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By reuben31

While there are plenty of political and social issues involving Israel, in the country itself there is hardly any discrimination, racism, or hatred that is directed at any specific group. This results for the most part from the fact that in order to immigrate to Israel, you have to be Jewish. While there are Israeli Arabs who were granted citizenship when Israel declared independence in 1948, the fact that almost all of the country is Jewish creates a fairly level playing field for most. There are Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and Spain, Ethiopian Jews, and Latin American Jews all living together.

Among all of these groups I feel relatively comfortable and at home. As someone of Ashkenazi Jewish descent who grew up around Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews at summer camp, coming to Israel I believed that I wouldn’t experience a culture shock when it came to Israelis. However, through my time here, I have found that there is one particular group of Israelis that I have experienced a certain culture shock around. In the 1990’s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and an agreement between Mikhail Gorbachev and Shimon Peres, almost one million Jews immigrated to Israel from the Former Soviet Union. This changed the state of Israel forever.

Russian-speaking Israelis have been one of the main sources of the success of the country as a “Start Up Nation.” Jews from the Former Soviet Union arrived in Israel with advanced degrees in science and technology and quickly flourished in the new capitalist nation they found themselves in. A large proportion of the highly successful tech companies in Israel are founded and run by Russian-speaking Israelis, and the language most often heard spoken among doctors all across the country is Russian. As a result of the size and success of the immigration of Jews from the Former Soviet Union to Israel, across the country there are whole towns with store signs only in Russian, Russian newspapers, Russian television, and Russian as the primary language.

...continue reading "Russian-Speaking Israel"

By kyrahaltman

While volunteering with Pet Grooming House, an "animal-friendly" entity which provides free grooming and health services to stray dogs, I have also had the opportunity to conduct research. By exploring how the adoption of stray dogs is supported by “animal-friendly” dog groomers and veterinarians in the city of Athens, I was able to use findings to make suggestions to the Greek government regarding the promotion of stray dog adoption and improvement of the wellbeing of all dogs in the city.
Drawing from dialogue with a groomer, veterinarian, and two owners of (formerly stray) dogs, I made the following recommendations to the Athenian municipality: facilitating public education campaigns about responsible dog ownership, investing in technological advancements and online infrastructure, enforcing existing animal welfare laws, and financially incentivizing locals and “animal-friendly” entities to promote adoption. The research concludes that “animal-friendly” organizations are the city’s secret weapon to promoting stray dog adoption by residents and should have government support.
After returning home to the States and refining my research, I intend to send my recommendations to numerous municipal departments and newspapers in Athens.  I hope that this information and my time at Pet Grooming House will contribute to policy change and catalyze local discussion about the important and escalating issue of stray dogs. As Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
To read my full research or to send a personal comment, please email me at kyrahaltman@gwu.edu!

By tanvibanerjee

One of my friends who went on an exchange program once told me, “Nothing lasts forever, especially, study abroad.” And how true have her words been! It feels like it was just yesterday when I landed in Changi on a hot and humid January morning (something, I never thought I would be able to say in the same sentence). Now, I am expected to pack up and fly back to New Delhi on a hot and humid May morning. Even though I have been prepared to go back home, I am whiplashed by how quickly the semester went by. More importantly, though, I am amazed at how much I have learned and changed over the last few months.

So, what have I learned from study abroad?

1. It is okay to feel like a fish out of water

In some aspects, coming to Singapore has not been a culture shock to me simply because the Indian culture is an important part of Singaporean culture itself. However, I have still felt like a fish out of water many times here and especially during my travels through Southeast Asia.

One of the first times that I felt completely out of sync was when I tried to order my first cup of tea at a local hawker center. I was extremely confused by local names such as ‘Teh, Tea O, Tea C etc.’ and ended up ordering iced milk tea, instead of the hot one that I wanted.

The first final that I took in Singapore, also baffled me. First and foremost, it was held in a huge sports hall. Even though my class was small with only 10 students, we took our exams with nearly 400 other students in the same space. The local students put away their bags in the corner of the huge hall and walked to their assigned seat numbers with complete ease. One of my local friends had to actually guide me through the entire process. ...continue reading "Lessons and Letters: My final blog on Singapore"

By shellytakessingapore

It was a sunny day when my plane was descending from an eight hour flight from Doha International Airport into Singapore's Changi International Airport. As I looked out the left window, I could see the famous boat like structure on top of Marina Bay Sands, the Singapore Flyer Ferris Wheel, and even the Supertrees. When the plane finally touched the ground and came to a stop, my first thought was "This is it. I'm actually here".

I didn't think that these past five months would have gone by as quickly as they did. There were certainly dull times throughout the semester where the days went by and all I had done was stay in my room and do some work. However, as I have to come to learn, studying abroad doesn't necessarily mean doing something new every moment. Often times people studying abroad say they have been enlightened or have changed as a person. While I can't necessarily say that I have changed, I have learned a lot more about the world through the lens of the locals in Singapore and the countries I have visited. I have enjoyed having meaningful conversations with my fellow exchangers about their home countries and how their culture is similar and different from my own.

Looking back on my semester, I don't have many, if any, regrets. There are some things that I wish I had known before coming to Singapore. These things include basic things like sunscreen (it costs so much here!), an umbrella (despite all of the sun, it rains at any given moment in Singapore), and also general assumptions such as spending. While the food in Singapore is cheap, I have found myself being constantly low in cash. Singapore is mostly a cash based economy. The country is moving towards being cashless by encouraging people to pay with NETS, the Network for Electronic Transfers. NETs is a national electronic payment system that is owned by banks in Singapore including DBS, OCBC, and UOB.

...continue reading "It’s not a goodbye, it’s a see you later"

By neerjapatel

Since middle school, I’ve always viewed myself as multicultural bringing together my Indian heritage with my American upbringing. I never felt that one culture dominated the other which helps me to represent myself in all settings whether this be at home, at school, or in the workplace.

As I’ve come abroad, I’ve been faced with many challenges. Being in Barcelona, I have found challenges including differences in language, food, clothing, and much more. At first, this was a huge culture shock. I was in a new city, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, and most importantly a huge language barrier. However, as the semester continued, I found myself adapting and turning ever challenge into a positive factor of the culture in Barcelona.

From my experience abroad, I am able to reflect on internal change and my identity. I still view myself as multicultural, but now I include the Spanish culture as a part of my identity. I travelled to Croatia last weekend and found myself in a country where I could not understand the language even if I tried. But, it wasn’t when I heard English that I felt at home but more so, when I heard Spanish. When I heard someone or a group of people speaking Spanish, it reminded me of home—Barcelona. In this sense, I think the way I view the Spanish culture and how it ties into my identity has changed the most for me throughout my semester. It has become a way I can connect with people outside of Spain. It has also become a way I connect with my friends that I made in Barcelona.

...continue reading "The Spaniard Inside of Me"

Some things I've learned about Shanghai so far:
———
Life here can seem like one huge contradiction.
  1. Society runs at its own pace. Lateness is accepted and rather common in some facets of life. Nevertheless, public transit arrival and departure times are always right on the dot and I've never been to a more punctual, streamlined hospital than the one I go to in Shanghai.
  2. Bikes. Are. Everywhere. So much so that massive bicycle graveyards stretch on for miles and miles, piled up with broken bikes and overproduction, but at the same time, bike sharing is generally a very time efficient and cost effective way to travel around the city.
  3. City street cleaners work almost entirely by hand with a broom made of leaves and a shovel, which seems extremely unproductive and inefficient, but the majority of streets—even in less-populated areas—remain relatively clean.
  4. Traffic culture is chaos. Move it or lose it. On top of that, everyone honks at everyone for no apparent reason. However, there seem to be very few accidents—at least none that I've seen.
  5. There is absolutely zero rhyme or rhythm to the way people walk in the streets. You cannot get around anyone. I think people walk at about negative 0.5 mph, but when it comes to catching the bus or metro, everyone runs like they're being chased by a chainsaw murderer down a dark alley at 3am.
But hey … at least you know you've got something really good going on in your home away from home when the only things you truly miss from home are blue skies and fresh air.

...continue reading "Shanghai is…"

Before I head home this week, I have one more adventure to tackle here in Iceland: my glacial geology field work trip! For five days, my forty classmates and I are traveling with our professor and some graduate students around South and West Iceland to observe glaciers and the landforms they leave behind. Here is a recap of our trip, probably the most epic field trip I have been on.

 

Saturday (May 12th)

Saturday was our first day of field work and consisted of three primary stops: the Ancient Forest, Gígjökull, and Steimsholtjökull. The Ancient Forest is a patch of dried tree stumps which were killed in a flood. This flood was caused by a sub-glacial eruption from Katla volcano which is under the Mýrasjökull glacier. By dating the trees, scientists concluded that all of the trees died at the same time around 823 CE. This site was only revealed 15 years ago by another flood, which is why it’s a hotspot for glacial-flood related research now. Both Gígjökull and Steimsholtjökull are glaciers further inland from the ancient forest. These glacial tongues extend down from Eyjafjallajökull, the famous subglacier volcano which erupted in 2010. Both of these glaciers have released giant floods as a result of eruptions and other events, similar to the one which killed the ancient forest. Being able to predict flood events as a result of the interactions between glaciers and volcanoes is very important in Iceland because these massive flood destroy property and infrastructure, and have the potential to change the physical landscape and kill people.

Excavating a dead tree in the ancient forest

 

Gígjökull extending down from Eyjafjallajökull

 

Steimsholtjökull in the top right corner extending down and its proglacial lake (the lake of meltwater in front of warmer glaciers).

Sunday (May 13th)

On Tuesday, we spent the entire day at Solheimajökull, another glacial tongue extending from Mýrasjökull. In the morning, we walked around the outwash plain of the glacier (the flat flood zone in front of the glacier) and observed different landforms (in layman’s terms, different types of gravel piles) from different time periods. For example, further away from the glacier we see features which date back to the Neo-Glacial era (2,000-3,000 years ago), as well as the Little Ice Age (600-800 years ago). Most notably, we see the moraines (linear mounds) which mark the end of the glacier at different points in time. Starting from the moraine from 1995, we can follow the retreat of the glacier as a result of climate change until now.

For the latter half of the day, we hiked on the actual glacier and practiced drilling into the ice using a steam drill. Basically, to operate a steam drill, you have a boiler filled with water which is heated using camping fuel. When the water boils, it releases steam through a hose which is connected to a hollow spike. The steam warms and escapes the spike through a small hole at the point. By facing the spike vertically downwards, the stream of steam will heat the ice below and slowly bore a hole down. These types of drills can be used to take measurements below the ice.

Solheimajökull from the outwash plain below.

 

Me and my friends Andrew (Canadien), Chris (Norwegian), and Nellie (Norweigian) on top of Solheimajökull. We used crampons to hike across the ice.

 

A professor boring a hole with the steam drill.

Monday (May 14th)

On Monday we spent our entire day at Sveinafellsjökull and Skeiđarárjökull, outlet glaciers of Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe. We started the day by hiking around the ice margin and proglacial lake of Sveinafellsjökull. One of the PhD students who was accompanying out trip talked a bit about her research with ice cores. In general, ice cores can be used to measure changes in the temperature. This is done by measuring the concentrations of different water isotopes in the annual layers of ice. Essentially, if there is a warmer year, there will less “light” water isotopes because they evaporate out more quickly. In her project, the PhD student was looking at how volcanic eruptions in the area change the regional temperature and how that effects the concentration of different water isotopes.

The second part of the day was spent walking around the outwash plain of Skeiđarárjökull. This particular glacier in the largest outlet glacier from Vatnajökull. It is also a surging glacier, which means that it does not have the same annual growth and retreat as normal glaciers. Instead, it experiences periods of very fast flow which cause it to expand quickly (maybe every few years). After it surges, it leave behind lots of “dead ice” – ice disconnected from the main glacier.

In front of Sveinafellsjökull – all of the black sediment coming from the glacier is ash from former eruptions below Vatnajökull

 

These slopes mark where Skeiđarárjökull stopped during the Little Ice Age, coach bus for scale.

 

A kettlehole, formed by dead ice melting underneath – students for scale.

Tuesday (May 15th)

On Tuesday, we continued our trip in the morning by heading east to Veiđarsandur. This sandy area is another outwash plain filled with sediments from the volcano, Katla. Eurptions from Katla melt the overlying glacier, Mýrasjökull, and cause it to flood and transport volcanic ash to the area down below. In 1918, there was a giant flood caused by a Katla eruption which carried enough sediment downstream to extend the surrounding coastline out 4 kilometers into the sea. This eruption actually connected an isolated island to the Icelandic mainland. Some of the Icelandic coastline is dependent on regular floods of glacier melt and volcanic ash to maintain the land. Currently, the small town of Vik is facing problems with coastal erosion since Katla has not erupted in 100 years to provide to sediments to the coast.

Later, we continued our journey to an older glacial landscape, named Völlur, closer to Reykjavik. Here we saw geological remnants from the Last Glacial Maximum 14,000 years ago. At this point, our group of fifty early-mid 20-somethings began to mentally devolve to kindergartners after spending 4 long days together. So here, there were lots of people tumbling boulders down hills and tumbling around in the moss.

Taking off our boots to wade through a freezing river

 

Hiking across an old glacial moraine

 

Wednesday (May 16th)

Wednesday was our final day on the trip, and we focused on glaciomarine environments (where glaciers meet the ocean). During the Last Glacial Maximum, Iceland was completely covered by glaciers which extended into the Atlantic. The glaciers were so heavy that they caused the island to sink nearly 60 meters into the ocean. Once the retreated, the island rose again. This phenomena is known as isostatic rebound. Because of this, there are specimens of marine interactions available for us to see on land.

Most of our day was spent at some sea cliffs about an hour north of Reykjavik studying the structural geology of the cliff. Essentially, we were tracing different layers of sediment along the shoreline to see which layers were deformed during which glacial time period. A local farm dog decided to join our walk along the beach and probably had the best time of all of us receiving pats from every student.

Sea Cliffs with the geolo-dog in training.

 

Sea Cliffs with the geolo-dog in training.

 

This blog post is the final one for my exchange here in Iceland. It has been a really great semester, and this field trip really rounded it out well. Of course, it is always bittersweet to say goodbye to my friends, but I hope to see them again in the future. It’s been a semester full of bizarre and interesting experiences and has been truly worthwhile.

-Emily

P.S. Here are some pictures of me snorkeling last week in Silfra, a crevasse in Þingvallavatn – my bucket list activity for my last free days in Iceland.

 

Greetings from Salzburg, Austria! While my program does not end til mid July, for other students this is their final week studying abroad, thus making this my last blog post. To be frank, I am only halfway through my program and have spent majority of my time outside of Freiburg, so I do not have the privilege of looking back on my experience and communicating it to you all, which was essentially what I was chosen to do. So, I will attempt to summarize my time here and give you a little insight into IES Freiburg - Environmental Studies.

For starters, most abroad programs start promptly after Winter Break in mid to late January at the latest. For better or for worse, this particular program starts late February - as in February 27th, which is basically March at that point - and goes til July 7th. This is primarily due to Germany’s semester structure and is similar to the Australia program. As a result, you have around 2 months at home after finishing up fall semester finals at GW before your program and about a month before you start school back in the States in August. I personally love spending time with my family and the extra month was perfect for my timetable, but it is important to note that it took my out of internship season in the summer. On the other hand to play devil’s advocate, spring and summer in Freiburg is the best time to live or travel in the city.

Which brings me to my next topic - Freiburg as a city. Freiburg is a university city and is primarily comprised of students, professors, and the elderly. That being said, when school is not in session, there is absolutely no one - and I mean no one - in town. During the first three weeks I was in Freiburg, school was not in session and it was still winter. Needless to say, it was rather depressing and isolating. As time went by and school resumed, the city changed over night and suddenly everyone was outside walking around, laying on the grass, eating at a cafe, and just enjoying the local culture. So if you do go on this program or are considering it, keep this in mind that it gets better. In addition, Freiburg is situated right near the French and Swiss borders, thus making Basel or Frankfurt the closest airport. The airport is only a 3-4 hour bus/train ride away, but it does make traveling more expensive. I pay from 5—70 Euros just to get to the airport (sometimes total, other times one way), thus increasing the cost of my weekend travel. If small towns in the middle of nowhere are your thing, then Freiburg is perfect, but if you are looking for a National airport type situation like DC, you will not find that here. ...continue reading "IES Freiburg – Environmental Studies Summarized"

By sheldonwongg

One of the really unique aspects about doing an SIT Program is that they all have a one month attached independent study project (ISP) to culminate the end of the semester. During the ISP, you are allowed to travel to anywhere that is relevant to the program focus and given free range to research any topic of your interest. I only have one week left of my ISP time, but it has been one of the most eye opening and educational experiences of my life. I decided to go to Dharamsala, the “capital” of Tibetans in exile. I’ve spent the last three weeks apprenticing a local small business clothing company to learn more about how emerging Tibetan designers use traditional clothing as inspiration for their contemporary designs. I’ve been going into the workshop and working with the tailors to make clothes. I even got to design a few garments. I set out to gain some perspective on what Tibetan clothing means for a group of people that have evolve in exile, and I’m walking away from a deeper understanding of how nuanced this idea of fashion, especially in the context of identity, can be. This experience has given me so much first-hand knowledge about the livelihoods of those who seek to creative and to do so with integrity to their identity.

 

Getting to do an ISP in India is also really cool because it is like I get to study abroad in two countries. Despite being in majority Tibetan communities in Nepal and India, Dharamsala has been really unique from my experience in Nepal. In my few weeks here, I’ve reunited myself with a variety of food that doesn’t include dal bhat, explored little Israel, and walked a lot of hills. I even met the Dalai Lama and got to attend a teaching by him. It’s my last week in Dharamsala before I head back to Nepal for the final week of study abroad, so I’m trying to soak up all of the beauty in Dharamsala before I leave.