Hello!

This past week has been crazy busy for me! Apparently quiz week is a thing here. I’m used to my classes not lining up very much back home. Usually some classes have two midterms, some have one and two tests, some have weekly quizzes, and assignments and quizzes generally seem to be spread out enough that I’m not completely swamped. However, here it’s not the same here. I don’t know if it is Peru in general or just USIL. There is a set finals week, but also a set midterms week. In addition, it seems as though there are unofficial quiz weeks as well. I think there is a general course schedule that most, if not all, professors follow. I don’t like this as much because it is stressful to have a lot of things scheduled for one day. For example, last Thursday I had a speech, two quizzes, six workbook pages, and an online quiz. It was a lot for one day and I was pretty stressed. But as per usual, my worrying was completely unnecessary. I ended up doing great on all of those things and my day went smoothly. My classes are all going well. They are boring because they are too easy, but I enjoy spending time with the people in my classes.

The same day that I had all of my quizzes and such I happened to wander back into the music room. I hadn’t heard from my professor about when we would be rehearsing, so I was starting to get nervous. I happened to drop by at the perfect time because I found out that I had rehearsal right then! It was a great first rehearsal. It turns out there aren’t enough musicians to form a full band, so we are going to be an a cappella group! I am excited because I was planning on trying to form an a cappella group anyways! There are four voices and one drummer. We chose our music and I am very happy with our selections. My solo is Like I’m Gonna Lose You by Meghan Trainor. It is my favorite song right now and I was very happy that the rest of the group approved it for our set list. There are two guys and two girls in our group. The guys don’t speak any English and they are also very quiet, so I didn’t really get to know them. The other girl and I bonded a lot though. We have very similar tastes in music and I think our voices sound really good together. We spent a pretty good amount of time “jamming” before rehearsal officially started. By jamming I mean that we picked a song that we both know and like and we sang together and made up harmonies and such. It was a blast! By the end of rehearsal I was on cloud nine. I am SO happy to be doing music again. I go through phases of not making time for music and being very addicted to music. Lately I have been in the addicted to music phase. Between this music class, playing my host family’s piano, and playing/singing along with my housemate’s guitar, I have found that most of my day is spent either thinking about music, listening to it, or making it. I love it.

I’m going to skip over the other happenings of the week. I think I covered the most important ones. Instead, I have a few things to share that I’ve noticed and jotted down here and there. One big thing I’ve noticed is the difference in the interactions between students and professors at the university. It is almost like being in high school again, but maybe worse. Often times the students call the professor “teacher” and I’ve heard a lot of students complain about homework and beg for less. It is so odd for me because I am used to using formal names with most of my professors and doing the work the professor assigns. A similarity I’ve noticed was when I went to get my ID card. Some of the students in line in front of me looked at their pictures and started giggling in embarrassment. It made me smile because I have had the same experience and I thought it was amusing to see it in another country. After thinking about it, I suppose it is probably a universal reaction, but in the moment it took me a little by surprise because I wasn’t expecting it.

And finally, an interesting piece of general cultural information that I learned this week. I asked a friend what parents’ expectations for their children are. He told me that the primary goal is to go to university. Side note – kids start university at 16 or 17 years old, I was astonished by that because I can’t imagine starting college at 16. Anyways, university is only an option for families who have money. Economic status greatly affects the type of life your family will have. If a family doesn’t have money their child doesn’t get to go to university and they must begin working immediately. The next step is marriage. It is very important to Peruvian parents that their children get married. However, waiting until after college is preferred here too. The children generally live with their parents until they get married, with the exception of their time away at university.

That’s all I have for you this week. I am leaving for a long weekend trip to the mountain tonight, so I will have plenty to write about next week.

Chao!
Abby

Here is a picture of some of my music friends before our first performance.

This is a picture of the main academic building on the newer of the two campuses.

Here’s a bonus picture. This was taken in the southernmost district of Lima, called Chorillos on the top of one of Lima’s many dirt mountains.

Tomorrow I leave for fall term at Roehampton, in London, England. I think I am still in denial that I’m actually leaving. It feels like yesterday when my countdown on my phone said I still had over 100 days to wait. Around that same time I decided to stop calling my study abroad period a “trip” but instead, an “experience.” I really want to travel to as many countries as I can while I’m abroad. That is one of the most important things to me. I’ve never been away from my parents or out of the country so these next three months will be very eye-opening. I feel like I’m leaving for college for the first time.

The first week of my Costa Rican adventure is coming to a close and I can safely say that I have survived. Being away from friends and family is proving to be harder than I expected, but my Tico family is anything but welcoming and helpful while I try to adjust. Its been a week filled with orientations, meeting new people, and getting to know San Jose, Costa Rica. This city has a lot to offer, from incredible street art to amazing french pastry shops. There’s still much more to learn about this country and I cannot wait to discover it all.

Pura Vida!

The last two days have been a whirlwind. Orientation began with an introductory seminar and a tour, followed by a tour of our neighborhood, and finished with two seminars, one of which we got lost on the way to! Later that day CIS Abroad treated us to a wonderful four course three hour Italian meal. Needless to say I left the apartment at 8 am that morning and didn’t return until 11 pm! There was just so much to see! Yesterday after a full day of exploring the city and running errands to get settled into my new home, FUA hosted a welcome reception with a buffet and desserts. Today is the first day to take a breath, relax, and prepare for the start of classes on Monday! At this point, any initial assumptions I in initially had coming into this experience have been changed. The main thing I have noticed is that there is a huge difference between the tourist parts and the local parts of Florence ; especially when it comes to the restaurants. In the tourist-heavy parts of Florence, there are extra charges in restaurants for tourists called a cuperto. This is charged per person and can range from 1 to 4+ Euro, many tourists are unaware of this. The service is good enough, but usually gets worse if they find you will not be tipping (tipping is uncommon in Italy, as the employees make a living wage, but many servers have come to expect it from Americans).Servers will sometimes say this to Americans, regardless of if a service charge and/or cuperto was already charged, in an effort to guilt them into tipping. At a local establishment, there is rarely a cuperto, and if there is, it is often very low. The staff are friendly, though rarely speak much English. They encourage American guests to practice their Italian and provide excellent friendly service. I will attach a picture below of a note our server made for us when we were inquiring about various Italian phrases. I have also learned a lot about what is and is not socially acceptable here, there are many things we do with out thinking in America that would shock or disgust the locals in Italy. Some examples are: asking for food to go after not quite finishing a meal at a restaurant, eating while walking in general (food is meant for the table), coffee sitting down or to go, asking to change something about the menu while ordering (this is very rude to the chef), and various others. I will try to update these as I find out more!

Ciao!

-Alexis

Since I came a few days early with my grandparents, my initial post is occurring from within Italy after my arrival and recovery from the extreme jet lag. I do have a few pictures from the ride to the airport I will attach as well. My initial thoughts before arriving were that this place seemed almost imaginary. People were constantly telling me how wonderful it was and how it was a great experience and that I would have a wonderful time, but all I had seen of Italy was out of a book or movie. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, all I could picture were these fairytale images! I expected the language barrier to be difficult, since I do not yet speak Italian, and was told the people were friendly and welcoming but that they, and the city did not always smell the best. These were my first thoughts heading into this adventure. Orientation is tomorrow and I will follow up afterwards about my reaction to actual Italian life as well as how my orientation went!

Ciao!

-Alexis

We are headed home.. I am so sad to be leaving. I feel like I learned a ton on this trip and am so happy I went. I feel like China could be my home one day. Everyone we met was extremely nice, and even with all the differences in culture this country is still amazing. I would love to come back in 10 years and see the differences and improvements they make. Hopefully I can do that. I will definitely miss all of the friends I made while abroad.

Thank you Dr. Flatt and Mariano for the wonderful photos of days that I didn’t have any!

Today was a free day, some people went to the zoo or you could go shopping. I’m just going to talk about Hadeels presentation on traditional Chinese herbal medicine. She is against using the medicine if the ingredients are not layed out to the patients. She personally took a remedy that made her more sick than beforehand, she ended up in the hospital. I think this is a great reason that Chinese medicine should be more controlled. Although the government is trying to implement a ore controlled practice, in “small” cities such as xiangtan the practice of medicine can be done by anyone. You don’t need even a certificate. This is scary because you could get a doctor who truly knows there stuff or you could end up with someone who doesn’t know their knee from their elbow. Dr. Li actually has no qualifications which make him a doctor, he is just extremely good at his job. So basically at this point everything is on word of mouth. I think integrating western and Chinese medicine can lead to problems such as Hadeel’s not happening again.

The class went to the Great Wall but again I was sick so I stayed in bed. This piece of history is legendary. It was built to protect the Chinese empire from Mongolian invaders, obviously it wasn’t perfect. But the fact that just humans with no machines built this giant symbol of strength is legendary.

The class went to the summer palace, but I didn’t go because I got sick again. I will be putting a photo in from there. Basically it is a beautiful giant garden with more pagodas and temples that you can visit.

Arriving in Beijing and getting to the hotel made this trip for me. We saw the forbidden city today. It was extremely crowded, so I never felt that it was very awesome. But the fact that the emperor had a whole “level” just for his wives, which he had tons of, is crazy. They had their own lives separate from him. It’s just weird when compared to how people live nowadays.