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By Fatima Zahra Kassidi

As my semester abroad comes to an end, I write this last blog post with a heavy heart and a great load of wonderful memories. Reminiscing on my first post, I realize my identity has not changed much but it definitely grew stronger and by that I mean that my pride in it has multiplied. Experiencing such a diverse and welcoming scene where people from all over Asia and many European natives, now expats, have built an environment of respect and discipline and have proven that this cohabitation is not as difficult to achieve as other areas of the world have portrayed. I have realized that my identity as a global citizen has deepened and affirmed further than ever before thanks to my several opportunities to travel, explore and familiarize with such different cultures. I have been around so many nationalities and languages such as regional Malay, Mandarin, Bahasa, Tagalog... Moreover, I have had the incredible honor of visiting some areas of Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Australia and Thailand. This thirst for discovery and wanderlust has grown insatiable as I constantly battled between classes and expanding my array of foreign visits and cultural knowledge to learn from. The hardest part about returning home would definitely be leaving this City-State hub called Singapore—connecting you to so many other amazing places, a literal door for travel lovers as myself. Another hard reality is putting an enormous distance between friends that you developed special bonds with but will become dispersed all over the world. The good side is that I now have a global network of friends and we can visit each other. Indeed, plans and dates have already been reserved for reunions in the coming future. I have also shared contact information with my professors to keep in touch with. Although I have had an incredible experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world, I’m happy to find the comfort of home in Morocco for a few weeks before heading back to GW and finding a certain stability for one last semester where my weekends will look like Gelman library dates and not Singapore Changi airport meetings en route for yet another adventure.

By Taylor Williams

In all honesty, the food has not exactly been the highlight of my trip. I don’t want to say it's been all bad, London is an amazingly diverse city with a wide array of options. All of the Indian food I’ve tried has been unmatched to anything I’ve ever had at home, similar to the Caribbean and Chinese food. Before I came to London all I would ever hear once I told people I was going to London was that the weather was bad and the food was even worse. Well, thus far the weather has held steady and it hasn’t been until recently that a dreary and dark sky has been the constant state of the city. Well, unfortunately, I finally understand what everyone means when they talk about London food. Now, I don’t at all want to say the food is bad. I think its horribly ignorant and rude to say that all of the authentically British food is bad and to be avoided at all cost. That being said, it’s definitely been much different than the food I’m accustomed to eating at home. 

When one thinks of London, you don’t normally think of it being a place that's drastically different than the US, and in many ways that's true. There are times when I can completely forget I’m in another country at all and feel completely come home, and then I’ll walk past Buckingham Palace or I’ll ride atop on the many red double-decker buses and I’ll remember how far from home I really am. I only have one week left to try and soak up as much of London as I can, so I’m going to vow to every day see something I haven’t before. 

By Julia McNally

This past weekend I finally got to cross off one of the top items on my New Zealand to-do list: the Bay of Islands. Located about 3 hours north of Auckland, the Bay of Islands is a collection of 144 islands and features towns of Paihia, Russell and Waitangi, where the famous Treaty of Waitangi was signed.

Along our drive up we stopped at Abbey Caves, a set of three caves that are home to the glow worms found all over the North Island. Moss-covered geometric rocks framed and formed the caves, making the trip down into them a slippery one. The first two caves were difficult to get inside of but the third we decided to attempt. Forming a single-file line we descended, careful not to step into the water or cut up our legs. We moved on all fours into the depths of the cave, holding each other’s bags and hands when needed. Crawling into a small side section of the cave, we turned off our flashlights and waited for them to appear. Looking up, we saw the white-blue glow of the worms, like stars in the sky. Having only my phone with me and not my camera, I wasn’t able to get a picture of the worms we saw but I’ve pulled one from tripadvisor.com.

After consuming the lunches we’d packed we got back in the car and headed for AH Reed Memorial Park. We arrived at the park and read the map, which showed a 45 minute each direction walk to our next destination, Whangarei Falls. At this point in the semester waterfalls were nothing new, but this one was three times the size of any we’d seen before. Perhaps not the tallest, but the widest and most vivacious. The path lead across the top of the fall, providing a steep but breathtaking view down towards the the lagoon where the waterfall gathered. Following the path down to the base, we took in the scenery from all angles and heights. At the base a family was having a picnic, the little girl exploring the edge of the water, watched closely by her father so that she wouldn’t fall in. I took a moment, thinking, “this is someone’s everyday life. My paradise, my other-worldly beauty, someone lives here always.” That thought permeated many of my experiences throughout the semester.

 

Our next stop was the Mermaid Pools near Matapouri. At this point we had lost the other car we were meeting at the Bay of Islands, and the urge to see and swim in these pools was far stronger than our desire to track them down. We pulled up to an absolutely surreal beach. The sand was pure, soft in texture and light in color. The waves weren’t crashing, but discreetly rolling in. The water and sky displaying idyllic shades of blue. Slowly, we walked across the beach, following a map we found online to the pools. The way to the pools was first up a steep hill - steep in the way that it was almost 90 degrees vertical. There was a rope secured into the ground to grab and use to pull ourselves up. Equipped with flip flops and massive cameras, we were ill prepared for this type of climb but persevered nonetheless. A short walk awaited us at the top, taking us down an equally steep rocky journey to the pools. They looked exactly like what I pictures something called the “Mermaid Pools” would look like. Rough edges framing emerald water that overlooked a view of the ocean and islands in the distance. Without hesitation we dove in. The water, as per usual, was freezing. That didn’t stop three of the four of us from spending over an hour splashing and swimming around, living out our childhood mermaid fantasies.

 

From Matapouri we finally made our way up to Piha, the town we were staying in. The next morning we took a ferry from Piha to Russell, a small town well-known in the Bay of Islands. We hiked up and over the town, reaching the summit and taking in the views before descending to a small, hidden beach to relax for a few hours. Just around the bend from where we sat we found a tire swing that stretched across the rocky shoreline just out over the edge of the water. We soaked up as much warmth from the sun as we could, as it was difficult to catch a warm day in the winter. Piling back on to the ferry to Piha and heading back to Auckland we were all satiated with the number of adventures we’d found on our way to and around the Bay of Islands, one of the must-do locations for New Zealand visitors.

By Beatrice Mount

Around this time of year, my parents normally send me one simple text message for the holiday season: “email me what you want for christmas so I can order it on time.” It’s rather straightforward, and indeed a little bit abnormal, but provides the best representation for how my family views the holiday season. Specifically: we’ve never really been big fans. It’s not that we don’t celebrate chirstmas, but the only holiday tradition that avoided falling to the wayside was our visit to a family friend’s christmas party. OF course, that fell apart this year, when my parents traded out California’s great, smokey sunsets for the slightly less smokey sunsets of Oregon. We just don’t “do” christmas well.

In contrast, the minute mid-November hits, the Dutch enter a holiday frenzy. The streets are decorated with intricate, twinkling lights that illuminate the cobblestone and symbolise the welcoming of the new season. Beginning in mid-November and lasting through the first week of January, Dutch city centers and squares are transformed into Christmas markets. Each town has their own unique array of edible goods and non-edible gifts, ranging from scarves to rubber ducks to kettlekorn to loempia. Maastricht even has it’s own ice rink and Ferris wheel!

While the Christmas markets bring together the dutch, in recent years, the holiday season has been marked by a debate regarding one controversial holiday figure: Zwarte Piet. For those of you who don’t know, Zwarte Piet, or “Black Pete," is, explained in simplified terms, the dutch’s racist answer to Santa’s little helper. In more detailed terms, the Dutch Christmas holiday focuses not on Santa, but on Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas. Instead of having multiple “elves" who help him deliver presents, he has multiple helpers, who undeniably look a lot like racist caricatures of black people. Piet has an afro, a black (literally black) face, and large, red lips. Beyond that, Piet also wears “moorish” dress, based off of 16th-century noble attire, and a single earring. Zwarte Piet originally was portrayed as an unintelligent helper, however, since the 19th-century origins, he’s now grown into just a lovable, absent-minded character.

And oh boy, do the Dutch love him. Zwarte Piet is inescapable. He’s there, staring at you while you walk from class to class, peering out of the windows of hairdressers, children’s toy stores, and coffee shops. Furthermore, people love to dress up as Zwarte Piet for part of the holiday—donning wigs and drawing on big, red lips on top of blackened faces.

As an American, this holiday tradition scares me. It’s made me feel lucky to live in a country where the work of black civil rights leaders have changed the norm so blackface is, for the most part, unacceptable. You, for the most part, won’t get egged for calling some frat boys interpretation of Kanye West racist—rather, it’s more likely that that frat boy will be fired from his job.

The Netherlands is something else, completely. As of 2018, 88% of the Dutch public did not perceive Zwarte Piet as racist or associate him with slavery. While interpretations of Zwarte Piet now include just rubbing coal on your face, the fact that the character is so widely accepted represents a larger issue with Dutch society. It’s something I’ve noticed while living here, especially when visiting museums or talking to other university students about problems within American society.

While racism and sexism are something that people in America openly talk about, Dutch people just don’t really do that. The reason for this boils down to how we view multiculturalism in our construction of nationalism. In America, multiculturalism is relatively good. We’re the melting pot; our differences boil together to make the cheesy, artificial goo that is America. In a way, this recognition of multiculturalism allows us to talk about our differences. We’re not perfect, and we have a lot of problems, but we do have a large, multi-varied, and constant discourse regarding these problems.

Europe in general views multiculturalism as "niet zo goed." The concept of sameness is intrinsically linked to the concept of equality — you become equal by being the same. But that emphasis on sameness doesn’t create equality—it just tries to pave over the impavable, and by doing so ultimately reinforces problematic power structures and denies social progress. SO, although some of the Dutch I’ve met have claimed they “don’t have racism, unlike America,” my response has always been “you do, but you don’t talk about it.”

One of the easiest ways to see this, outside of but connected to Zwarte Piet, is through how various museums address colonization. While the Dutch may not have dealt with the civil war, the Dutch have had a long history of colonization and enslavement. They were heavily involved in the slave trade, shipping kidnapped African people to Spanish colonies in Brazil. They colonized South Africa and the East Indies, murdering indigenous persons and forcing enslaved Africans and Pacific Islanders to the same horrific treatments that Black Slaves in America had to deal with. And Zwarte Piet is undeniably connected to this history—he is, no matter how the culture tries to gloss over it—Santa's slave, not helper.

My interaction with the Dutch education system is limited. But based off of what I know from visiting museums,  the history of colonization is portrayed as a “G” rated joke. Stolen objects and dioramas of apartheid settlements and Indonesian sugar farms are encased in glass, next to descriptions that avoid addressing the kind of orientalization and dehumanization that accompanied the actions. Importantly, Black and indigenous perspectives are missing from these narratives—rather the narrative acknowledges some bad stuff happened, but it’s ok because that was a while ago. Tackling this history means avoiding the white-washed, G-rating. And effectively tackling gives everyone the basis to have an easier discussion on Zwarte Piet.

There are a plethora of other issues Zwarte Piet symbolizes, importantly including the removal of voices of color from Dutch discourse. And, indeed, it’s by centering these voices of color and acknowledging difference that the Dutch can actually begin this process. That might start with museums, or it might start with the education system—as some Dutch teachers are already doing. But either way, white Dutch people need to listen to the people of color who’ve been angry with Piet for decades. The racism needs to be addressed, and Zwarte Piet needs to go, soon.

By Zachary Brumback

While searching for a study abroad program, there are so many universities to choose from. Since I had always dreamed of visiting Australia, I was able to narrow the long list of potential universities. After researching various universities in Australia, I decided to apply to the University of Sydney (USYD). USYD was the first university to establish the study of politics and international relations in Australia and continues to be a world-leading institution in political science. Since I am a political science major, I believed that the university had the best curriculum and overall environment to help me achieve my study abroad goals.

Courses like International Organisations, Emotions and Public Policy, Media Politics and Political Communication, along with Youth and Digital Culture were perfect fits for my interests and complemented my academic growth. By taking these classes, I was able to stay on track with my political science curriculum and had the opportunity to learn about politics from a different cultural perspective. Studying abroad at USYD was an excellent, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore career options, hone my academic and professional skill set, and embrace the vibrant culture of Sydney. During the semester, I was able learn more about politics in Australia and the rest of the world through classes, while simultaneously developing long-lasting relationships with a peer-network that shared my passion. In addition, I had the opportunity to travel and explore the East Coast of Australia.

If you are unsure where you should study abroad, I highly recommend that you choose a region and then begin researching the various universities that best suit your personal and academic interests. Once you have selected a university, it is time to decide where you are going to live. Will you live on campus or off campus? In a dorm or an apartment? If you decide to study in Australia, I strongly encourage you to reside in an academic residential college.

If you are interested in learning more about living in a “college,” make sure to read my final blog entry regarding my time and unique experiences at St. Paul’s College. Till next time.

By Taylor Garland

I’m reporting live, dear readers, from the other side of the semester. My final submission was last week, and I have to say that I’ve never felt like I’ve worked harder on anything else – and all the grades are pass fail!!!

To refresh, I’m a Marketing Major, with a Fine Arts/Art History dual minor. I’ve completed the majority of my business degree, with the rest of the classes required to be completed in my next, final semester. For this fall semester, I planned on completing my minor, so four out of the five courses I’ve taken here in Singapore have been either studio courses or art history…and let me tell you…I suffered for my work.

In my weekly schedule, my first class was Applied Drawing. I found it to be like an elevated foundation drawing class – for people who were familiar with drawing techniques to hone in on their artistic voice and methods. This was a bit above my technical level, but I tried my best to keep up, and ended up producing a lot of artwork that I’m generally quite pleased with!

The next class was my one business course, Social Marketing. It was about creating marketing strategies for social issues, which differs to traditional product marketing. I enjoyed conversations about ethics, learning more about the Singaporean social fabric, and getting a look at how different expectations are for business school students here versus in the states.

Next class was History of Photography. A delightful (and manageable) dive into the mechanics of the evolution of photography, as well as the people and art movements that were important to this timeline.

After this, one of the most interesting and intellectually challenging classes I’ve ever taken – The Expanded Field of Art: Public Spaces. This class was intended to interrogate the construction of “space” in the Singaporean art scene, as well as identify actors and relationships relevant to Singapore’s struggle with its identity and the art its people produces. The readings were, in my opinion, unnecessarily dense and required academic context that I definitely didn’t have. However, after several passes through the readings, and hours of discussion with my group mates (who became two of my closest local friends) there was a ridiculous 3am intellectual breakthrough, and we were able to piece together a new, cohesive argument, drawing on the texts and our experiences within the class. Our final presentation (and accompanying essay) is one of my proudest achievements this semester!

My final class was called Wearable Technology: Fashion and Design. While the Public Spaces class was the most intellectually challenging, Wearable Tech was the most time consuming and labor intensive. This class was essentially a three-hour studio in preparation for a end-of-semester fashion show, where we would design and create an outfit that featured some kind of technology in its context and execution. I spent a cumulative of about 200 hours (I wish I was kidding) designing, creating, breaking and then remaking my garment. The technical aspect, the sewing (which took the most of the time due to the design which in hindsight, was WAY too ambitious), and the research and coordination for the class’ show consumed my time deep into the night. Definitely a challenging course as an exchange student, but I had a lot of fun creating and discussing and spending long hours with my professor, who was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.

In all, this semester was full of challenges and setbacks, as well as break throughs, congratulations, and moments of genuine pride when reflecting on my work that I’ve never felt before in any other college class (save for my African-American Art History course with Bibiana Obler, which I would highly recommend to any GW student thinking of studying art history!). I’m super happy with my work and the memories I made with those who were working around me.

By Taylor Garland

Learning languages has always really interested me, particularly learning each language’s slang. Since I’m only really fluent in English, I’ve had a wealth of different countries with English slang, but never did I think I’d love Singlish so much.

Singlish, Singaporean English, is easily one of my favorite things about this little island. It’s a mixture of primarily English and Hokkien Chinese (with a few Malay and Indian terms, so I’ve been told).

Here are some of my favorite terms:

  • Bo Jio (v) – to not invite ex. (when you see an Instagram post from your friend’s party that you didn’t know was happening) -in comment section- “Bo jio :/”
  • Shiok (adj) – great (has many different meanings, can be used as an exclamation or as an adjective) ex. Ooh-la-la. Wowie. Shiok. Jazzy, man. Beaut.
  • Chio (n) – pretty girl ex. She chio lah.
  • Smoking (v) – making things up on the fly, bluffing ex. Rose had no idea what she was talking about during her business presentation, she was smoking the whole time lah
  • Shag bawls (adj) – tiring ex. Have to listen to my friend complain about breaking up with her boyfriend….. wah shag bawls
  • Sien (adj) – annoying (because x has become a burden) ex. I’ve been studying for this exam all month, this is so sien.
  • Tabao (v) – to take away, food to go ex. I don’t have time to eat in canteen, so I have to tabao my lunch.
  • Can (v) – to be able to (similar in English, but different in sentence placement) ex. Can pay by nets? “Can, can”
  • Jialat (adj) – nothing is going your way ex. Wah jialat liao, look like it’s going to rain!
  • Aiyo (adj) – quick response to something bad or unpleasant ex. (cup of kopi is spilled on table) Aiyo, spill!

By Savita Potarazu

As a non-French speaker, I picked up on some interesting new phrases during my first few weeks here. Now that we only have 2 weeks left in the semester, I can safely say that I’ve adopted the following into my everyday vocabulary:

C’est chou! = It’s cute!

In beginner French, I learned that “chou” means cabbage. Before learning about this, I didn’t question it. Then I started to wonder why people were calling things “cabbage". I still don’t know the origin of it but I guess it’s just slang for “That’s cute!” or “S/he is so cute!” Now I say it all the time... but mostly as a joke because it still doesn’t make sense to me.

Cou cou = My dear

French is such a melodic language. The way people say Cou Cou actually sounds like a stereotypical cuckoo clock but it’s much cuter coming from a person. Usually elders say it to younger people, or, at least those are the contexts in which I’ve heard it said to me or to others. Just cute Swiss things…

Ouais = Yeah

Basically, Ouais is the english equivalent of “yeah” (oui is “yes”). After a while of me knowing what it meant I began to feel super formal saying oui. You could also say that I started saying it to sound cool but that’s up to you to decide… 🙂

By Rachel Blair

I just got back today to Paris from a long, but amazing weekend. As you all know, this weekend I went to Prague, Czech Republic and it was beautiful.

In mid-September one of my friends from school, Sydney, who is studying abroad in Florence, Italy asked me if I wanted to travel to Prague with her. Now me, not knowing anything about Prague but who wanted to explore said yes. One of the best decisions I made this entire semester.

Before I went to Prague, everyone told me that it was beautiful and had amazing architecture. All I knew about Prague was how pretty everyone claimed it was and Nicki Minaj’s “You b****** can’t even spell Prague.” So, I left the planning up to Syd, but was excited to mark this as my last trip.

However, I was the one that found us our Airbnb and let me tell you, it was the best Airbnb I have ever seen. We absolutely loved it. We loved it so much that every night we were excited to go back to it, and today we didn’t want to leave it.

But Prague is such a beautiful city, with so much to do, and easy ways of getting around. One thing that I was really fascinated with was that some of their subway trains were actually in the middle of the street. There would be cars driving next to you on both sides and sometimes even behind and in front of you at any given point while on those subways.

Also, the prices of everything in Prague were amazing! First of all, their currency is so much weaker than ours that $1 is about 20/25 of their money. So, buying things is very weird there because you would spend about 150 on a drink, which makes you feel like you’re a big baller, but in reality, you’re paying practically nothing. One night for dinner, I got a meal, alcoholic drink, side, and dessert and only paid $25. On top of those cheap prices, everything was actually really good. I would’ve been willing to pay more for everything I got.

I really enjoyed the amount of time I was able to spend there as well. Sydney and I for whatever reason decided to catch 7am flights that would get into Prague at 9am. In the end, I was very happy we did that because it gave us a full 3 days, but that Thursday morning when I had to get up at 3am I regretted that decision. Like I said, both of our flights arrived in Prague around 9am, and our Airbnb was only 45 minutes away by public transportation, so we started our day off around 10:30 and got to see Prague when there weren’t as many people around.

Sydney works for admissions and has been assigned the task of taking pictures with the GW banner. On Thursday, we went to this really nice bridge, but Syd forgot the banner, so we knew we had to go back at some point to take the picture she really wanted to get. We decided to go back Saturday. Wow, what a difference it made being there on Thursday compared to Saturday. As we were getting closer to the bridge on Saturday, the crowd of people just kept increasing and we knew we made the smart decision of actually seeing it on Thursday.

Without even meaning to, I believe that Sydney and I somehow managed to get all of the top tourist attractions done on Thursday and Friday, with very limited tourist, and then got to do cool adventures on Saturday, where we barely had to see tourists.

Prague is such a beautiful place and while there, it was amazing to think about how all of that was existing while I wasn’t there, and it will continue to exist while I’m gone. It’s amazing what little impact we have on the world, but it’s also amazing discovering new cultures and walks of life. While living our lives in the United States, we don’t think twice about the things going on in anywhere else in the world, especially someplace like Prague. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that people live their everyday lives in these places, and that they do exist, and we should take the time to get to know them. While we’re stuck in our ways in one country, a totally different life is happening in another.

I believe it is important to travel and to take in as much of the culture and experience as possible. No matter what you do, the cultures and lives in all of these other countries will still go on, so it’s better to appreciate and understand them than to avoid them.

 

By Zachary Brumback

With less than a month left in Australia, my friends and I decided to attend the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition. From October 18th-November 4th, the scenic beach walk between Bondi to Tamarama Beach serves as the largest free sculpture gallery in the world. With 100 sculptures on display, there is a piece for everyone to enjoy. If you end up studying abroad in Sydney, this event is a must “sea.” With that said, I recommend that you do not make the same mistake that I did and go on the last day.

 

On the following day, a friend and I travelled by bus, train, and ferry to reach the Hornby Lighthouse. Instead of getting off the bus at the nearest bus stop, a fellow passenger recommended that my friend and I walk along the scenic cliff walk. As a result, we exited the bus where she suggested. Little did we know that we were 2.5 miles away from our destination. As we neared our destination, we were completely caught off guard when there was an Australian Department of Defence base blocking our walking path. Since the base did not appear on Google Maps or SnapMap we had to ask a military officer at the gate for directions. Luckily, we just had to turn on another side road. Along the way, we ended up walking past a nude beach. As you can see our journey to an ordinary lighthouse was full of surprises.

 

Later that evening I attended a play performed by students residing at St. Paul’s College and the Women’s College at USYD. The play was titled The Bold, The Young, and The Murdered. In order to provide you with an overview of the performance, I have included the play’s summary. “The long-running soap opera The Bold and the Young is in its last days: its hunky hero has self-esteem issues, its villainous old man is more interested in soup, and its heroines are slightly psychopathic. The executive producer gives the squabbling cast an ultimatum: Complete one episode overnight or the show dies. But when the director ends up murdered, and other cast members start dropping like flies, it seems like his threat might actually come true. Can these misfits discover the murderer before the show is literally killed off?”

 

Since many of the performers are friends of mine, I was on the edge of my seat. Would one of my friends be murdered next or was one of them the killer? The production had the entire audience guessing who the culprit was until the final minute of the production. I never saw the ending coming; three actors conspired together and killed their cast members to advance their careers. Ironically, three of my friends were the murderers. If the three decide to pursue a career in acting, they will not have to “kill” anyone to succeed.

During STUVAC, a week-long break to “study” for exams, I decided to go with a friend of mine from Australia to the 360 Bar and Dining. The restaurant is located in the Sydney Tower Eye and is elevated a thousand feet above Sydney. While dining, the restaurant slowly revolves and provides customers with a 360-degree view of the city. On a clear day, individuals can see up to 60 miles away. Due to the spectacular view of the city, I highly recommend this to anyone studying abroad or just visiting Sydney.