SOUVENIRS A COLLECTION OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES | SPRING 2014
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SOUVENIRS STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF SABINA BADOLA ART DIRECTOR CHELSEA BLIEFERNICHT MARKETING DIRECTOR MARY STRAUSE PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR PERRY KATZ
EDITORS MARY FRIEDMAN AMANDA EZELL ANNAMARIA GRINIS PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE DIRECTOR ALEXANDRA JAGODZINSKI ADVISOR JIM ROGERS
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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hank you for picking up a copy of the seventh issue of Souvenirs Journal! We publish UW students’ adventures, thoughts, and reflections of their global travels in the form of stories, poetry, and photography. We hope this collection of international experiences will inspire you to embark on your own adventure. With each piece, be prepared to go on a journey told through the unique lens of a fellow UW-Madison student. Whether you hop in a car to drive cross-country or board a plane to an exotic locale, the excitement of unknown experiences awaits you. From the wanderlust that drove you to travel in the first place to establishing a second home, each story makes the life-changing experience of going abroad come alive. As for me, the position of editor-in-chief of Souvenirs has been a journey in itself. I have learned so much not only about the world, but also myself. I am very grateful for the opportunity and thankful to my staff members who have helped tremendously along the way! Happy reading!
EDITOR IN CHIEF
03 07 13 23 27 31 TABLE OF CONTENTS NORTH AMERICA
04 DANIEL SCHAEFER
SOUTH AMERICA
08 ANDREW SCHMIEGE 09 MONICA HALL 11 KATHERINE BATHURST 12 BRIAN DROUT
EUROPE
ASIA AFRICA GLOBAL
14 15 17 19
MEGHAN EUSTICE GRACE O’MEARA AMANDA RECKTENWALD SAM EICHNER
24 HILARY BROWN 28 MARGARET SULLIVAN 29 SIERRA BUEHLMAN BARBEAU 32 JEREMY GINSBURG 34 YUNWEN TIAN
NORTH AMERICA
MARION LAKE, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA | Elizabeth Duxbury
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MY WISCONSIN STORY A DREAM COME TRUE by Daniel Schaefer
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t was a cloudy Saturday in August when my loved ones all gathered around me for the last time before I travelled abroad. Saying “goodbye” wasn’t easy because it made all the distance, absence, and uncertainty feel so real. It means a dreadful fear of the unknown or personal vulnerability of daring steps onto unknown terrain. Above all, it means change. To me “goodbye” always meant solitude, a situation in which I had to stand on my own feet away from all the comfort I held. Maybe that is why we all so desire to have our loved ones around when “goodbye” is spoken: to gather a last time with the ones we love and the ones that love us back. I wanted to share this moment with all my loved ones to not only say “goodbye,” but also “thank you.” On that cloudy August day I felt the deepest gratitude a man could have; it was that day I knew that I was grown. It was that day that diving into uncertainly made me a man. The sun came out and shone upon me. It was as though the heavens were opening up and smiling. God was looking down on me saying that the time had come, the time to go, and the time to shine—without and within. Sincere gratitude pervaded my anxious soul. Two days later I boarded the plane with mixed feelings. I was excited to take this next step in life, but still respected the sublime forces of change. A vortex of emotions overcame me, as if it held dogmatic authority over what I worked so hard for. I was proud, humble, anxious, and afraid of this journey into the unknown. I gradually felt movement within me. It was not bad, but rather brought forth life like a divine breath. I inhaled it, consumed it, and made it a part of me. That was when I realized I was ready. My journey to UW-Madison began with the dream of moving far away from home. It was a dream so sweet that I never wanted to wake up. But I had to, for I would not be one of the millions out there who all dream. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be the one in million who was awake, who actually made a dream become reality. To many, my dream of traveling overseas to this university seemed to be wishful thinking. To me, it was always more than that: a soul ride through the deepest traits of myself. A weary traveler I was: back home somebody, out in Wisconsin nobody. The moment I boarded the plane I knew that no more obstacles were in my way. Nothing could stop me now. The plane landed in Chicago and I got on the bus to Madison, my final destination, my dream was no longer a dream: it had become my life. I was far, far away now and all alone by myself. Still, my confidence was strong, as I thought about all that made it possible for me to wander on Wisconsin ground. When my thoughts drifted to my days back home, it rattled me. Every once in a while I ruminated about my little Wisconsin dream. The long road to make it to Wisconsin felt full of obstacles: millions of documents, emails, financial verifications, contracts, collecting signatures and stamps, thousands of phone calls. Looking back now, I’m sure there were several moments in which I felt like I was drowning, but the vision of being a UW-Madison student carried me though it all. That’s all it took to make it happen. Now I made it: not back at home dreaming, but wide awake in Madison. It’s no longer my dream because I am living it. The Wisconsin experience—kayaking, studying, dancing, playing, radio talk shows, football games, shooting ranges, snow tubing, music projects, dinners, and road trips—brought forth the life within me. Madison welcomed me with open arms. When I go back home, after living the best year of my life, nothing will be the same. I paid my price and earned my prize. Nothing in life is free, they say. Every once in a while I look back to when I first thought about coming to UW and the time that elapsed until I eventually came here, and it tells me one thing: embarking on the journey to make my dream a reality is the best decision I ever made. I would do it all over again now that I know where a first step can take you in the end. On Wisconsin!
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ANNETTE LAKE, JASPER NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA, CANADA | Elizabeth Duxbury
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SOUTH AMERICA
AMAZON, ECUADOR | Forrest Theisen
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AN UNLIKELY COMMUTE by Andrew Schmiege
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he obelisk stands high in the middle of one of the world’s widest avenues in downtown Buenos Aires. Of the nearly fifty million residents of Argentina, one quarter live in the capital city and its suburbs. The subway stop directly below the monument is perhaps the most crowded at 8:15 on a Thursday morning as the downtown denizens make their routine commute to their jobs in the less financially oriented barrios. I made the same commute during my intermittent six weeks in the bustling cosmopolitan hub of South America. Every weekday morning my companions and I rode the Subte for about half an hour from downtown 9 de Julio Avenue to suburban stop Olleros in Belgrano. We had a unique reason to commute: as native English speakers, we were taking Italian language classes in a Spanish-speaking country. (Contrary to what one might think at first, it actually has some logic. It is thought that 60% of Argentina’s population has some Italian descent due to the huge wave of immigrants in the late 19th century through the mid-20th century.) If we did not literally push our way onto the Subte train, we would never have gotten on. The subway is survival of the fittest. And getting a seat on the train in the 9 de Julio station? Don’t even dream of it. The hordes of commuters are as bunched together as kids waiting to get into a Hunger Games movie. Eventually the great crowds largely dissipate around Pueyrredón, and many times it is possible to find a seat. On Thursday, June 6th I found a seat, and when we arrived at the Bulnes station, that seat allowed me to witness one of the strangest spectacles of all my travels. The train stopped, the doors slid open, a few people got off, and a couple people got on—along with a dog. It was a small, thin mutt: a street dog. It looked to be in relatively good health—no gobs of hair missing and its ribs weren’t showing like an accordion covered in flesh. Despite how out of place it seemed among the other passengers, it sauntered unpretentiously into the middle of the aisle like any other daily commuter. The subway was just another transitional space between its home and its job. Perhaps its favorite place to scrounge for food was in Scalibrini Ortiz. Maybe it even had an owner there. A number of other pasajeros and I exchanged glances. We all were thinking the same thing and wanted to make sure what we were witnessing was real. Upon making eye contact with complete strangers, it didn’t matter what native language we spoke—we all had the same reason for smiling. The perrito had perfect subway posture. In the middle of the aisle, it was balanced to react to the capricious jolts and sways of the subterranean highway. It glanced up every now and then as if it were checking the map to make sure of its stop. As we approached the next station, it moved with composure from its place over to the door in anticipation of it sliding open. Then, the dog left as casually as it had come. Since then I’ve told this story in three different languages. Who knows what happened to the dog, but its morning commute reminded me of just how fantastic the real world can be.
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RIO DE JANEIRO by Monica Hall Rio de Janeiro. The concrete Christ statue cutting across the blue illuminated sky floating above the golden sun-soaked city below. Bikinis so small they are simply a dot of color in the steady teal waves. Luxurious hotels with flashing signs, guests with flashy gold watches. A darker side. Favela streets stained red with blood from drug violence. The gray faces of the homeless sleeping in between shiny black garbage bags. And although their lives are far from perfect, they are living in a nation of acceptance and humility. The man in the black tailored suit stopping on his way to work to converse with the gray-faced man who slept between those shiny black garbage bags last night. Not looking down on him as another gray piece of stone on the sidewalk, but rather a fellow Brasiliero, a type of people with personalities so colorful, they truly are inexplicable.
GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS, ECUADOR | Forrest Theisen
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PARATY, BRAZIL | Monica Hall
BOLIVIAN GUINEA PIG SLAUGHTER by Katherine Bathurst
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’ve been living on a farm in Tiquipaya, Bolivia for a week now, and my home stay is getting pretty weird. Today I butchered three little guinea pigs with my host mom, Juana. We cut their throats, peeled off their fur, and emptied the guts out of their poor lifeless bodies. I actually didn’t feel sorry at all, but rather completely enthralled as I watched their slick, lumpy organs tumble straight into the red plastic bowl I’d eaten my soup out of earlier that day. It was truly revolting. One of these pigs, had it been allowed to live, was definitely about to take a giant crap. I could see tons of little poop pellets backed up throughout its entire intestinal system, and some of them had already fallen out amid the mishmash of stomachs and livers that would forever contaminate my little red soup bowl. “What are we going to do with these lovely organs?” I thought about asking, but I decided it was better to keep silent and at least feign ignorance when the time came for a steaming hot bowl of pig intestine soup with a garnish of floating fecal matter. While we were in the process of gutting, my host mom somehow extracted from all three pigs a gelatinous yellow mass that vaguely resembled the combined ear wax of about five people who had never used Q-tips. She swallowed all of them whole. Confused and slightly horrified, I asked for an explanation, but all I could discern from her response was “healthy” and “good luck.” I did figure out, however, that boiled guinea pig meat tastes like
a slimy, dirty pair of old shoes. I politely swallowed little nibbles of it while my family members enthusiastically gnawed away at every single existing body part of the boiled pig. “Más, más!” my host mom ordered. “No, no…” I whispered as a boiled guinea pig head was dumped onto my plate, little eyes and teeth included. I was seized by a rush of panic. I didn’t want to offend my family by refusing such a delicacy, but there was absolutely no way I was even going to touch the cabeza de conejo. There it was on my plate, waiting for me to gobble it up, while my family members looked on expectantly! I wondered if I should excuse myself to the bathroom. I wanted to make myself vomit up everything I had just eaten, but that would have been impolite. I thought about falling to the floor and pretending to be dead because I was really done with this whole guinea pig fiasco and I needed to get out of the kitchen. I ended up flashing my most winning smile and telling my family that I had enjoyed lunch very much but wasn’t hungry anymore. They said they would save the cabeza for my dinner, and I said okay because I didn’t work out what they had said to me until ten minutes later when I was back in my bedroom, paging through my Spanish dictionary. I had a mini heart attack – but really, I wouldn’t have wanted my ridiculous Bolivian life any other way.
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SUNDAY NIGHT IN LIMA by Brian Drout
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ou’re walking down the street past Parque Kennedy; it’s a Sunday night in Lima. You’re carrying a stack of manila folders overflowing with old school readings; you needed them as you wrote your last two finals today, and besides, your backpack is full with everything you’ll need for the next month. Tomorrow you set off for Bolivia, heading south once more. As you walk through the crowded streets you can’t help but think back on the semester. You try to avoid cliché endearments as your time in Peru draws to a close, but if ever there were a time for such things, this must be it. When you left for South America five months ago, you connected through Atlanta. You remember that flight. It was dark outside your window, but the plane dipped its wing down as it turned slightly east, correcting course. Behind the wing tip, the moon peaked out, bright and white. But then the wing continued to dip, and you saw the yellow skeleton of some unknown city below, etched out in streetlights across the face of the earth. Later, when the plane had moved over dense clouds which caught the moon’s glow, you thought about that city and the unknown that waited for you beneath the clouds. You didn’t know Peru or Lima. You didn’t know the people you would meet, and you couldn’t imagine what was waiting. And so you felt small, and the world felt very big. And the home you had left behind felt very fragile, the life you had made very trivial as you glided along away from what you knew and into what you didn’t. You blink and it’s December. You’re walking by a park you’ve frequented since July, coming from a café you first visited with friends who you didn’t know five months ago. You just finished your last essay for a class you didn’t know you’d take. It’s a warm night. Your family visited last week, and just last night you watched them get into a cab and pass out of sight as the car turned the corner. You steal a glance up at the moon; it’s shining brightly again as a wisp of cloud floats by. It was harder saying goodbye this time, because you learned how important the people who really matter are, and you know what it means when you give a last hug for a while. You shift your eyes back to the street and grab the shoulder strap on your pack, shifting the weight. I think if I’ve learned one thing in Peru, it’s that the unknown parts of life that make us feel small and unprepared are at least as fragile as the comfort zones we leave behind, that what might happen is more exciting than scary, and that who you are never leaves you. It’s a Sunday night in Lima, and tomorrow you’ll be gone.
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PARATY, BRAZIL | Monica Hall
EUROPE
OIA, GREECE | Chelsea Bliefernicht
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AN EVENING IN MADRID by Meghan Eustice
“Is that him?” “I’m not sure.” “What do you mean, you’re not sure? You talked with him all night!” “It was dark! I couldn’t see that well!” “Well, he’s walking this way. Is he looking at us? He’s definitely looking at us.” “He’s waving back at me and smiling. Yeah, that’s him.” He leaned in and kissed me on each cheek, a custom I was still adjusting to even though it was my last evening in Madrid. The thought weighed my heart down, but I brushed it away quickly and introduced my two friends to Ramel, who was indeed the guy I’d met the night before at a club near the city center. He asked how I was and I did the same. “So you’re leaving tomorrow? That’s too bad.” You’re telling me. “Yep, we’ve got a train to catch at five tomorrow morning.” Ramel smiled at me. “Let’s go this way. I want to show you something.” Despite running around the Spanish capital for the past four days, my friends and I had never wandered to this neighborhood where our new acquaintance had us meet him. The lack of pictureworthy architecture and souvenir shops told me this was obviously less of a tourist infested area than where we had been spending most of our time, and I was suddenly disappointed in myself for not branching out a bit more and letting my curiosity get the best of me like everyone else who travels seems to go on about. But I am curious, right? Like, I am actually burning with desire to see the world. I mean, probably. Oh God, did I just waste this entire trip? This wasn’t the first occasion these thoughts had crept into my mind. Every time over the past three months I had chosen to remain back at a hostel instead of going out to a loud, congested nightclub. Every time I didn’t make conversation with an old woman sitting next to me on a train. Every time I took the path more traveled while investigating a new city. I could feel these questions shaping in the back of my head. Backpacking through Europe had sounded like it was going to be an adventure. My adventure. My crazy, spontaneityriddled adventure. I was supposed to go back to the Midwest brimming over with stories about funny miscommunications due to language barriers, or brief romances before leaving for the next city, or anything that would make listeners covet my semester spent on the other side of the Prime Meridian. I snapped out of my silence as we strayed from the sidewalk and started trekking up a small hill, and wondered if maybe we weren’t supposed to be here. The undeveloped terrain was a bare, vast expanse. What was left of the brittle grass was unable to stretch over the entire acre of land, exposing bald patches with no more than a
pair of malnourished trees as its landscape – not including the fastfood hamburger wrappers and cigarette butts scattered around. I mean, when you said you had something for me to see, I was expecting it would be pretty, but this – this is absolutely breathta And then we were at the top, my sarcastic internal thoughts interrupted. On the other side of this sad, littered hill was a view of Madrid. Ramel pointed to his university off in the distance, but other than that, this portion of his city my friends and I were now looking upon was mainly home to some small shops and a few apartment complexes. The sun was setting: a bright coral hue cast one long last light upon the city, an impatient indigo on its heels. All in all, it was not the most remarkable sight I had ever seen. My travel companions and I had visited more original and postcardworthy places, ones whose unexpectedness had extracted actual gasps from our lungs. “I come here after class sometimes,” Ramel confessed it as if it had been a secret up until this point, trusting three girls he’d just met to be the only other keepers of his undiscovered sanctuary. I looked out at the view again. Maybe I judged too quickly. We sat down in the prickly grass and began to talk. Ramel pulled out a bottle of wine he had brought, more than likely to make conversation flow a bit easier. It turned out that he had lived in more places than we had visited. For the hour or two that we sat there, we recounted our top travel tales to one another, involving anything from getting lost in the Black Forest in Southern Germany in the dead of the night to run-ins with a Colombian mafia on New Year’s Eve (that was one of Ramel’s stories, for the record). Our madrileño friend checked his watch and I knew it was time to call it a night. That insistent indigo was now the only color in the sky, and stars were beginning to poke through. I stared out at the view once more, suddenly afraid to look away. I didn’t want to forget any of it, even the stupid food wrappers. It may not have been the most beautiful memory of my trip, but it was the last. The journey back home would begin in a matter of hours, and I knew in that moment that this was the final picture, and there was something to be said for that. Maybe the wine was making me dramatic, but every fiber in my being went against standing up and starting the downhill descent. Leaving Ramel’s spot meant leaving everything. We continued to talk as we made our way to the metro, squeezing in as many last stories and laughs as possible. I looked at him through a sideways glance. I might never see him again. I hoped that it wouldn’t be true. “You guys are crazy,” Ramel decided about us after the last story had been told – one where my friend nearly missed a flight from London to Berlin. “That sounds like the best three months ever.” I realized he was right. His voice meant more to me than the one in the back of my own head. We had lived an adventure.
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BOLOGNA FOOD DIARY
by Grace O’Meara
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s a tourist, one has an excuse to splurge on famed dining, eat to excess, and then order dessert. But if you are studying abroad for six months, doing this will make you broke and fat. However, I was studying in Bologna, Italy, which is renowned as the food capital of Italy. So, I chose to be broke and put on a few pounds instead of miss out on the city’s buttery, meat-sauced cuisine.
in a quiet bar, students stumble into the tiny crepe shop. A white menu with hundreds of options for crepe fillings looms overhead, while Italians and foreigners stammer out orders. Behind the pink bar, two short men wield long metal spatulas while a woman in her forties controls the cash register. To the post-bar crowd, the men work magic. They pour out batter, cut off edges to form perfect circles, flip the crepes, fill the crepes, spin their spatulas, and fold the crepes into perfect triangles with the ease of swordfighters. Bombocrepe’s metal floor, hot pink detailing, and pop music pumping through speakers feels somewhat out of place in ancient, cobblestoned Bologna. But the incongruity is forgotten after a bite of a Nutella and strawberry crepe dusted with powdered sugar.
During our first week in Italy, a group of friends in my program discovered Osteria dell’Orsa. We ate Bologna’s famous tagliatelle al ragu from a giant bowl that our crabby waiter placed in front of us. He rolled his eyes at the table full of eager Americans as we called for more wine, red, like the ragu covering the thick, tangled pasta. We slurped the pasta and marveled at the buttery flavor. It was inevitable that specks of tomato red landed on our clothes as we reached past other arms to stab another serving of pasta. On that first visit, the Osteria managed to find plates for us, but on later trips they “didn’t have enough.” Instead of leaving hungry, we ate directly from the large bowl, a feral hunger erasing any semblance of manners.
After two weeks in a hotel, my friends and I moved into apartments we found through a series of awkward phone calls and interviews. Living with foreign roommates who speak a different language was completely terrifying because I never knew what they thought of me, especially in the first few weeks. Cooking became frightening after my roommate Erika yelled (or talked loudly by Italian standards) at me for not adding salt to my boiling water. She hurried over, disgruntled that the pasta was already added to the water, and quickly plopped a tablespoon of salt into my pot. During subsequent dinners, my
Soon after discovering the Osteria, someone led a group of us to Bombocrepe. After dancing all night in a discoteca or sipping wine
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BRAC, CROATIA | Chelsea Bliefernicht
friends and saw their looks of similar apprehension—how much would this meal cost us? We’d only tasted appetizers and we were already full. We began talking the man down, trying to explain how the appetizers were enough. He made us compromise: he would give us portions for three people instead of six. Soon our table was covered in shallow bowls of pasta that we devoured. A “light” dessert, chocolate mousse and a fruit plate, finished our meal and we walked out, giddy from our full stomachs and lighter wallets.
roommates would check on me, making sure that I had put in the spoonful of salt after the water began to boil and before the pasta was added. Because we were all equally inept, my American friends and I liked to try different recipes together that we had stolen from our roommates. Sofie and I attempted pasta arrabbiata and crushed so many peperoncini into the sauce that we gulped down our bottle of wine and ate yogurt to cool our taste buds. With a larger group, I tried to cook tagliatelle al ragu and ended up waiting three hours for the sauce to simmer down. Fresh stuffed pasta from the supermarket down the street was much easier. There, I learned that ravioli stuffed with pumpkin is more dessert than dinner and the rich, creamy filling melts after the al dente pasta wrapping splits under a bite.
While I packed my suitcase, my roommates Erika and Tania surprised me with a cookbook featuring regional Italian recipes. The gift was so thoughtful; it was something I would have bought for myself. I’ve never shown great talent at cooking, and usually it just makes me stressed out and hungrier. But for six months in Bologna, I forgot about time constraints, calories, and cost. Like most Bolognan apartments, mine didn’t have a living room. Instead, we gathered around the kitchen table to do homework, play cards, drink espresso, and eat. There would be time later for exercise and saving money. For the time being, I wanted to eat.
My final night in Bologna, five other Americans and I found a small restaurant tucked away in the historic center’s winding porticos. We were committed to splurging a little more than usual on a traditional Bolognese meal. Then the plates began covering our table. The set menu was not given to us on paper; instead food came immediately. We passed around olives, bread, melon wrapped in prosciutto—at least seven serving plates filled with different offerings. Then our waiter (or perhaps he was the owner) came to ask us how our appetizers were and if we were ready for our meal. I side-eyed my
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’MURICA
by Amanda Recktenwald
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everse culture shock didn’t hit me like I thought it was going to. Instead of feeling like an abrupt slap across the face, it appeared much more subtly. Like when you find an enormous painful bruise on your leg and wonder how the heck it got there, and then vaguely remember your run-in with the kitchen table three days prior. There are practical readjustments to get used to: eating American things at American hours of the day, speaking English all the time, realizing that ordering a glass of wine with dinner is probably not going to fly, and reinitiating myself into the world of texting and 4G. It required some conscious change, but nothing too drastic. The most unexpected aspect of my return comes whenever I try to explain my experience to the people back home. The typical conversation goes something like this: “Amanda! It’s so good to see you! How was Spain?” “Great!” And then there is an awkward silence while I try to think of something else to say. In the past few months, my life has changed in so many ways. I have had amazing experiences, seen beautiful sites, and learned much more than I thought was possible. I documented the experiences and sites in blog posts and more photos than I can handle sorting through, but the learning is what really changed me and is simultaneously the most difficult to convey. My main goal was to learn to speak Spanish like a boss, and I conquered that task. The lessons I learned while studying abroad range from the best way to approach eating foreign foods to mastering public transportation to the sequence of Spanish royalty. The sites we visited were incredible, but daily life seemed repetitive at times. It was so easy to complain: “this food makes me queasy” or “I can’t understand the bus driver” or “Spaniards are never on time.” I could find a million and one problems with my life, but I had to stop and reflect. Before leaving, a wise woman told me: “You have chosen, used the free will God gave you, to go abroad and He will bless you abundantly for that. So don’t wallow.” Is it really worth it to stress over the miniature-sized coffees or the slow walkers on the sidewalk? I realized that if I wanted to make it through
an entire semester in this country, I needed to be a little more patient, a little less irritable, and a lot more appreciative. The Spanish phrase “La vida está hecha de pequeños momentos” (life is made of little moments) sums up my experience in Spain. The subtle beauty in small moments is what I remember most about my semester. Surprisingly, a key conclusion from my study abroad experience is about the USA. Traveling abroad as an American can be a challenge. Being abroad makes you want to contradict those negative stereotypes about America. You want to prove to the world that the United States isn’t a bunch of McDonald’s-eating, flag-shirt-wearing, Starbucks-drinking know-it-alls. At times, the fact that you are associated with the US makes you embarrassed. It made me wish I had dark hair and a better Spanish accent, so that my citizenship wasn’t so painfully obvious. At times, it was really hard. The 2013 Boston Marathon, a devastating event for our country and the rest of the world, occurred 11 days before I returned to the US. The aftermath of that event from an outsider’s point of view was incredible, as it showed America’s strong unity. We are America. Sure, we joke that Wisconsinites and Minnesotans can’t be friends and a New York Yankees fan would cut off his own arm before he would share a cab with a Boston Red Sox fan. But in times of crisis, the United States band together. Watching the unity from overseas made me see the US in a whole new light. It made me forget every embarrassing stereotype. I saw America come to Boston’s aid and I thought, “That’s my country.” It made me proud to be an American. The study abroad experience was surreal. At times I think, “Wait, did that actually happen?” It taught me so much about myself, boosted my confidence, strengthened my values, changed my perspective on everything, and helped me see the world in a completely new way. There are few times in life when I am at a loss for words. Ask anyone in my family; I never stop talking and I always have something to say. But as I mentioned before, it is difficult for me to put my semester abroad into actual words or small talk. Words don’t do it justice.
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LE JARDIN D’EZE, ÈZE, FRANCE | Chelsea Bliefernicht
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THINGS WE DO by Sam Eichner
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e kill it, whatever it may be. We talk in one language and listen in another, which immediately brings to mind that irritating word problem you got in every math class ever, about those two trains going in different directions at different speeds. It seems like we spend half of our waking hours just preparing and eating dinner. We use “But we’re studying abroad” as justification for everything and talk about home like it’s something that happened years ago. We visit a lot of churches. And see a lot of different paintings of Jesus. We sit around a small square table in our apartment, maybe five or six of us, smoking Marlboro Reds and sipping cheap whiskey and Coke, too-sweet wine, and overpriced beer. There’s a window open to keep the apartment from smelling like smoke, but it’s just for show, and the stilldrying clothes draped on chairs and the tops of doors inhales it through cotton lungs. We play a game someone knew from a movie they saw back in the States. The game is called Truth, and it goes like this: In the center of the table is a jar, its top covered with a tissue tied down by a discarded rubber band and a coin placed on top. One person lights a cigarette, takes a drag, and uses the lit end to make a hole in the tissue. Afterwards, he passes it to the next person who does the same. The person who pokes the hole that causes the coin to fall through the tissue is the loser, and must answer—truthfully, hence the name—a question posed by the rest of the group. We are all aware of the fact that Truth is essentially a more bourgeois version of Truth or Dare, a game most of us had retired after middle school. Yet something about the cigarettes, about being in Europe, about the open wine bottles littered indiscriminately across our apartment, infuses the game with a cheap profundity we do not take for granted. So we pass the cigarette, taking hard, pensive drags, the rest hunched over in their chairs, surveying the coin resting innocently on the tissue, oblivious to its implications. Every hole starts out small before expanding, and we watch, rapt, as the dirty gray ash eats into the snowfield of tissue. The black ring extends itself until the yellow-gold embers die; the room lets out a collective sigh; the cigarette is passed again. This goes on for a while until, amidst hoots and hollers, the tissue finally breaks under the weight of the coin. The bottom of the jar squeaks out a curt, metallic ping. All eyes turn towards the player with the cigarette still in hand, held
loosely between twitching fingers like a smoking gun. “Who has a question?” The group confers, murmuring. Normally we just ask a question that involves sex, but this time someone gets serious: “What is your biggest fear?” Silence. “My biggest fear is snakes,” someone says. “Mine is darkness,” someone else adds. “Or being buried alive.” “Drowning.” “Death.” We go on listing fears like plagues, sins, and wonders of the world. When we run out of fears, the fears become hopes, the hopes become dreams, the dreams become nightmares, and we realize why it was indeed a stupid question, and why Truth was a stupid game to begin with. We walk around. We rediscover the art of conversation. And in quiet alone times we lose ourselves in the newness of it all, which rings out from all the places where normalcy and the unknown intersect. We deliberate about getting tattoos. We like to sit at the table and talk about what we might get, where we might get it. We point to places on our bodies—the underside of thumbs, the confluences of hand and wrist, the inside of biceps, the crescent shadows behind ears—treating each like a canvas we bought just for show, because we’re not artists but maybe we want others to think we are. “I think I want to get the coordinates of Aix.” “I want something in French. Maybe a line from Le Petit Prince. The one about les yeux.” “Is getting ‘to infinity and beyond’ on the underside of my right breast tacky?” We don’t think about why we want them so badly now, when we hadn’t even really thought about it before. Maybe it’s because we only study abroad once, because if not now, when? Maybe it’s because we left the people we were back home, and we are desperate to identify the people we are here, leave an icon of our French avatars for our future boring adult selves. Or maybe we are afraid of the impermanence— the transience—of just one semester abroad, and the ease with which it can be forgotten when we return home to real life, so we seek out the one thing we know can never be washed off. We ask ourselves: “Is this Europe?” or “Wait, are we even in France?” What starts as an innocent joke becomes this super pretentious existential question: “But, like, where are we, really?” We embarrass ourselves or genuinely feel uncomfortable
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in social interactions on a somewhat consistent basis, but it’s okay because that’s what they call “cultural immersion.” We watch the French version of The Bachelor on TV and stream the American version on our computers. For all intensive purposes, they’re the same exact show dubbed in different languages: both follow the same structure, have a similarly square host, and play heavy-handed music in the background in case the audience doesn’t know how to feel. We note only a few perceivable differences. One is that the French bachelor sensually kisses his bachelorettes on the napes of their necks, while the American bachelor has trouble even looking his suitors in the eye. Another is that the French always eat their meals during one-on-one dates, while the Americans pick awkwardly at their food. We assume, perhaps too readily, that this is a pretty solid representation of the differences between Americans and the French. We take lots of pictures of horizons and sunsets, and lots of pictures in front of scenic overlooks. We take lots of pictures of food. We take lots of pictures in general. We tour cities and visit monuments, and once there, we eventually come to this moment where we’re like, “Okay… now what?” We drink bottles of wine we can’t pronounce. We feel like our parents when we travel—especially when we go on those guided tours and actually pay attention. We sit at cafés and sip espressos and watch the girls as they pass by: their faces read expressionless, vapid eyes, clothes that remind us of death. We write on them like blank pages of an expatriate’s moleskin, waxing poetic, grasping at the ghost of profundity. They are nothing so in that disappearing instant we give them everything. We give them scars, birthmarks, a tendency to curl their chestnut hair along their long, thin fingers; we give them cigarettes to smoke and wine to drink, lips to be singed red or purple, skin to be pale, arms to swing at their sides, legs and thighs to tease us with; we give them the cute way they say American words, the shy half-smile, a deflated heart we pump up with all that’s left. And when they’re gone we light up a cigarette (we just took up smoking) and go back to pretending to read that Hemingway story, because what are we supposed to do, actually talk to them? That final scene in Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray’s whispered good-bye to Scarlett Johansson gets swept up in the sounds of the streets, and falls deaf on the audience’s ears—well, that pretty much sums up our trip abroad.
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SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, SCOTLAND | Forrest Crawford
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CAPPADOCIA, TURKEY | Allison Brown
ASIA
AMBER FORT, JAIPUR, INDIA | Chloe Karaskiewicz
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ESCAPE FROM KHAO SOK by Hilary Brown
I
feverishly looked behind me, to the side, and then at the ground ahead. Just keep walking – and don’t make a sound. The trail was muddy and crossed with roots. The undergrowth was sparse. We were the prey. My blood pounded, calling to the parasites, and on and on they came. We’ll never make it! screamed a voice inside my head. I visualized the shock waves linking each of our steps to the tree trunks and nearby river. A leech dropped nearby and my anxiety reached a new pitch. We were running. From terrestrial leeches.
The humidity began to feel clammy in the shadow of the trees. Insect calls occasionally broke the silence. “Do you guys see this? The leeches on the trail are inching along like caterpillars,” said Filippa. That was when I noticed. They were inching toward our footfalls. I sped up and saw the leeches change direction when I passed. “They’re chasing us!” I said. Filippa screamed, “Give me the DEET! Give me the DEET!” as one climbed up the side of her shoe toward her sock. Li stopped and started spraying. I hopped in place, hoping that if I kept moving the leeches wouldn’t be able to climb onto my shoes. We moved forward along the trail, and heard the bubbling of a river close by.
I had no idea such a creature existed until I traveled to Thailand. Familiar with and unafraid of mud leeches, I assumed these would be no big deal and even laughed when our local guide told us not to go hiking in Khao Sok National Forest. After all, we had already hiked in the mountains near Chiang Rai. We saw two leeches and, although exotic, they weren’t exactly terrifying.
“It’s going through my shoe!” Filippa, Clara, and I rushed over to Li, who was frantically spraying the mesh part of her shoe to kill the leech. Clara opened the salt and started pouring. Undaunted, the leech continued to burrow. In a fit of inspiration, Clara started bludgeoning the leech with the salt bag. Finally, it dropped to the ground. We kept going, determined to not let the leeches ruin a perfectly good jaunt in the National Park.
My travel companion, Li, and I met up with Filippa and Clara after breakfast and the plan was to spend the morning hiking. We met outside the hostel and ventured forth into the cloudy morning. We all wore long pants and what passed for hiking shoes. We walked the mile or so along muddy reddish roads, passing houses on stilts. The nearby mountains rose jaggedly, tops covered with trees, but the exposed rocky faces betrayed the steepness of the formation.
As we trotted down the trail, the leeches came thicker and faster. Just when I thought that this hike was turning into a walk through some cheap horror flick, we were stopped by a rope spread between two trees. The sign informed us in Thai and English that the remaining trail was closed. We were disappointed, but our minds soon turned to the matter at hand: trekking back through the leeches that had been following us.
At the Visitor’s Center, we were disappointed to find out that most trails were closed due to the recent rain. The rainy season had just started and it had poured all the previous day, causing waterfalls to cascade off the roof of the open-air gathering space at the hostel. The first clue should have been the large display in the Visitor’s Center to explain the terrestrial leech. Because our first encounter with them in Northern Thailand had been so innocuous, I took a funny photo with a large, zoomed-in print of a leech attached to a toe. Clara and Filippa were prepared with a small bag of salt from the convenience store. Salt, our guide had assured us before hiking in the north, was the only way to get a leech to detach once it latched on. Li had a spray bottle of DEET and I had a weaker bug repellent. We sprayed down and tried not to inhale. Then, we ambled across the lawn to the only open trail that was supposed to lead us to a “lookout.”
We knew we had to keep moving and we battled the leeches as if they were zombies. In case you, dear reader, ever need to escape from terrestrial leeches, use the following strategy: 1) try to escape, 2) if one grabs your foot, beat it with the salt bag and spray it madly with DEET until it drops stunned to the earth, 3) move away as quickly as possible and don’t let others sneak up on you while you’re distracted by the attacker. I could hear the sounds of more leeches dropping from the trees beside the trail. Logically, we knew that nothing bad would happen if the leeches did attach to us, but the sense of being chased by parasites was enough to cause me to panic. Please don’t let them get me. I, for one, was not appreciating the forest views as we returned. The trees, the dirt, the other insects all faded as I watched my feet for attacking leeches and jogged out.
Off we hiked. The trail was mostly flat and wide enough that branches stayed far away from our legs and arms. “Ugh! I have a leech on my pant leg. How did it get there already?” Li exclaimed. Bright green, the terrestrial leeches stood out starkly against the dark brown of her pants. These leeches looked nothing like the mud leeches we used to see growing up. They had firm ridges and were about an inch and a half long. When a leech bit, its mouthparts attached at one end to the skin and its tail floated up and filled with blood.
Suddenly, we were back in the clearing beside the Visitor’s Center. Our sweat stank of raw fear, last night’s garlic cashews, and Singapore Sling cocktails. Our laughter was fresh with the relief of escape. Two travelers passed us on their way into the trail. They wore sandals and we tried to warn them.
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TAJ MAHAL, AGRA, INDIA | Chloe Karaskiewicz
PUNE, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA | Jordynn Peter
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RED FORT, AGRA, INDIA | Chloe Karaskiewicz
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AFRICA
NGORONGORO CRATER, TANZANIA | Aubrey Winkie
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BUYOBO
by Margaret Sullivan
I
t took just one peculiar truck in Uganda to help me clarify a reality that goes unnoticed throughout most of our lives. The truck seemed as though it was headed for a party; it was jammed full of people in vibrant outfits singing their favorite tunes and cracking jokes. While I sat outside of Ambrose’s house sorting beans, I waved and said my normal chorus of “Mlemebe!” to the passing truck. By that point, I had the proper Lingisu greeting for “hello” nailed. I was also accustomed to the chants of “Mzungu! Mzungu!” (“white person”) every time I set foot outside. I thought it strange, though, that they were headed up into the mountains and that the number of passengers exceeded the typical Mutatu taxi. Once again, the mysteries of Buyobo piqued my curiosity, so I asked Ambrose about the truck and where the party was. She responded with her usual fit of laughter and before she could catch her breath, she told me it was for a funeral. Its destination, God’s Peak, is a cave nestled atop the highest mountain in the area and is the local burial site for the villagers of Buyobo, Uganda. I assumed that death would require a dark grieving period in which the normal high-spirited attitude throughout the village would cease. I was wrong. In fact, I was completely wrong. In Buyobo, death is met with celebration. Ambrose explained that they celebrate the life of the member whose time has passed and their inevitable meeting with peace. But most of all, they celebrate the village’s good fortune to still have each other. To a Buyobo villager, all humans are connected in ways nobody can predict and death doesn’t end that connection. Whether from Wisconsin or Uganda, alive or dead, rich or poor, we’re all alike in one way or another. What bind us together are emotions—all humans have them, and they all intersect at some point. Death is inevitable. The people of Buyobo believe how one copes with death reveals the true color of his or her character. I’ve always associated death with sorrow, blackness, and tears and assumed this was the same for the rest of the world as well. Turns out it’s not. How much easier would death be if it were seen as a time to celebrate an entire lifetime that has run its course? We spend much of our lives attempting to erase the reality of death from our day-to-day existence. For many of us, it is simply too difficult, too frightening, to consider. My friends in Uganda taught me to embrace life and death in a unique way that goes unnoticed by the rest of the world. While my life at home may be entirely different from the life of a Buyobo villager, I always find myself hoping the spirit of Buyobo will somehow find its way across the rest of the world.
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FEZ
by Sierra Buehlman Barbeau
I
t’s the final week of my study abroad experience in Fez, Morocco. These past few days I’ve overlooked a lot of the beauty of my life abroad, as finals stress and excitement to return to the familiar take over my consciousness. All I can think about is macaroni and cheese and my family back home. It’s important to recognize, though, that this study abroad trip is an amazing adventure. It’s time to concentrate on the present and enjoy it. When I arrived in Morocco, there were so many minor features of the area that absolutely fascinated me. Over the course of my trip, I’ve gradually forgotten about them. I decided to devote this next week to paying attention to them, since I’ll never get this opportunity in the future. The city of Fez is in a flat area of Morocco and surrounded by the Atlas Mountains. I recall initially thinking that I want to live in a place with mountains so I can enjoy their beauty every day. Now, I can’t remember the last time I really looked at them. My first
evening walking home, I saw the pink sunset light reflected off the perfectly carved, lone mountain to the left. The mountains beyond the old, walled city radiated an energy that reminded me of how beautiful my life is. By now, I’ve almost forgotten they were there. I can’t remember the last time I heard the call to prayer. At the start of trip, it scared me, for it reminded me of a tornado siren. It is a song that calls people to prayer; that stops them from their stressful activities and remind them to stop, think, and breathe deeply. Over the past week, I haven’t even heard it. It’s become normal, like the mountains. It’s become white noise in the background. I’ve grown so accustomed to all the little things. I feel as though this whole life has become unremarkable. My home at the Medina—where the streets are made of brick, where I take a single wrong turn and get lost, where I reach both my arms out and touch the walls on both sides of the street—is now
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so ordinary and regular. Donkeys the men who harassed me in that pass me on my walk home are the streets only did so because annoying instead of enchanting. they thought I was beautiful. NGORONGORO CRATER, TANZANIA | Aubrey Winkie Now they are just another species She comforted me when I was coexisting in my environment, homesick or stressed. I’ll never similar to squirrels and chipmunks back home. Will I miss these forget when she made me spaghetti and American comfort food animals or will they dissolve into my memory of this crazy life? Will when I was sick. I miss living in the old, walled city of Medina? I certainly won’t miss the men yelling obscenities or the guy who tried to grab me. But In a week, this life will only be a memory. I’ll leave behind my I’ll miss the beautiful clothing; I’ll miss hearing and understanding family, the medina, the mountains, the call to prayer, the Arabic and Arabic; I’ll miss the sights and smells; I’ll miss the wild cats. I’ll miss the French, the poverty, the chaotic traffic, the lentils and Moroccan that familiar path I walked every day to get to home. soup, the oranges and pomegranates for dessert, the palm trees, the houses without heat . . . and I’ll come home to “normal.” Will it still Home. I’m leaving a home and going to a home. I’ll miss my host be normal when I get back? Or do I prefer this life? mom who made my experience in Morocco so comfortable. She figured out my strange, picky eating habits. She assured me that
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GLOBAL
“SUNBATHING” PLENEAU BAY, ANTARCTICA | Hilary Brown
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TRAVELING BEATS COLLEGE by Jeremy Ginsburg
I
had a relatively normal upbringing. I studied hard in high school and then I went to college, as most 18 year-old Americans I know do. The spring semester of my junior year, I studied abroad in Ghana, Africa through a UW-Madison program. Then, everything changed.
games, spent hours procrastinating and chatting up cute girls at the library, and it was great. I miss college. But if I could go back, I wouldn’t. It’s important to remember that life doesn’t end after college. I’ve learned more this past year traveling, meeting people, and reading than I did in my 3.5 years at UW. College can be the best time of your life, but the fun doesn’t have to stop there. Education doesn’t stop when you receive your diploma. Personal growth has no graduation ceremony. Maybe your beer consumption slows down a bit, but the experiences and adventures don’t need to disappear as soon as you enter the “real world.” Who defines the “real world,” anyway?
Now, I know you’re thinking I probably became one of “those people.” You know, the wealthy kid who goes to Africa, falls in love with it, and comes back talking about how nobody appreciates the little things in life: running water, electricity, a furnished home, et cetera. Well, I am indeed one of those people. However, my biggest take away from living in West Africa was this: Life is short and the world is large. By chance, I was born with a US passport that allows me to travel to basically anywhere in the world. For many, college is a time to “live the dream” and “escape reality” before settling down in a 9 to 5 job. However, for me, college was the only thing keeping me from my dream of traveling the world.
My real world is pretty sweet nowadays. I’m traveling, meeting amazing people, learning Vietnamese, eating new food, and performing music and comedy. I’m also in the process of starting my own business that will allow me to travel and work on my own time. Life can be pretty damn good on a tight budget.
Today, I live in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. I just got back from an amazing two-week adventure in Northern Thailand and I don’t plan on coming home anytime soon (sorry, Mom and Dad). For money, I teach English and play an occasional music gig for some extra cash. I work only 20 hours a week, but I make enough to cover costs and pay off some of my college loans as well. Am I getting rich? Not if you’re going by bank account numbers. But I feel richer than ever.
So, what kind of reality do you want for yourself? It’s never too late to pursue it. Ask yourself what makes you happy and go do it while you still can. Push yourself. No one is going to do it for you. A random drunk girl at a party once got up on a table and screamed, “YOLO!” as she took two shots of tequila and nearly fell on her face. You only live once. Though I find it a bit rude to put dirty shoes on a clean surface where people eat, I couldn’t agree more with what she said. Mae West put it best, “You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”
I’m happier than ever, too. College was a blast; don’t get me wrong. I skipped class because I could, woke up early on Saturday mornings and had beer for breakfast, traveled to away football
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TOWARDS THE SUMMIT by Yunwen Tian
The wonder and fear when exotic air rushes unto your tear The loneliness and tremble when foreign language engulfs your body On the verge of collapse. You may ponder The hardship you brought yourself Sometimes lose sight or even the sun as a compass Misery seduces you into disparity Caging yourself in illusory safety. Forward or backward To choose a living style or regress into obedience On the serpentine path that you hover. Just one strike, one strike of light Kinetic energy leads you to fight Seek for the pinnacle of height. In the mirror of clouds, You see a sculptor merging Waiting to be praised Recognized Towards another summit.
“PERCHED” DECEPTION ISLAND, SOUTH SHETLANDS, ANTARCTICA | Hilary Brown
COVER: TEMPLE AT RANTHAMBHORE FORT, INDIA | Chloe Karaskiewicz BACK: MORAINE LAKE, BANIFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA, CANADA | Elizabeth Duxbury
A COLLECTION OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES | SPRING 2014
BITTEN BY THE TRAVEL BUG? THESE RESOURCES WILL HELP TURN YOUR TRAVELING DREAMS INTO REALITY. INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
studyabroad.wisc.edu WUD ALTERNATIVE BREAKS
go.wisc.edu/altbreaks
INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
internships.international.wisc.edu AIESEC
aiesecus-madison.org
IF YOU WANT TO SUBMIT TO THE JOURNAL OR JOIN THE STAFF, EMAIL
souvenirs.wudpublications@gmail.com FOR MORE INFORMATION.