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Month: November 2012

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By squeakyrobot

MurmanskMy program is one of only a couple study abroad programs that allow its student a week of independent travel. Students can do anything in this time, so long as they’re back in class the following Monday morning, ready for the daily grind and such. After a program-mandated excursion to Kiev and then Moscow, a group of friends and I took a train to Murmansk, the Arctic Circle’s largest city.

Go to Russia, and you’ll immediately see that the thrills and freedoms of consumerism have hit hard. Go to Moscow, see the supercars zooming past, and it’ll be easy to forget that only twenty years ago, this was the center of a deadly chaos as the government was enduring a castling of hands and minds. Petersburg has a touch bit more Soviet-ness to it than Moscow, but not much more. So when I arrived to Murmansk, I was surprised. ...continue reading "A Trip to Murmansk"

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La BocaThis weekend I went to visit a friend's art studio in La Boca, a neighborhood with history as complex and vibrant as it's architecture there. Beyond the world-class fútbol club and being the birthplace of Tango, La Boca is known as an immigrant neighborhood at the mouth of the Matanza River. In the late 1800's the British built the Buenos Aires port and other infrastructure throughout the city to make it easier to export Latin American goods  back to England. In order to build the port and operate it later on, they imported labor from Europe (mostly Italy and Spain) and La Boca was soon flooded with people from Genoa, Italy.

As ships would come in and leave behind containers, the immigrants of the are would pull the containers apart and use the corrugated iron to build their homes, as well as other materials laying around the shipyard. They also used leftover paint to decorate the iron (which is why there are squares of different colors of paint they would use the leftovers, run out, then use other leftovers). ...continue reading "La Boca"

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By rlubitz

This past week was Reading Week here in the UK and while British students read, I decided to see six different European cities in a week.

For those wondering, taking night buses is a very, very bad idea. Buses rock about and can stop abruptly and drivers can keep the lights on and blast the air conditioning on a six hour night bus to Paris and drop you off an hour early at 5:30 am. After this said journey, you look like a very unhappy newborn kitten. Your eyes can’t open and it is so, SO cold and you have no idea where you are and maybe you start crying. Night buses are a very, very bad idea. ...continue reading "People Are Amazing and I Want to Marry an Italian Flight Attendant"

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By asthaa

I woke up early on November 7th, Wednesday morning, and immediately refreshed the web page of The New York Times that I had up on my laptop screen to find who would be the next president of my country. And then, because I am in Spain, I checked elpais.com, one of the country’s major newspapers. The headlines were basically the same at 7 am. In one of the hallways of La Autónoma, we GW Madrid students talked excitedly about the outcome before class. Who stayed up until 4 am? How was the U.S. embassy election-watch party? Who made it to the Democrats Abroad party? How did the students hoping to see Romney win feel? ...continue reading "“Who’s going to be our President?” and other concerns in Spain…"

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By tierneybb

Last week we began our independent research period. Handed conspicuous envelopes fed fat with rupees we were wished the best of luck and told to keep in touch. A fellow GW student happens to be staying in the area as well, so we packed up our bags and hailed a cab across the river to the incorporated city of Patan. While housing (especially on a student stipend) in Patan is limited, we have contracted a room in a guesthouse with a communal kitchen (yes, this is my worst nightmare, but at least we have our own bathroom, GW dorms have set my standards a bit too high). But our room is two blocks from Durbar Square, and next to a large market street that turns into a major thoroughfare. ...continue reading "Patan, KTM"

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By oncptime

You can learn a lot about a culture of a place from its grocery stores; hints and clues litter the places. The fresh produce, the types of sales, the music blaring from the tinny overhead speakers—each of them tells you a little something more about the personality of that specific place on the planet.

Florence is host to a number of minimarkets, corner stores, and bodegas of varying size, but it also has its fair share of American-styled grocery...boutiques. They’re not quite Whole Foods but they’re certainly not Safeways; they’re somewhere in between. The Conad on Via Nazionale, is my favorite. Fresh baked bread, Spanish imported mussels, and Alaskan salmon all just a few steps away from my apartment.  Uncle Ben’s brand curry jockeys for shelf space with Patak’s and three brands of pita bread conveniently lie in wait just one shelf down. The store is an exercise in internationality, and strolling down its aisles reminds me of similar stores in D.C.

The Conad outshines a number of other grocery stores in the area for a number of reasons: selection, longer hours, a markedly friendlier staff—but honestly, I’m not here to talk to you about a grocery store. Not really. No, this is a story about how I learned how not to wait in line in Italy.

...continue reading "Aspetta, Prego, Avanti"

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By littlemisadventures

LuxorI’ve gotten used to thinking of Egypt as a city- a vast, congested sea of humanity. However, there’s much more to the country than Cairo. During the recent Eid al Adha, I traveled to Upper Egypt with my mom, who flew in from Chicago ostensibly to see me but actually to see various dead kings and their monuments. I’m fine with that, incidentally.

A professor told me that the years don’t pass very quickly in Upper Egypt. I understood what this meant as soon as I stepped off the train. If it hadn’t been for the tourists’ fancy cameras and the pop music playing in cafés, we could have traveled back in time. The countryside was lush and peaceful. Buffaloes and donkeys sauntered through the streets, unfazed by the motorcycles. Men sat leisurely outside stores sipping tea and chatting. Teenagers hacked enthusiastically at the bodies of strung-up animals in preparation for eid dinners as bone shards, blood, and bits of meat flew everywhere. We took a three-day cruise, visiting tombs and temples during the day then docking at night in Luxor, Edfu, and Aswan. ...continue reading "Death (and Life) on the Nile"

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By hwscott

Two days ago, I gave my ISP presentation proposal in front of the other students in the program, my professors, and other SIT La Paz community members. I am now officially in my Independent Study Project period, living on my own (not actually - still with my host family but with slightly different arrangements), and doing my research. I am researching a priest named Sebastian Obermaier, and his influence and perceptions of him in El Alto. So a lot has happened since my last post! ...continue reading "The Power of One Priest in a Revolutionary Aymara Stronghold"

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By tokyostyle101

Minami SanrikuIt`s weird to go from Minami Sanriku to Tokyo. From a place where weeds grow in the cracks of the barren, concrete foundations of buildings gone to a city over-inundated with buildings and flashing lights.

I spent the past four days in Minami Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture of Northeastern Japan. Minami Sanriku was a coastal town. In fact the whole town center was right on the water or on the river that lead to the ocean. That`s why the town is almost non-existent today.

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck at 2:47 pm. I was told you couldn`t even walk because the ground shook so hard. It only took 20 minutes for the tsunami to reach the coast line of Tohoku (Northeastern Japan). In that 20 minutes students returned home from school, many people were trying to figure out if their family members were ok. The Tsunami warnings were going off, but people didn`t know what to make of them. It just didn`t seem possible that the waves would be so high. But they were. At their highest the tsunami`s waves reached 15 meters. Taller then most buildings in Minami Sanriku. The town is set right between two small mountains, but the sides are steep and only the most nimble could hope to climb them quickly. ...continue reading "Tohoku Ganbatte: Minami Sanriku 11/3-11/6"

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By tierneybb

A few weeks ago I found myself in the middle of an argument on the bus. Two young twenty-something Nepalis had gone from a general pleasant conversation about nothing, looking forward to Dasain, but when I made an offhand comment about the stretch of road we were on I set them off. The boy, a well off construction manager was too jaded to even entertain the notion of discussing politics, he just pointed out that peoples interests were not being served by the government and it was too bad, too entrenched to get any better. The girl was a university student studying politics, who was interested in the advancement of her country, and while she wasn't fond of the current government, how was that supposed to change if dissatisfied young Nepalis didn't get involved? I sat back, I was determined not to get involved, but still they kept most of the argument in English, with passioned bursts of Nepali roughly translated for my benefit. But this isn't the only time I've been caught in such arguments, while interviewing a shopkeeper in Namo Buddha a man walked in off the street already hurling political arguments at her, and the interview took a back seat as the two of them discussed local issues with the government, animatedly pacing and gesticulating with their arguments. There always seems to be an odd dynamic where both parties agree with each other, and are very nice, but then point out that the other just happens to be fundamentally wrong about their proposed action. ...continue reading "Patan, KTM"

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