The Hook
A blog post from Robert Engel's ('13) No Jordinary Adventure about his time abroad in Jordan and Nepal (he hasn't gone to college yet, so he's a third-semester senior, now).
Want to read more? Go to http://nojordinaryadventure.wordpress.com.
April Journal from Nepal No Jordinary Adventure (Nepal)
Each morning I wake up around 6am. I lie there for awhile, in my bed on the floor, listening to Strawberry Swing thrum through the room. Finally, I rise and walk slowly to the bathroom, where I throw cold water on my face. Stumbling upstairs. I mumble good morning to my home stay mother, who kneels in the family shrine next to the kitchen, ringing a bell (intended to ward off bad spirits and concentrate the mind on good). As I take a seat at the table, I wave to my home stay father who is walking laps on the porch outside. After drinking my tea and snarfing down a few cookies, I run downstairs, throw on my old sneakers, plug in my iPod, and start my journey to the program house.
My trip always begins with the loud barking of Snowy, the aptly named white terrier, whose curiosity quickly transitions to hopefulness at a playmate so early in the day. As I speak, he sits outside, yapping his head off at the cat, who has discovered that young Snowy can’t climb the wall. He is a barker… And his hoarse shouts carry through the early morning chill until I reach the corner store.I make a right and continue up the street, at which time I am accosted by an older gentleman, whose heavy accent is blurred even further by the liquor I can smell from yards away. His name is Suman and our encounters go briefly as such;
‘hello my friend,’(Returned pleasantry)
‘Sit down and have a cigarette/drink/tea/cookie sitting in the ashtray’
(Some excuse about me being late for school/my dog running away/the world ending soon)
‘I insist. Please…. You know wance I veesited amurica.’
(Nice! Where?/ What is amureeka?/ who???–depending on the quality of the slur)
I lean in, give him a quick handshake, then a hug, and continue on my merry way.The next thing I pass is the massive banyan tree, which I have alluded to in a previous post. Under it sits a large and beautifully decorated cistern/well, where, every morning, all the neighborhood cleaning, washing, and tooth brushing is performed. I wave hello, turn up the path past the temple, zig zag past the cows munching on garbage, slink down a narrow alleyway with kids and dogs running every which way, and finally emerge on a minor road. Here, I weave my way through traffic and schoolchildren, (two things that don’t really mix all that much) and walk on past the many small shops and momo eateries lining the narrow street. I dodge sleeping dogs, smile at the mechanics already busy welding broken motorbikes, and every once in a blue moon I catch the happy gardener man who sells me flowers from his cart. What a class act!
My bus is the gold bus, and once I pop out onto the main road, it is fairly easy to catch one as they grumble along. The fare is very cheap, 15 rupees, (15 cents) for 10-15 minutes of slow travel. I usually pull out my book or journal, but sometimes if the mood is right, I just sit there with my earphones in, nodding my head to some thumpin bass, looking like a goofball.Some interesting things I pass along the way: the Bhat Bheteni temple, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Power (heavily guarded and difficult to photograph without the guard waving his gun. I will get it though!) the Russian Embassy (a mighty fort; also heavily guarded, but I am trying to persuade the guard to let me peek in) The Police Academy, The Teaching Hospital, and the US embassy. Occasionally, the bus waits while an entire army regiment runs by, which is quite cool, but now a little annoying. And about every other week, I have to walk all the way to the program house because the police have set up checkpoints along my route.Just an hour walking commute….
So I’m not a happy camper. One thing I have to explain: the streets of Kathmandu are not exactly a nature walk. Yes, there is the potential to step in some cow feces, but that’s the closest to any green I get. Meanwhile the dust and smog swirl around my head, filling my ears, nose, mouth, and eyes. I feel like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown just running along with my own personal cloud of dirt.But most of he time, the bus takes me all the way to the US embassy, where I hop off, say hello to the guards, goodbye to the bus attendant, and walk up towards Basbari…..
From China to the USA
by Shelley Chen
Sometimes we need some courage to love,
Sometimes we need some courage to leave things behind,
Sometimes we need some courage to live the dream we’ve dreamed on.
At Charlotte Country Day school, I’ve enjoyed the changes studying abroad brought into my life. Before I came to America, there were certain blind assumptions about the term “American Dream” in my mind. In this country that is famous as “Liberty and Freedom”, I believed that everyone could achieve high if they try. In China, women are traditionally considered less important than men. The best thing for a girl to be is “a pretty little fool”. I have not agreed with this theory for a long time, but I didn’t know any woman who tried to defeat this common belief until I met my host mom.
She is a very strong woman. By the time she got divorced, she was heartbroken and hopeless. A friend of hers suggested she host international students. She thought it ridiculous at the beginning because she wouldn’t want a stranger who probably doesn’t speak much English to move into her house. She decided to take her friend’s advice and became a host family. It was the first time she felt somebody cared about her and kept her company in the house after divorce she told me. She still goes to work even though she is sick. I felt strange because women in China usually stopped working and began to enjoy their retire years at her age. When I asked why she works so hard, she said she would keep working for female rights in this country until she can’t. I saw what a woman can achieve in this world and what a woman can fight for.
America gives women more freedom to pursue what they want to achieve than many other countries. In campus, girls have the equal rights as guys to run a candidate for class president or any other position. Girls are well-respected and protected for the most of the times. Even though from the speech last year, I’ve realized that girls got trafficked and forced to do inappropriate things. It happens in countryside areas in China I learned from news and TV. Women are treated as goods that can be saled and bargained. Most of them ended up being some poor family’s housewives because they need a woman to “produce” babies in the family. I feel lucky to be a girl but I feel sorry for those innocent women whose fates are not controlled by themselves. There are non-benefit organizations and foundations in the U.S. to help but there is none in China.
A blog post from Sarah Campbell Tucker's (Class of '15) No Entiendo about her time abroad in Zaragoza, Spain, for the year.
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March no entiendo
The flurry of traveling came to a brief stop this past weekend, and I got to relax in Zaragoza a bit and enjoy the amazingly beautiful weather (it has been in the 60/70 and cloudless). The weekend before, I went to Salamanca with two friends, and it is probably one of my favorite cities in Spain. Every street and building feels like it was frozen in the 18th century and I honestly didn’t see an ugly part. The cathedral is impressive, and the random allies and streets are lined with cute apartments with flowers spilling over their balconies that looked onto picturesque cafés. Everything was just lovely. And Plaza Mayor at night, all light up, was one of the coolest things I’ve seen.
The city is also home to one of the oldest universities in Europe, and any impressive college you’ve seen pales in comparison to the majestic stone courtyards and impressive history. I was skeptical after hearing all the “propaganda” our history teacher told us about his alma matter, but it’s true, the place is just awesome. However, the university also makes it an international hub from Erasmus kids (which is an EU college exchange program), so we heard a substantial amount of English, but on the other side, it means that a lot of weird restaurants have opened, including a delicious vegetarian one with the best carrot cake I’ve had in Spain! We arrived in Zaragoza exhausted from a month of weekend trips, but also amazed/excited with how much of the country we had seen. My goal is to leave Spain feeling like I have a grasp of it as a whole, not just a general overview, and the best way to do that is travel. This week was a bit of a turning point, in a linguistic sense. Although I still struggle with speaking, I’ve realized that when I listen to spanish, I don’t have to translate in my head, I just understand, which is really an incredible feeling. When people ask if I understand everything, I can actually honestly say yes now, and I’ve started (albeit with trepidation) to make personal decision about when to employ subjunctive in order to express a certain idea behind what I’m saying. They told us that February would be the pinnacle of our language, but it cautiously hopeful that they were wrong, because I feel like I’m getting to a place where it’s actually comfortable to slip into Spanish.
Time is slipping away so quickly here. All of a sudden we have a little over two months left, and we definitely are not the same kids who arrived in September. With the acceptance of of the new class and the excitement of the coming year, we’ve all been especially sentimental about how we started out and what’s different now. I was talking to my friend Lauren about this, and we realized it’s hard to figure out exactly how we’ve evolved because no one here knows each other outside of Spain, and it’s hard to view change from the inside. We all hope we changed, and we hope that it’s for the better. I tend to think it is, but at the same time it’s hard to accept that you’ve become a different person away from the friends and family that defined you for so long. It’s incredibly liberating, but also scary when you think about the return. Here, I’ve established amazingly strong friendships, and there’s and ease and understanding between us that’s hard to find, and on top of all that, we have influenced change within each other. I try and think about not being with them next year, and whether this sounds pathetic or cute or just sappy, I cannot fathom how I will go to school without them there. But at the same time, I really shouldn’t waste what little we have left worry about next year. The year still has major milestone left, like mini viajes, Semana Santa, and the sentimental journey, and there’s probably a little bit of changing left to do, whether we like it or not.
Tomorrow I leave for Paris for my mini viaje with my contemporary art class to view the greats of the city of art. It will be weird to leave the Spanish world for the first time in 6 months and once again not understand a language and feel truly lost in a culture. And in true European fashion, our flight was canceled today thanks to strikes at the airports (I think air traffic controllers), so the school scrambled together, impressively fast, a plan b, and now we are driving to the border and catching a train to Paris. I’m more excited about this plan because we get to zip through the south of France, and we get to avoid flying. There’s something romantic about trains, and as cliche as it is, I get super reflective and thoughtful staring at blurred landscapes. Anyway, I’m very excited to see the things we’ve studied in class in real life, and to go to Paris with people who really know the city.