My mantra as I enter my final few weeks in Barcelona is, I'll sleep when I'm back home. While this sounds a lot like it has to do with staying out late and taking advantage of the night life Barcelona is well known for, well, it's actually the quite opposite. I'm running out of time in this city I've fallen in love with and that is terrifying. I want to go back to Park Guell and Sagrada Familia. I want to wander the streets of the Barrio Gotic and get lost in medieval Barcelona. Most of all, I want my next three weeks to slow down because I'm just not prepared to say goodbye yet.
Then, on the other hand, I keep finding the urge to find some relaxing downtime because I feel as though I'm always running around. This is the paradox of being abroad - the act of having a general feeling of panic that you don't have enough time to accomplish all that you want to, but also just wanting the ability to catch up on three/four months of sleep that has been lost in the abyss of taking classes, exploring, speaking another language, traveling, and so much more. I've yet to figure out how I want to spend my lasts as and weeks in Barcelona, but I know that I'm never going to be completely ready to leave. I've grown accustomed to the slower lifestyle, the emphasis on family and friends, and a sense of adventure that I have never tapped into while in DC or back home in Connecticut.
I think I've done it. I think that I finally understand what causes study abroad students to have severe abroad withdrawal and with the biggest look of nostalgia to explain to others how it was the most amazing experience of their entire life.
Studying abroad is all about adventures with your friends. That's why this weekend my friends and I rented a car and drove to the other end of the country to have a little adventure.
We drove down from Haifa on Saturday morning at 6AM all the way down to the Dead Sea, only about a three hour drive, but literally on the other side of the country, that's how small Israel is. We found a spa on the side of the road, and for only about $20, had access to pretty much everything there.
The Dead Sea is a body of water lying on the border between Jordan and Israel that is so dense with salt you float it. You walk into the water, turn around, and fall backwards into the water. From then on you don't have to tread water because you just float where you are. The water is supposed to be really good for you skin. Once we got out, we found a pile of the famous Dead Sea mud and put it all over out bodies. The mud is also supposed to be really good for you skin. Then we went back in the sea to rinse the mud off. And from there we went and relaxed by the pool and ate ice cream. Such a hard life.
Then we drove south to go find our youth hostel. Our hostel was located about 45 minutes south through the desert literally up against the border with Jordan. All of the signs were in English, Hebrew, and Thai, because the Moshav ( a type of Israeli town) we were staying in must have employed a lot of Thai workers, which definitely says something about Israeli society. We hung out around the campfire and then went to bed at 9PM, because we were that tired and because....
We woke up at 4AM the next morning. Sunrise was at 6:22AM. Now that's important to know because it was important that we be at the top of Masada to see the sunrise. Masada is an ancient Jewish fortress atop a mountain that was destroyed by the Roman Empire, and is famous because of the battle that took place there and because all of the families ended up committing suicide to save their honor before the Romans got to them. We drove there in a hurry in the pitch black desert night and hiked up all the way to the top before the sun rose. It was absolutely beautiful. Then we explored the ruins atop the mountain and hiked back down to our car.
We then drove a few kilometers north to Ein Gedi, which is a natural spring and series of waterfalls in the desert. It was beautiful, and we got to hop in the water a little bit, but it the narrow path was so full of Israeli school children that it wasn't as much fun as I had remembered it. We then drove to a public beach and went back in the Dead Sea before we drove all the way back to Haifa.
Such a great weekend, and such beautiful scenery. Weekends like that one remind me of why I studied abroad.
Just a three hour flight and we touched down in Istanbul, Turkey for a well-deserved Spring Break.
Not only was this a break from the daily routine in Jordan, but it was also a break from the intense language pledge and homework we have been receiving.
We [my program friends and I] chose Turkey because it was a quick escape for a little money. Istanbul is also a ‘must-see’ city with the best of European and Arab cultures. It has the best of both worlds half of Istanbul on the Asian continent and half on the European continent. Everything about this week has been so different from my time in Jordan.
There are more colors, the water and air are clearer, there is a running body of water nearby, and Istanbul—as a tourist city—is used to foreigners. In a way, I began to compare Amman to Istanbul, not wanting to leave beautiful, historic, clean Istanbul or dusty, dirty, old Amman, but then I realized there is something Amman has that Istanbul doesn’t.
I have been told by many Jordanians and fellow classmates that in order to like Amman and live here you have to experience Amman by night and make friends with locals. After one week in Istanbul I missed all my new Jordanian friends. Sometimes it’s not the place you go to, but the people you meet that makes your time worthwhile.
So as I got back on the plane today with a bittersweet feeling of sadly leaving my relaxing Spring Break destination and only ready and prepared to take on the rest of my semester abroad, I realized my time is half way through and I feel I still have so much to learn.
My time in Senegal has had me thinking a lot about cultural relativism. During my stay, I faced some pretty alternative manners of thinking and living that greatly contrasted with my own. When I encountered such traditions and values, I wrote them off as simple differences in culture. I was adamant about not imposing my own assumptions of what is right and wrong upon a culture that I was just trying to observe and better understand without judgement. Now that I have left Senegal for the last leg of my trip in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I've been reflecting on my experience in West Africa and trying to piece together my opinions on the experience.
One situation that really challenged my assumptions was a discussion about polygamy that I had with one leader of a feminist organization in Dakar. She had said that many educated women often seek to join a polygamist relationship because the system offers them opportunities. For one, as wife #3 or #4, the educated woman would be free to get a job of her choice without worry that she is not caring for her husband. She may also be a more attractive match for a man seeing that she can work and support herself. Thus, female education does nothing to threaten the institution of polygamy at this point in time. The fact that many educated women still seek polygamist relationships speaks to how comfortable the general populous is with the idea of polygamy.
In contrast, I entered the country with many reservations about the idea of polygamy. In my eyes, the institution exacerbates inequalities between the genders and perpetuates them. Hearing what women had to say about polygamy was unsettling for me, but a healthy dose of cultural relativism. I am currently working on discovering where the line of what is culturally appropriate and what is simply right or wrong lies. In my eyes, polygamy is still a perpetuation of the patriarchy, regardless of whether the women agree with the system or not. But it is also important to consider whether the people and institutions whom I evaluate even consider their values on the same terms. I will have to continue to reflect on this.
This past week, I finally submitted an Independent Research Proposal to my Capstone Project supervisor. For my capstone I am creating a basic literacy curriculum for New Chapter’s After School Program in Phumlani Village, which does not have an educational component at this time. Since nearly 70% of Phumlani’s residents are unemployed and do not have the means to pay school fees, many children do not attend primary school. This reality exists in townships all over South Africa, and as a result, nearly 80 percent of South African learners do not develop basic reading skills by the time they reach Grade 5. Those learners will not likely succeed in secondary-school education, which will in turn compromise their options for post-school learning, career opportunities, and general wellbeing in life.
Phumlani’s literacy program will take place either at the community center or in the local library and will target primary school learners from Kindergarten to Grade 3, as well as children who have never been enrolled in school. I am creating a handbook with a curriculum that includes lesson plans for weekly literacy workshops as well as workbook activities and short stories that coincide with each workshop. I am also creating an Indigogo webpage that will provide the means for printing and for each child to receive his or her own workbook to bring home. Ideally, I would like this handbook to be the initial step in the development of a larger mentorship program in which New Chapter would partner with a local high school to form a one-on-one mentorship program using the handbook as the curriculum. The greatest challenge to this program is that most of the children speak three languages: Xhosa, Afrikaans, and English. Their levels of English vary drastically, so this program will not just be a literacy program, but a literacy program for ESL learners. As I speak neither Afrikaans nor Xhosa it would be nearly impossible for me to formally tutor the children myself, which is why I’m hoping that New Chapter will be able to partner with locals who speak the children’s home language. Thankfully, Malcolm Josephs, the founder of New Chapter, speaks Afrikaans fluently, knows nearly all of the children in Phumlani as well as their families, and will be able to help me establish the children’s English skills for the purposes of forming the curriculum.
Although I am creating the handbook for future purposes, I am also working with the children informally on a weekly basis, in order to better understand their learning styles and what activities are able to successfully motivate them to learn. I would like to get the name and grade level of each child who attends the afterschool program. Then I will create a log of their general literacy levels. This would be helpful to the future volunteers who will work with specific children. Once I’ve established the baseline literacy levels I will split the children into two groups based on reading skill, one group focusing on basic phonetic skills and the alphabet and the other more advanced group focusing on improving reading comprehension. I would work with each group for an hour each week. At the end of the semester I would interview the children to understand if their attitudes about reading have changed.
This week I am distributing consent forms to the parents of the children who will participate in the program. Later, this week once the signed forms are returned, I will distribute a short survey to assess the children’s attitudes about reading. I foresee that my research plan will change as I begin more hands-on work with the children. I’m expecting my greatest challenge to be the language barrier, but also that some of the kids are very shy about answering questions. These next few weeks will be hectic, and I’ll have to adapt my research along the way, but I’m relieved to finally have a foundation for my project and to be able to start working.
This week marks the start of my month-long spring break adventure, with my trip currently underway in Ireland. My mom and I began our trip in Dublin, and we are now on the west coast of the country in Galway. While I absolutely loved Dublin, Galway has a certain small-city charm that makes it feel undeniably Irish. Upon thinking more about why Galway captured my heart, I realized that it's due to its similarities with Bristol.
Galway is basically the Bristol of Ireland: it's smaller than Dublin but thrives off its large student population. Both Bristol and Galway are lively cities that offer a more authentic experience of the country as opposed to the two major urban draws: London and Dublin. I'm realizing it's not just Bristol that I adore, but perhaps all European college towns.
A city dominated by young adults makes for an interesting city indeed. There's always something going on every night of the week and there's usually an urban city center as well as quieter areas full of natural beauty. Simply put, college towns have it all.
While there's something to be said for big cities and their endless variety, I can't help but feel that they lack the "sense of place" that comes with small city college towns. Studying abroad is about expanding your horizons and trying new things, and for me, Bristol has been a completely different type of city than any other I have lived in. Going to a new country is great, but changing it up even more is better.
Today is the day. I have about two months left at LSE until my finals begin, but I’m beginning to study for them today due to the sheer amount of material tested. Luckily, my grades do not carry over towards my GPA directly, but I am studying hard nonetheless because equivalent grades will be displayed on my transcript. This isn’t exactly the beginning of the end for me, however, because there is only so much time that one can spend studying—eventually you need a break, and I’m hoping to take full advantage of that time. Two months is a long time to do anything, let alone study, but I suppose what I should really be talking about here is my recent trip to Switzerland.
Unfortunately, my little four-day vacation cut quite deeply into my wallet—not a surprise in a country where the minimum wage is the equivalent to 25 US dollars—but to me every penny was worth it. The contrast between Switzerland and Croatia, where I had been the week before, was immediate from the moment I walked into the airport in Zurich. Everything was pristine and every train was on time. You can imagine my excitement over their efficient public transportation considering we got stuck twice in Croatia while we were traveling because of poor bus scheduling. We were to spend two and a half days in Zurich and a couple final days in Lucerne, about an hour train ride away. Zurich was fantastic, but the beauty in Lucerne is unlike any other country I have seen thus far. We rented boats to take out onto the lake, and the weather was so incredible that we took a second boat out the very next day. With the Swiss Alps in the background and not a cloud in the sky, there wasn’t much you couldn’t love. At night, my friend from GW had invited my friends and I to dinner at her family’s apartment in Lucerne, which was placed beautifully over the city. It was maybe one of the best views that I have seen in my past few months of traveling—it compares with the top of the Eiffel tower—and these people lived there! I was instantly jealous, but it was inspiring in a sense. And just like that, all my traveling for this year came to a close. It was incredibly sad but also incredibly rewarding, a feeling I had never felt before.
At this point, I’m beginning to prepare myself mentally for the many weeks of studying that lay ahead of me. In a way I feel as though I haven’t actually studied in a very long time, since the work you do at LSE during the year can’t exactly be considered studying. You are really reading a lot of information and taking as many notes as possible so you can review them later. Now, I have to remember how to get back into the groove of studying, and although I’m not looking forward to it, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Two of my exams I’ll be taking in New York during my internship, so that should make for a very interesting experience. If you plan on coming to LSE it is important to know that their exams stretch all the way until June 20th. This is very important for students who will have internships over the summer, because it will most likely conflict. With all my traveling over and done with, it looks like my next few blogs will have to be about London and my life in this beautiful city—I cannot complain.
This week I had a truly eye-opening experience. After months of waiting, the week had finally arrived where I would travel north to the Syrian border to work with Syrian refugee children through Project Amal ou Salam.
Project Amal ou Salam is a week long camp for Syrian Refugee children. We had 20 volunteers fly in from around the world to participate. In this week, I worked with close to 1,000 Syrian Refugee children. I really had no idea what I was in for before the week began, but now that it has ended, it is time for me to reflect on what just happened.
I was a team leader for “Fareek al-Ahmar” (Team Red). Between me and one other girl, we were assigned to take care of up to 50 Syrian Refugee children each day, between the ages of 5-13. I have held many internships in my life dealing with international affairs, but this was the first time I actually found myself in the field, dealing first hand with refugees. Every day, we arrived early morning at the venue we had rented out for the camp. The children would arrive and we split them up based on their age groups. We took them around all day to different workshops including sports, photography, art, music and team building/trust building. A lot of these kids don’t even go to school, and this was the one-day they had a chance to experience the life of a child. It was a day of empowerment for them, as we asked them to rebuild Syria in art class, taught them about viewing one issue from different perspectives in photography class, and more. At the end of each day, we I was met with hard goodbyes from the kids, as they made me promise that I would see them again the next day.
Every day, little Syrian refugees came in from all walks of life, but they had one thing in common: they all had their childhoods ripped away from them. I was so shocked to discover so many things. I noticed kids without limbs, kids with scars all over their face, kids in extreme distress. Throughout the days, we would feed the children breakfast, lunch and a snack, yet many of them kept coming up to me and telling me they were hungry. I found out later that they were quietly saving the food we were giving them to bring home to their siblings. I found out that many of them did not have both parents, or any parents. I witnessed with my own eyes six year olds screaming chants about bringing down the regime, bringing down Bashaar Assad.
As I was talking to these children, I gained more and more knowledge about their backgrounds. Engaging in conversations with these little kids, I learned how much they knew about the world. They knew all about the war, they knew about nationalism, they knew about pain, hunger, death and suffering. They have been through more than any human should ever go through, and at such a young age. Their ‘backpacks’ that they carried were small black totes with the title “UNHCR” written across them. These were the refugees; these were the kids that were in such a devastating place in life that aid had to be delivered.
One thing I noticed as well was that these kids never smiled in the photos I took. The only time they did smile was when I caught them actually being happy. It’s very interesting since we grew up our lives learning that you should always smile in pictures. These kids only smile when they actually feel the emotion. I feel so lucky that I could have been a part of this project to bring them that emotion, and I hope that there are many more projects like these in the future to help empower the youth of Syria and give them hope for the future.
The bus was scheduled to leave at 8:00, but nothing leaves on time in Salvador, so we’ll be fine, right? It was 7:45 and we finally jumped in the car of my friend’s host dad. Red lights, lanes, and other cars go unnoticed in Salvador, and we zoomed through the city. We approached a large intersection where the host dad waved down a bus and told us to get out. At 7:59, we jumped out of the car into a crowded intersection and onto a moving bus that said “Praia do Forte.” Two and a half hours later, we made it to paradise. The small touristy town was just what we needed to get away from the crowded streets of Salvador for a weekend.
Beyond the lovely beaches, this town is home to Projeto Tamar, a sea turtle conservatory. Here, they hatch over 400,000 baby sea turtles every year and then safely transport them to the ocean. This was an event I was able to witness! At 5:00, the event titled “opening the nest” begins. We went to the nest area and the staff members gave a speech (I can’t really tell you what they said), and began to remove the protection from one of several nests. As they started to brush sand away, little tiny sea turtles smaller than a playing card began to poke up through the sand. First we saw only a few, but suddenly, it seemed as though the nest exploded. Dozens and dozens started popping up and flopping about on the sand. They brought some over for us to touch – their shells were not yet hardened. They were so adorable, all I could think about was how to put one in my pocket to take home. The turtles were then put into a large bucket, and we all walked over to the beach. With the sun setting in the background, they let children hold the turtles and then set them down several feet away from the water. It was amazing how all of the turtles knew exactly where to go. Some more slowly than others, waddled into the water, letting the waves catch and pull them into the sea. It was one of the most beautiful events I have experienced.
Baby Sea Turtles
It’s amazing where only a few hours of travel can get you. The conservation projects, beautiful beaches, and relaxing lifestyles of places surrounding the large cities is so fun to experience. Plus, practicing Portuguese is even more of a challenge and a must in these areas, as we have to rely on others to know where we are going, rather than our own knowledge of the city. It was interesting trying to communicate with locals and new bus systems. I had some doubt in our ability, especially with our late start to the trip, but we did it!
I just returned back to Barcelona from a weekend trip to Paris and I have never felt more at home as I do at this very moment. Maybe it had something to do with having to navigate Charles de Gaulle airport and the bus/metro system alone with no working knowledge of French, aside from croissant and crepe. On the other hand, maybe it was being scrutinized by Easy Jet as I stuffed my carry-on bag into a too small metal been to make sure it was within the correct dimensions and restrictions - isn't flying budget airlines a ton of fun?
While I had yet another incredible and moment worthy trip exploring a major European city, I found myself ready to return to the comfort of Barcelona and Spanish speakers and my metro system. The comfort in the Spanish language factor is ultimately what has lead to the reflection of this post. When I first arrived to Barcelona on January 7th I was terrified to have to speak in Spanish because while i knew my colors really well, my not so extensive vocabulary stopped there.
This is one of the most obvious ways I have grown over the last three,intend that I have been here. Not only am I fumbling through countries where I don't speak the native language, but I find myself being so ready and excited to seal and hear Spanish again once I know its time to head home to Barcelona. This makes me realize that despite the fact that this experience has gone by way too fast (I have exactly one month left), I'm proud of myself for not only
making Barcelona, the people, and their language feel like home, but for recognizing how far I have come in the last three months.
Here's to one final month that can maybe top the last three,
