Pre-departure to LONDON!

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Kylen Dix

I leave for London in 5 days, and I can hardly believe it! I feel like I have been planing this trip for a very long and now it is finally happening. I am very excited and I am looking forward to all the adventures my trip holds. I have never been to London, let alone England, so it will be a completely new experience for me.

I believe my host culture will be very inviting and accepting. I would love to meet some individuals from London and be able to talk to them about their culture, and how it differs from my own here in the U.S. I have heard people do not drink to the same state that we do in the U.S. I heard in London they drink to enjoy each sip, and make it more of a social action, that an action to change their state of mind. I hope to learn what the main differences are that lie between our two cultures.

I am VERY excited! As of now, I have no apprehensions, just excitement. My mom backpacked through London when she was my age. It will be really interesting to see if I can relate to some of the same things she did, and see how other things have changed.

Until next time, Kylen

Arrivals and Adventures

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Kevin Kronenfeld

I am now approaching my fourth day of my journey that is going to last 10 weeks. I still cannot believe I made it this far. I am by myself, and I have no one to fall back on other than the people back in the states but I feel at ease. I am enjoying myself to have an authentic experience that is truly mine. If I want to go somewhere, I just go there. Nothing is holding me back. I got to travel around London for a day and then I took a plane to Mumbai, India. Everything fell into place for the things I wanted to do without having expectations. .

As I said, I traveled around London since I had a 14.5 layover. I had nothing holding me back. I may have sucked the experience right out of the city by racing around the city to go to every tourist attraction, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. I went to Buckingham palace, Green park, Trafalgar square, and Camden town. I think the best thing about the whole experience was that I got to have a pint in a pub while talking to a local. Life always starts with a good drink and then comes the story. After being at the pub, I realized that the people make the city for what it is not the tourist attractions. As I downed my last pint I made my way back to the airport.

I arrived into Mumbai with my feet drenched literally. The monsoons are happening right now so there is a good amount of rain, while being really humid. The weather is not unbearable but it does get you lightheaded pretty quick. Going through immigration was frustrating because I forgot my friend’s address for this slip of paper that you have to fill out to get through immigration, but once I got through immigration I was greeted by my friend at the airport.

The next morning I was greeted by his dad who made the best coffee I have ever had, and I don’t even drink coffee. As time went by, my friend and I went to the beach. The experience was surreal and exciting. The beach was filled with trash. I guess I was shocked, but I cannot really judge and ridicule them for doing for what they deem is alright. It is just a way of life.

After a while we came back to the house where his mom prepared a vegetarian meal. This would be my first vegetarian meal. It was actually really good. It goes without saying, “ What is better than mom’s home cooking.”

The next day I was picked up by the internship provider and now I am going to start my internship.

First Week!

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Joshua McGraw

I absolutely love it here! Everyone is so nice and helpful. My preconceived notions were wrong, there are so many cars, tall buildings and the city is VERY clean! I could not have asked for a better host family! They have been so understanding about when it takes me a little longer to come up with a response. I have learned so much just in the few days I have been here, I believe my understanding of the Spanish language and culture has grown, placing me closer to my end goal of becoming fluent! Having gone to a museum I was able to see a bit more of the Spanish culture, I also took a trolley ride through the historic down-town. On this tour the guide gave us a history of the buildings and streets. Some parts were a little difficult to understand because the guide used words i did not know, however Carmen was able to translate those tricky parts. We met an elementary teacher here who is wanting to learn English so we sort of traded, she helped us with Spanish and we helped her with English. She was able to teach us more about the culture and history of Queretaro. She also introduced us to some of her friends. Meeting more people in an unfamiliar place is always good, we now have friends for a lifetime and are able to continue getting to know them and through them get to know the city!

I have included a few pictures of my first days in Mexico, hope you enjoy.

Second Week in Vienna

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Reina Morgan

Now that I have been in Vienna a little longer I have definitely been able to more fully adjust to life here. Before it seemed like most everything was a challenge, but now most daily things are not much of a problem at all. Between the little German I have now learned and the little English some people speak, I am able to communicate well enough with most people to accomplish what I need to. My classes are very exhausting as there is so much information given! Since there are only four people in my classes it takes much more focus and understanding of the material to make it through each class. My teachers are understanding though and for the most part try to accommodate us by making the work load reasonable. This last weekend all of us in the music program went to my site director’s house out in the countryside. It was so nice getting away from the city for a while and enjoying nice music and conversation in the garden. She showed us around her village and we saw a simple castle and some cool art made by a friend of hers that was inside the castle.

Violins made out of scrap metal!

We also went on another excursion with our music history teacher and saw Belvedere Palace, Hotel Beethoven, and some buildings designed by architect Otto Wagner.

Belvedere Palace

Classes, excursions, and homework have taken up a lot of my time and all of my energy so I have not done too much outside of those things. Besides that I mostly hang out with my roommate (who is now a great friend), catch family up on my adventures, and find good places to eat! I found another bakery with tasty pastries 🙂 And as I am an avid pizza lover I am more than satisfied with the pizza here!

Week One in Morocco (June 15 thru June 21, 2013)

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Michael Smiley

So after I arrived in Fes, I met my AHA associates: Ahmed and Cody, both 500-level Arabic students from Portland, and Driss Marjane, the program director. I also met Jenna (sorry if I misspell your name), an AHA employee… I’m actually not sure what exactly her job is, but regardless she’s a very kind woman. My first weekend in Morocco was spent hanging out with the motley AHA crew. I can’t quite remember the order of events from week one, as the first two days felt like a whole week just on their own, but I’ll try to recall.

Saturday night (June 15), we ate out at an Italian restaurant. Our whole first weekend was completely covered financially by AHA, which was awesome. Jenna wanted to eat traditional Moroccan food, but Driss told us that since most Moroccans eat “traditional Moroccan food” for everyday meals at home, when they go out to eat, they prefer different national foods. I got a delicious pizza, and to my joy I learned that people in Morocco eat pizza with their hands, not with silverware (the one and only drawback of ordering pizza in Europe, in my opinion).

The next day (June 16), Driss took us on a mini personal tour of the Old Medina. I didn’t take any pictures for most of the first weekend because the last thing on my mind while trying to adapt and soak in my new environment was stopping to pull out my highly steal-able camera (but don’t worry, I got plenty of pictures of the Old Medina the following weekend). Before our journey into the medina, Driss had made arrangements for us to meet our host families (we were to officially move in on Monday). I learned that the neighborhood in which I was to live was called Batha, and I would be sharing my room with a Duke University student from the first summer session (there are multiple waves of students attending ALIF, and I’m in Summer II). Ahmed and Cody would be rooming together with a homestay family just outside of Batha, right next to the fountain where all the taxis congregate.

My host father, Abderahman, met us at a kiosk near the Batha fountain. From there, he led us through the winding streets of the medina to what was to be my house for the next six weeks. There he invited us in for coffee. I’m not a coffee person, but this particular coffee was delicious, almost like hot chocolate. Once in the house we also met my host mother, Najia, and my host brother, Si Mohamed (he is around the same age as me). Si Mohamed wound up accompanying us on our tour of the Old Medina.

Driss basically led Ahmed, Cody, Jenna and myself through the maze of the Old Medina, walking us through the souqs (marketplaces) and showing us a riad (traditional Moroccan house featuring an interior courtyard/garden) that had been converted into a guesthouse. We finished our tour with lunch at Café Clock, a very cool restaurant/café run by a former ALIF student who enjoyed Morocco so much that he decided to stay. Incidentally, his name was also Mike. Ahmed and Cody both ordered a camel burger, which apparently was really good. I ordered some tasty sweet couscous with chicken, raisins, nuts, and apricots.

Cafe Clock.

After lunch, we met Ahmed and Cody’s host family, who seem to be quite posh despite living right on the edge of the Old Medina. We then traveled to the Ville Nouvelle and bought cheap cell phones (roughly $20 American dollars) to use for communication while in Morocco. After that, Driss shoved us in a cab and next thing we knew we were at an extremely fancy hotel overlooking the whole city of Fes. We walked through the lobby and found ourselves on a balcony with a fantastic view of the Old Medina. This is where I took my very first picture in Morocco!

Overview of Fes.

If I remember correctly, the mosque marked by the large, green minaret is near Café Clock, where we ate lunch earlier in the day.

Awesome Minaret.

We sat and enjoyed the balcony for quite some time, with some very interesting conversation. Driss talked at length about the absurdity of nationalism and borders, and demonstrated on paper how you could trace the similarities of various letters within different alphabets, as well as the history of how those letters evolved, showing how all of humanity is connected. I have since learned that Driss has a PhD in linguistics and sometimes teaches classes at ALIF, which answers a lot of the questions that were floating around in my head for that first week or so.

After our time on the balcony, Driss left our company, and Ahmed, Cody, Jenna, and myself all decided to have dinner at the Broadway Café, the same café that Ahmed, Cody and I met on Day 1. As we sat there, we remarked how incredible it was that we had only been in Morocco for two days—it seriously felt like it had been ages ago that after first arriving in Fes I had wandered by the same café that Ahmed and Cody happened to be sitting at. As we were eating our food, Driss showed up out of nowhere to inform us that he had taken care of the bill for us behind our backs, which elicited much complaining as he had been taking care of everything for us, it seemed. I must admit, though, it feels pretty good to know we have a guardian angel in Morocco… a guardian angel with a PhD.

The next day (Monday, June 17), I packed all my bags, checked out of the hotel where we were staying for the first weekend, and got ready for my first day of Arabic. Both Driss and Jenna met me at the hotel, and Driss got my textbooks for me (he also showed me where I could buy a notebook for class). I met my amazing teacher, Moustafa, who also happens to be a professor at Dartmouth, as well as my classmates. After the morning class, I met my host father Aberahman in the ALIF garden, and we took a cab to Batha so I could officially move in to my new home.

The first week went by really fast. We’re supposed to have two different Arabic teachers, one for the morning (10:00am—12:00pm) and one for the afternoon (4:00pm—6:00pm), but for the first week our morning teacher, Mohamed, wasn’t available, so Moustafa simply taught both classes. I also met my roommate from Duke, Dylan. He’s in the 500 level Arabic, plus he’s already been here for several weeks, so he showed me the ropes and has been helping me communicate with my host family. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to survive once he leaves on July 5, heh.

At the end of the first week, I went on two excursions provided by ALIF. On Saturday, June 22, we went on an almost all-day guided tour of the Old Medina (basically a more comprehensive version of the previous weekend… only this time, I had my camera at the ready!). Then, on Sunday, June 23, we took a trip to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, then toured the imperial city of Meknes. And the following weekend was the trip to the Sahara. Of course, those trips require blog entries of their own, so I’m gonna have to stop here for now. I’m almost all caught up!

Pre-departure post: Just saying hi!

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Ann

Hello everyone!

My name is Ann and I will be traveling to Siena, Italy in three days! I am very excited. In fact, I’ve been excited for months. The reason I am going to Italy is for the Sign Language program they offer during the summer. Once there, I will be learning signed and spoken Italian along with their Deaf culture and history. I can’t wait! Although, my Nana has been warning me not to fall for any “cute, dark haired, young men” while I’m there. Her words not mine. Don’t worry Nana, I’ll focus on the beautiful landscape and real gelato (ice cream) instead.

My expectations for the culture do not really exist. I have been to Europe in the past and have learned first-hand that there are many “subcultures” within any town or city. I am simply looking forward to going there and meeting people from a culture different from my own. I am a bit sad to be missing the Palio di Siena by a few days though. The Palio di Siena is a large, annual horse race where thousands of people crowd into the Piazza del Campo (town square, shown above) and race three laps around a pre-made, dirt track. It apparently lasts roughly 90 seconds. Ah, but the energy generated in the crowd of spectators would have been amazing to witness first-hand.

Over the past few months, while getting everything ready for the trip, I have gone through stages of excitement, nervousness, a bit of trepidation, and back around to excitement again. This last week has been all excitement, though! My family have said they cannot wait for me to go so I will stop bouncing off the walls in my eagerness. Well, in less than 72 hours, my adventure begins. Siena, here I come! 🙂

The Good and the Bad in Glorious Nippon

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Casey Gallagher

I’ve been here in Japan for a while now; figure now’s as good a time as any to share some of my favorite things as well as my least favorite things. I’ll mostly ignore things that I’ve already touched on in the past (like expenses). People are people, and I don’t really find much terribly different between the US and Japan on an individual basis. I’ll probably be super surprised when I get back home, and find out that I’m actually wrong once I get to compare again, but for now, those are my thoughts. I can’t make judgments on the working related side of Japan, but for an exchange student I’d say that the good HEAVILY outweighs the bad.

(karaoke, serious business!)

The good:

There are a LOT of good looking women here in Tokyo. I suppose it’s to be expected in a big city, as I noticed the same thing in New York City. It’s just especially easy to spot them here due to their fondness of showing off copious amounts of leg. Carrying on a decent conversation is hard, since my Japanese language skills are low, but the ones who are relatively confident in their English skills are super easy and fun to talk to.
Flirting with said women at the pub after several drinks is fun. It’s really the only time that I’m not worried about how good or bad my Japanese language skills are, it’s just good fun. If my friend tells me: “Introduce yourself in Keigo!” (very formal speech) Then chances are that I will. It’s especially fun at my favorite pub which is located in the red light district of Kabuki-Cho. The beers are currently 70yen each, and it goes up by 10yen each month. (1 yen = approximately 1 cent). These are the nights that I use the most Japanese, and no English at all.
Tokyo is lively and fun (until the last trains of the night). There is a lot to see and a pretty good amount of things to do. There are events and festivals nearly every weekend (including Oktoberfest… There have been two of those so far and it’s really not the right time of year)
The public transportation is really good the vast majority of the time. Delays are uncommon; the whole system works in harmony and is very effective at getting millions of people to their destination every day. Normal tickets are pretty expensive, but my commuter pass from my dorm to school costs me about $35 a month and that’s a 40 minute commute each way. Plus with my commuter pass I can stop at any station between the dorm and school without paying extra. Outside of Tokyo, it’s even more expensive, but the options are pretty nice. You can take a regular train, or a bullet train, or a bus, etc.
The other exchange students are awesome. We have people from all over. A lot from America, a few from Germany, one from Ukraine, one from Poland, a few from Australia, several from China/Korea/Thailand, etc. I’m most impressed by the ones from non-English speaking countries though. My friend Daniel is from Germany and he speaks German/English/Japanese. For tests in Japanese class he has to translate from Japanese to German and then to English, or the other way around depending on the question. While speaking with the American students he has to converse primarily in English. We’ve actually got him dreaming in English now. ‘Murrica! The Asian students impress me a lot as well. A good amount of students on exchange from other Asian countries know at least 3 languages at a very high level (their home country’s language, English, Japanese, and frequently Chinese as well).

(Japanese chat room event)

(Avocado and Wasabi Burger from Wendys)

(More karaoke, with Akiko and Kat)

The bad:

People walk REALLY slowly! The average walking speed here would never fly in New York City, or any other big city in America that I know of. I’ve been told that this might be because of the humidity. Once you start sweating, it’s hard to dry off. I’m rather dubious about this claim, because even standing still the humidity is pretty unbearable.
Relating to the last point: The very second that a single drop of rain falls from the sky, up goes everyone’s umbrellas. This makes navigating through the slow walkers even more tricky. But again, the same reason was explained to me: Once you get wet, good luck getting dry again in the 90% humidity.
Relating to the last TWO points: The weather! Summer in Japan means rain, heat, and humidity all together in one lovely little package. I might as well start wearing my swimming trunks to school.
Most of the aforementioned good looking girls are wearing ridiculously high heels. I’m already short enough, and this just makes me appear even shorter. I do enjoy when they wear high heels and yet are still shorter than I am though.
The trains stop running at around 12:30am, which means I’ve pulled a few all-nighters in Tokyo. If they’d even run one or two trains an hour after 1am, it would be an improvement.
Citizenship: It’s quite hard to become a citizen of Japan if you aren’t Japanese. Additionally, Japan doesn’t allow for dual-citizenship so I’d have to renounce my American citizenship if I moved here permanently. It’s a minor complaint I suppose, but not being able to vote, even if I lived here, bothers me.

The really bad:

I’m getting REALLY sick of seeing this notice at the train station:

The red part on the bottom left means information from other train lines, and it usually indicates a delay of some sort. That isn’t what my problem is. The problem is the exact reason for the delay, which is often: jinshin jiko. A literal translation for jinshin jiko is “human accident”. In actuality, it usually means someone jumped in front of a train. I’m much less concerned about delays than I am with this needless loss of human life. It gets really disheartening seeing this message so often, frequently daily. Luckily, my train line seems to not be a very “popular” one in this respect, but my friend was on one that had someone jump in front of it. That story had a “happy” ending, as it was a local train already slowing down to stop at the station, so the train was able to stop on time, thankfully. Last year was the first year in over a decade that the number of suicides fell below 30,000. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a downward trend.

My Global Business teacher created a video about this subject, it’s called “Saving 10,000 – Winning a War on Suicide in Japan” and you can watch it in its entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo0SHLxc2d0 (It’s in English)

let the adventures begin!

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Alyssa Raimer

Hello Wales! We started our bus tour at this outdoor Roman amphitheatre which is the only fully excavated amphitheatre in Britain. It was amazing to begin seeing the country side of the UK and to explore throughout this very large ruin. Also at this stop we got to see the Roman Barracks ancient monument and stop at a Roman Legionary Museum. The museum was very interesting and because our group was only able to stay for a short period of time the owner allowed all of us to go into the outside part of the museum where they had people re-enacting what it was like back in the time of the Romans. Our next stop was to Caerphilly Castle, this is considered to be one of the

greatest medieval castles of Western Europe. This castle had not one but two motes and we got a chance to explore all of inside. We even got to witness the start of wedding occurring there! We stayed the night in Swansea and began day two at the Big Pit Mining Museum. This was an amazing experience, I got a tour of an actual mine 300 hundred feet underground. We put our hard hats on with our head lights attached to them and we were ready to go! Our tour guide was funny too which made the tour that much more enjoyable. I learned how they ventilate fresh air down in the mine, and how they used to have boys as young as six years old working down in the mines. At one part of the tour, our tour guide had us all of our lights off to experience true darkness as the little boys would when their candle got blown out. We got to see where they kept all of the horses and learned the origin of the word S.H.I.T.! It meant sit high in transit when lifting all of the horses manure out of the mine. Near the end our tour guide asked where we were visiting from and we told him London and he said, “London’s a dumb. The best part about London is the M4 on its way to Wales!” Our last stop was to Tintern Abbey which was a gorgeous ruin. We were able to explore around the abbey for awhile and before headed back our tour guide bought us all the best welsh cakes to try which were actually pretty good! I was thrown off by it looking like a pancake but tasting like a scone. Overall I had a great time in Wales, the welsh were very friendly but now it is time to say goodbye and head back to London.

Amongst this trip I have began adventuring around in London with a few friends I’ve made here! We found this amazing street food festival that is near the London eye on the weekends so that is something we look forward to now for their great authentic food! Also, I have began visiting some of the great royal parks here in London. I have been to the

Queen’s Rose garden and part of Kensington Gardens. Kensington Gardens is so big but I was able to see the peter pan statue and the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial which is where we are on the left! I plan to go back there again though to see Kensington Palace.

Other than that I have been doing well and my time here is going by much faster! I have made a list of places I still want to go and I look forward to being able to check some of them off this next week!

Arrival

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Joshua McGraw

Arrival was very interesting! I was very glad that we had Carmen with us to help with the spanish. Upon arrival we immediately went through customs and it went very well. Once we got through all that we bought a ticket for the bus to Queretaro. That was a fun experience, the ms weaved in and out of traffic, sometimes creating an extra lane. Once we got to Queretaro we went straight to bed, we were all very tired! These past few days have proven to me that my spanish is not as good as i thought, but i have learned alot these last few days and am really excited to meet my family tomorrow. Today we took the trolly around town and walked alot. It was nice to get to know the city. I cant wait to see what this next week has to offer!

Arrival

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Ayat Sexton

Ohmygoodness. Arrival was very…interesting. We got to the airport around 8 and they airport wasn’t abnormal…I don’t know why I expected it to be different. We went through security and they chose to check me. We walked around and found the bus station but it didn’t leave until 9:30 I think. The bus was very fancy but I made myself stay up so I would go to bed when we got to the hotel. However, we didn’t get to the hotel until about 2 a.m. Anyways, we definitely went right to bed when we got here and woke up kind of early the next day! Had some delicious breakfast! And we’re off to an adventure! 🙂