Featured image: I’ve made it my mission to have the true Dartmouth experience. This included going on first year trips, which is a pre-orientation program. I went cabin camping, which was great and all, but as a jaded junior I was ready to go home and stop playing the game where you stand in a circle and leave a shoe on the ground and then run if the person in the center says something that applies to you. My study…
Featured image: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow! Brrrrring! My eyelids flew open. 6:00 AM. I quickly flung my bed sheets to my left and reached for my phone. I pressed the stop button on the bottom of the screen. I had officially been brought back alive from the dead of sleep. It was time to release my inner warrior. Yohji Yamamoto once said, “Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy―but mysterious….
Featured image: The only time I find peace and quiet is on my walk home at 1AM. One of the biggest adjustments I had to make was living in a place full of people. No longer was I at Vassar, a small liberal arts school. No longer was I in Poughkeepsie, a town in the boring mid-Hudson Valley. Instead, I was at a big school in one of China’s largest, most overcrowded cities. China in general is overcrowded and Beijing…
Featured image: The Irish town of Waterford! Super pretty. Hello from Dublin! If New York is called the “city that never sleeps,” Dublin should be called the “city that goes to sleep promptly around 1 a.m.,” excluding the pub scene. While most of the city goes extremely quiet around the 1 a.m. / 2 a.m. mark, pubs are packed no matter what the day is. Speaking of, the pub scene here is one of the first things I noticed. The…
Featured image: I had this for lunch once. I thought it was wild they were just handing out these chunks of fish. It was delicious though. Only 15 RMB. When I talk to my friends or family, they of course ask “How’s China?” And all I can talk about is the food and how everything is so cheap. The food is delicious and costs practically nothing. My meals in the dining halls cost at most 15 RMB, which is a…
Featured image: I am IN LOVE with las puestas de sol (sunsets) in Viña del Mar. Do you know how earth-shattering it is to realize you have been washing your hands incorrectly for the last 20 years? The correct technique to wash my hands—let me tell you, it is a complicated series of movements and twists and paper towels—is just one of the many things I have learned during the last two (!) months of living in Viña del Mar,…
Featured image: Us after running around 南锣鼓巷, a historic district of Beijing. We rewarded ourselves after a hard day’s work with some Mexican food that honestly wasn’t bad. Hey there folks! My name is Nick Gorman, I’m from Buffalo, New York, and I’m a Chinese and Biology double major with a correlate sequence in Queer Studies. This fall, I am studying abroad at CET Beijing’s Language Intensive Chinese Program. I’m studying Chinese at Capital Normal University, which is in Beijing’s…
Featured image: The Parliament building illuminated at night. Fun fact: Parliament is the tallest building in Budapest as it is illegal to construct a building taller than it. As I assume most students studying abroad do, I spent the week before I left obsessively Googling anything that might go wrong. By the time the car was loaded and I was on my way to the airport, I thought I was prepared for anything. That feeling lasted until my mom asked…
Featured image: Where I am studying, the University of Glasgow! 3:00 in the afternoon. Slowly sipping my iced Americano, I gazed out the glass window—a light drizzle cascaded from the stratus clouds. I arrived at Glasgow Airport after attempting a two-hour snooze on my layover flight from London. Feelings of unfamiliarity began to stealthily crawl up my back. Along with a group of international students, five of us took the coach service to Kelvinhaugh Street. After we collected our suitcases,…
Featured image: Visiting the Lagunas altiplanicas in the Atacama desert At the start of my time abroad, my host mom encouraged me to savor every moment, since it would fly by before I knew it. Despite Adriana’s 18 years of experience as a host mom, I don’t think I completely believed her, but as I write this final post from my bedroom in New York City I can see she had a point. My last month abroad was known as…