, I decided to start a creative writing group at the secondary school where I’m teaching for a semester. The decision was born in part out of the realization that, compared to the students at my high school, kids here have little opportunity to express themselves creatively. I wanted to help fix that. Five girls showed up in the library for our first session; I knew a few of them already. We started off the meeting with a…
The Doric Dictionary I chose to study abroad in Scotland expecting to find it vaguely similar to America—after all, Britain and the U.S. were once one in the same, weren’t they? Both countries speak English, and both generally enjoy meat, potatoes, and beer. I knew that Scotland would be different from home, but I never expected to experience the culture shock that awaited me in the rainy, windy, and beautiful city of Edinburgh. The grocery stores are miniature, with teeny bags of flour…
Transylvania: A Weekend With Vampires We go on many excursions with my study abroad program. So far this semester, we have made day trips to Esztergom, Visegrad, and Eger, and a weekend-long pilgrimage to honor the Kids of Pest (Hungarian Revolution of 1956). This past weekend, we embarked upon our final and most involved excursion: staying with host families in an ethnically Hungarian village in Transylvania. Although my title makes reference to Vampires, to no one’s real surprise, we encountered none. We did, however, climb a…
While writing my previous blog post, I was in the reception area of a cheap hostel in Cologne, France, with a game of football playing on a nearby TV. Now, I’m typing in my luxurious single dorm room in London, more than twice the size of the closet-sized singles in Jewett into which I’ll most likely get thrown next semester. Seeing as the setting of my writing is dramatically different than last month, I’m having difficulty recounting everything that has happened to me over the last few weeks. I’ll give…
It’s hard to avoid the French language when in France. Yes, I am fully aware of how idiotically obvious this sounds. What I mean to say is, it’s hard to commit to learning and speaking French all the time while in France—and you must commit, because everything is all French, all the time. But in order to commit, you have to want to commit. And thus far, in my study-abroad experience, the wanting (which conversely means giving up the English)…
Before I left for Denmark, one of the main goals I had for my study-abroad experience was to meet as many Danes as possible. I wanted to experience the Danish culture and get a sense of what real life in the country was all about. When I first arrived, achieving this goal seemed like a bit of a challenge, since I was living with and going to school with Americans. However, in the last month-and-a-half, I have slowly been branching out, trying my hardest to interact with…
This morning I woke up and felt like I was actually in college. Before today, life in Bologna had been pretty easy. I only had to worry about one class each day, left with most of my waking hours to explore the city and travel. Real classes started this week, though, and I am feeling slightly overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong—the program classes at the E.C.C.O center are great. I’m taking a theater class and an Italian literature class, and I love them both. What’s freaking…
Battleground “One may conquer in battle A thousand times a thousand men, Yet he is the best of conquerors Who conquers himself.” ~Buddha, Dhammapada 103 I’ve noticed that I tend to identify with certain quotes at particular points in my life; the one above is a perfect summation of my first month in India. I handled the upbringing of my siblings after my parents’ divorce, worked my way to the top ten percent of my high school graduating class, and got…
Sao Paulo is huge. Flying over the city, I thought I had a sense of its scope, but I didn’t at all. You can never see where it ends. Standing on a mountain in the forests above the city, the urban landscape seems to stretch forever, with atmospheric perspective engulfing the horizon. I am living with a family in Villa Madalena, which is one of the nicest areas of the city, in my opinion. It’s located about fifty minutes away from Mackenzie University,…