SONDER // Edition 1

S ON DE R

Edition 1

LIFE . TRAVEL . ADVENTURE

ONE WEEK IN ICELAND

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BEFORE YOU GO ABROAD, GET GOOD SHOES NEW ZEALAND ANOTHER SIDEWALK BEST COFFEE SHOPS IN LONDON FOOD SAFETY IN JAMAICA THREE DAYS IN PARIS WHAT TO PACK ONE WEEK IN ICELAND DON’T BE AFRAID TO GO IT ALONE NEPAL TRAVEL DO’S AND DON’TS STRANGERS ON A TRAIN A DAY IN BATH WHERE MY SELF WORTH WAS HIDING

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, d a o r b a o g u o y e r o f e B s e o h s d o o g get Molly Bee

I’m talking about the type of shoes with arch support that makes it feel like you’re walking on clouds. Get the kind of shoes that allow you to walk for hours without making your feet tired, while everyone around you groans and complains, and slows you down. Here’s why: Get good shoes because you’ll need them when you get off the plane in a foreign country and have to rush to navigate yourself to the train.

Get good shoes because you’ll need them when you inevitably fail at navigating the train system and get hopelessly lost wandering around and trying to find your hostel.

Get good shoes because you’ll need them when you finally start seeing the new city and you wander down side streets and alleys to try to find the most authentic gelato in the city.

Get good shoes because you’ll need them when you happen upon a tiny church that seems insignificant to passersby, but is older and more intricate than anything you have ever seen.

Get good shoes for when you go to the major tourist destinations like the Eiffel Tower and the Coliseum, and find out for yourself exactly what all the hype is about.

Get good shoes for when you spend hours staring at the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Your neck will get tired, but thanks to your shoes, you could stand there all day.

Get good shoes for when you fly to Scotland and climb a mountain.

Get good shoes so that you can stand at the edge of a cliff and see the entirety of the city of Edinburgh

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spread in front of you.

Get good shoes for when your roommates drag you out of your apartment and your comfort zone with promises of fun and adventure.

Get good shoes because your roommates will be right and some of the most memorable and hilarious adventures will happen on nights when you thought you wanted to stay home.

Get good shoes so you can climb hundreds of rickety, wet stairs to the top of a crooked tower and look out on the sights and smells of Bologna, the food capital of Italy if not the world.

Get good shoes for when you take your first solo trip and spend hours in an Egyptology museum in Turin.

Get good shoes so you can hike from town to town in Cinque Terre and then kick them off to jump into the impossibly blue water of the Mediterranean Sea. Get good shoes so that you and your friends can run to catch trains, planes, and buses to as many countries as you can in the four short months you have in Europe.

Get good shoes so you can have adventures with the one time strangers, who became roommates, who became the only friends you have who truly understand how amazing it was to be there.

And finally, get good shoes so you can run to the people you haven’t seen in four months and spend hours telling them every detail of the trip that changed your life.

Then, once you’ve done all of that, put your shoes in a special place in your closet, because you’ll need them again soon.

NEW ZEALAND

J

Libby Schwartz

FEBRURY 5 Today we woke up in Albert Town just outside Wanaka and decided to move on down to Queenstown. We walked around all the little shops looking in on all the food. After a while we stopped and sat in the park listening to a guy play his guitar and sing, he had a really amazing voice. After a bit of relaxing I wanted to see the gardens so Sara, my travel partner, and I split up as she just wanted to relax a bit.

The smell of the roses in the garden was so over powering that I could smell from nearly 100 yards away. The pathway circling the area was beautiful and full of people just enjoying the weather and the view of

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the Remarkables Mountain Range and being active.

I was truly happy, but a little homesick, just thinking how much my mom, dad and brother would love to enjoy this with me.

After heading back and some delicious curry dinner Sara and I headed to the Tiki Trail, one that I had heard the view from the top was amazing. This was not a hike, it was a climb! Seriously we climbed a mountain! It was really steep and rocky but we made it to the top. Due to some party we couldn’t go in the building at the top, but were directed to the grassy side of the mountain and waited for the sun to go down, so we could see the city at night from the top.

We waited a good 2-3 hours in the cold, but good conversation made the time go by faster.

The view of the city lights was amazing and the pictures turned out pretty cool. Then we realized that we were probably the two dumbest girls in the whole planet because we had to now climb down the mountain in the pitch back with nothing but a tiny flashlight on the end of a key ring. It was the scariest thing we have done yet, but nobody can say that we aren’t adventurous.

We made it down alive, thank God! After finding our car we decided to drive to a DOC camp and we ended just parking in their lot and falling asleep, while looking at the stars, undisturbed by any light.

Goodnight from Queenstown!

APRIL 25 Wow these first few weeks have been crazy! I’ve met so many people and some even from Tennessee. It’s crazy how the world works… The first Friday we all got together and had the local Kiwi students show us around Palmy’s, Palmerston North’s nick name, night life.

Today though was really cool. A bunch of the study all planed on meeting up in the courtyard of the dorms for a cookout, or bar-b-q as they call it. After finishing up some course work, I headed over with my contribution, ice cream, a personal favorite.

It was so cool to hangout with a bunch of different people and learn about where they were

Photo by Angel Chaffin

ust take a chance… this is something you’ve always wanted to do… you’re going to make so many memories…

These nervous thoughts ran through my head as I headed into my first appointment with the study abroad coordinator at the University of Tennessee. Weeks later I was filling out all sorts of applications, an application for study abroad scholarships, an application for a passport, and an application for a New Zealand student visa. Months later I was packing up my stuff, and moving back home, before packing up less stuff and moving it halfway across the world. Just a quick 29 hours later I was landing in Auckland, New Zealand with two suitcases, a backpack and my travel partner, a girl in my class who happened to be studying abroad at the same university and had decided to come with me and embark on a three week tour around the Islands before starting classes.

Each day brought something new, but there are a few days from my five and a half months traveling and studying in New Zealand that really stand out.

all from, what their home university’s were like and hear about their majors and other just life stories.

We stayed up really late just talking and then watching the night sky, because there is very little light pollution here. Pretty awesome relaxing day, and I’m glad I’m making friends.

Goodnight from Palmy!

APRIL 13 So I’ve been running like a crazy person, it really helps me feel focused and release stress. Some of the other girls studying abroad have been running too and have actually been training for a half marathon.

Because I’ve been running 6-8 miles a day I figured 13 wouldn’t be too hard to train up to so I signed up for the Mt. Cook Half marathon that some of the other girls were doing during our two week spring break.

And today was the day of the Half Marathon!

The race stared at 9am and I finished in 1 hours and 52 minutes, and I got third place in the women’s category! The view was a bit clouded by fog that had set in, but you could just tell that we were running though the most beautiful mountain range. After the race we got a bit of food and then decided to go on two short walks to see the Tasmin Glacier and the Blue Lakes. It was a beautiful day. Then we curled up in our little car to camp the night.

Goodnight from Mt. Cook!

MAY 25 So this past weekend a bunch of us Americans decided to go to Wellington to see the city and celebrate some birthdates. We had a great time exploring the city and walking along the waterfront as well as enjoying all the nightlife. But the really interesting thing was the way home. We had all hitched rides down so now there were 6 of us that needed to get back to Palmy for class Monday. We walked to the side of the highway leading out of the city and decided to split into 2 groups of 3.

We were there for a little over an hour and were kind of worried that we might not get a ride when we got the Greatest Hitch Ever!! This huge charter bus pulls to the side of the road, and at first we wee kind of confused and expected people to get off but the doors opened and myself and my friend Leah went up and the driver was like, “Do you need a ride?” and we said “ Yeah we do! Can our other friends join?”

“Of course!!” he replied “might as well take you guys as far as you can because I got to drive this thing all the way back to Auckeland!”.

So there we had it, an entire tour bus to ourselves for the ride home! We were all pretty tired but while the others slept, Leah and I kept the driver company.

Bragging on how smart and talented his grandkids were the whole way. After getting home last night I slept for a solid 10 hours, overall an exhausting but awesome adventure!

I didn’t journal every day while I was in New Zealand but kept track of the interesting days. I learned so much while I was studying abroad, but while the classes were interesting mostly I learned about myself. I learned to let go a little of my type A personality and that it’s okay to get a little dirty, literally I didn’t shower for a week on some back packing trips.

I also learned that making friends and connections is an important part of making the most of any experience. By opening up to different people and learning about what made them tick, I learned more about myself and why I like certain things and what other things I could do without. I learned that I really don’t need much in life and that the connections, experiences and memories trump anything tangible.

I also learned that life isn’t perfect and sometimes life/people give you lemons and you just have to make the most of it, and make your own lemonade.

Most of all I gained an appreciation for home and family that I didn’t have before being completely on my own. Studying abroad was one of the best decisions of my life, and I know that without it I would not be the same person I am today.

Now go explore and BE BRAVE!

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ANOTHER SIDEWALK Logan Elizabeth Craig

you can go far to find yourself but not too far.

I showed up with roses and tulips and sunflowers because I thought I needed to give something, and I kept moving and waiting to feel something different but the sun still burns your shoulders wherever you go, and the rain still fell on Paris when my heart and hands weren’t working. and if I hadn’t been in Paris it would have felt the same. but when warmth is in the air like an orchestra you’ll look up and your friends are smiling, and you have to squint to see them, and you are still getting to know each other but their humanity keeps you steady like a hand to hold and you will know you are enough.

I wanted a revelation (and who says I didn’t have one) and now my heart is open (and what else do we really need). we were more honest than we have ever been jumping off sidewalks when the cyclists rang their bells behind us. we were more honest than we have ever been with our phones dead a mile from the hotel. and everything was blurry like a dream but what are dreams but all of us working through reality and there is love in both.

I look up at my friends with their headphones in, and they are smiling in the sunlight, and I don’t remember which city we were in anymore.

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ndon,

BEST COFFEE SHOPS IN LONDON

like all beautiful cities, is home to hipster coffee shops and cafés galore.

While I’m sure you could walk in just about anywhere and find a wonderful latté, the following were some of my favorite places to sit and sip in London.

Almost every museum and major gallery you explore in London will have a secret little coffee shop tucked away in a corner somewhere.

W H I T E C HA PEL’S C A FÉ

was my favorite of all of the museum’s.

While none of the museums served anything less than great drinks, White Chapel’s prices were a little lower (which is hard to find in tourist destinations), and their café had a local shop feel that none of the larger museums obtained for me. White Chapel is a great destination if you love modern art, and the café’s large windows allow for a great view onto the streets of the district.

P O R TO BELLO MA RKET

is just one of the coolest places around London, with or without coffee.

While wandering the street, your senses are consumed in street vendors offering you prints, antiques, touristy souvenirs, crêpes, fresh produce, and collectibles. Coffee and baked goods are everywhere: in the colorful buildings that line Portobello Road, on the streets with the other vendors, and even tucked away in basements unseen to the thousands of eyes that roam Notting Hill every Saturday.

I snatched a latté and custard below an unsuspecting antique store, and I don’t even know the name of the café that they came from (I Ed 1 P 10

Zoë Hester

know, when don’t I take a photo of a cute café hidden in a basement?).

However, Portobello Road’s many coffee shops all offer unique and adorable environments for the perfect cappacino. Just make sure to get to the market early in the morning, as walking the streets quickly turns into crowd surfing a little later in the day.

T O MT O MS

is the most adorable and neat little shop in London. I don’t say coffee shop, because the café is both a destination for coffee and a seller of fine cigars. Can you get any more English than that? (Well, I’m sure that they have tea, too.) After ordering in the tiny shop, customers find a table outside on the patio and overlook the little intersection that sits in front of the terrace. Tomtoms is the perfect spot for brunch as the food is just as amazing as the coffee.

BRIC K LA NE COF F EE

is the ultimate edgy hipster coffee shop.

The aura of the café is just as cool as the coffee. My flat white here was pretty amazing, but the environment is what really made this an awesome afternoon. Words can’t describe the cool vibe that Brick Lane provides.

While some people find the area run down and dirty, an artistic community has sprung up in the district, and Brick Lane Coffee captures it so well. When I was there, some customers sat and drank their coffee and left, while others seemed like they wanted to stay on the shop’s giant black couches for the rest of eternity. I think if I had a nice supply of bagels from the 24/7 German bakery next door to accompany my coffee, I could’ve done just that.

FOOD SAFETY IN JAMAICA Lynsey Jones Having never traveled out of my home country of the United States, I was not totally ready for what I was going to see and experience in Jamaica. I had to rely on what I saw on TV or looked up on the internet to learn about this foreign country that I was going to live in for 2 weeks.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the tremendous poverty and hunger I saw all around me caught me by surprise. I was not mentally prepared for what I was about to learn about food safety, food security, and hunger in a developing country.

Being a food science major, food safety is something that I have always been concerned with. I was raised by a “Food Science” mother who instilled food safety knowledge into my head starting from a young age. With that knowledge as my foundation, I was seemingly on high alert while in Jamaica. I noticed aspects of food safety everywhere - from the Jamaica Broilers poultry production facility to the banana plantation. There were many things I saw being done very well, but of course there are always going to be some questionable practices.

The many good practices I saw concerning food safety in Jamaica are things that Americans may never think about when it comes to our food supply and production.

While at the coffee roasting facility they told us that we must remove our jewelry and wear hair nets because they had recently become HACCP certified. When I heard that I began to wonder how long they had been producing without those guidelines and standards.

When you eat something in America you usually know that it has been produced in a facility with HACCP certification. That raised the question in my mind of how countries with a certain set of guidelines are allowed to export to countries with another set of guidelines. Where do standards become aligned? Or do they even have to be aligned?

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Now we come to the questionable practices I noted. Of course, there are going to be more of these because you tend to notice that bad more than the good. While driving from Montego Bay to Kingston on the very first day, I began to notice the vast amount of food carts and stands on the side of the road. I wondered if these were monitored or maintained by any agency or in any sort of way.

My question got answered at the Ministry of Agriculture by Mr. Dermon Spence, the Chief Technical director. He said that they are not currently monitored, but the government is working on that because if they become licensed then the government can earn tax revenue from them. I believe it is important to have them licensed in order to set standards for cleanliness and food safety.

There are a couple other questionable practices I noticed during our stay.

One occurred at the banana plantation production facility. The facility being outdoors made it prone to attract birds which would then sit above the assembly line, pooping whenever necessary. The workers told us that they splashed the birds away whenever possible, and the bananas were being washed in chlorinated water as they moved down the line.

That being said, there’s a reason you don’t eat the peels of bananas and why you should be very careful handling produce.

The second action I observed was at the Jerk Center we stopped at on the way to the beach. While we were there we didn’t notice any unsanitary practices, but we don’t know what happened during the preparation period. The knife and cutting surface that they used to cut our cooked meat could have been the same ones that they used to prepare the raw meat. They also had some yams that they were cooking which means they also needed to be careful with cross contamination between meats and vegetables.

Food Security in Jamaica was another important aspect of the trip. The ability to grow and not grow certain crops alters the ability to be self-sufficient.

We learned at the Ministry of Agriculture that Jamaica’s goal is to become more and more self-sufficient each year. Over the past few years, the local domestic production of yams, Irish potatoes, bananas, sweet potatoes, pumpkins and tomatoes has continued to increase, and the country is also self-sufficient in chicken and pork production.

In order to be food secure, however, the country continues to push the increase of the production of local goods. They also want to be able to export more and import less. A way they are trying to export more is by the creation of value-added products.

Banana chips and jerk sauces are just two examples of value-added products that are popular in the world market.

Following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, over ten thousand farmers were negatively affected by the hurricane’s wrath Thousands of hectares of crops were totally destroyed with many others being partially devastated. This devastation caused banana producers to only be able to produce for the country of Jamaica, whereas before they were exporting to other countries. Just as the hurricane threatened the security of Jamaica’s produce, invasive species are a problem for almost every crop in Jamaica.

The coffee plantation we visited struggles with the coffee berry borer as well as leaf rust invading its crops. Just one type of invasive species can devastate an entire crop and the producer thus loses the ability to sell that crop. The producer is not the only one to lose out-the consumer then loses food security in Jamaica.

Jamaica uses artificial insemination to be more food secure. By artificially inseminating cows, they are allowing more females to become impregnated by one bull than natural mating would allow for.

This is a practice used in cows and goats in Jamaica, but we learned that China uses AI in chickens in order to supply enough chicken to feed the growing population.

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Another way of becoming more food secure is by the introduction of Agro-parks to the country. Agro-parks allow people to pay about $20 American per hectare a year in order to farm that land. They plant crops and are able to sell those crops for profit.

They can use the farm machinery that is on sight, so that makes it cheaper than having to buy their own machinery.

Seeing people use these plots to grow crops for themselves reminded me of the Botanical Garden’s raised beds that we helped prepare in Knoxville. People in the community were allowed to come grow any crops they wanted in order to become more food secure in their food desert.

Something that goes hand-in-hand with food security is hunger. Not having good food security can cause hunger and malnourishment. Being a developing country, Jamaica has many people that suffer from hunger. Driving through the mountains I noticed numerous people sitting along the side of the road in what looked like small shacks. These were evidently their houses, and they were on the extreme side of poverty.

Jamaica seems to have extremes-either you’re poor or rich and there’s not much wiggle-room in the middle. The country has an unstable socioeconomic status. The price of utilities such as oil, gas, and electric are tremendously high in comparison to the United States, and these high utility prices cause everything else to cost more. People become unable to afford good, healthy food; this causes them to become hungry and malnourished.

After learning about the different aspects of food safety, food security, and hunger in Jamaica, I feel more aware of what is going on in a country besides my own. I had the chance to brush up on my food safety detective skills, and I also learned to notice things I normally don’t pay attention to in the USA. Hunger was something that I saw before my very eyes, but food security was something that made me pay close attention to detail. I learned a tremendous amount of information on those topics that I will draw from in the years to come.

THREE DAYS IN PARIS Katie Vandergriff

Dripping with history and culture, the Capitol of France is bursting with modern energy. The City of Lights. City of Romance. City of Fashion Week. And, for three cold and rainy days in January, Paris was all ours.

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After flying into Charles du Gaul airport, we took a train to Gare du Nord, and met our AirBnB host, Jean Phillipe, at the station Starbucks. We followed him across the street, into a gated alley, and up three flights of old spiral stairs to our temporary Parisian home. It was cold, late, and rainy, so we crawled into our beds for a very short first night in Paris.

Day 2 TOP TO DO’S Eiffel Tower Louvre Arch de Triumph Opera House Paris Disney Sidewalk café’s Notre Dame

HELPFUL FRENCH Hello - Bonjour Please - S’il vous plait

This morning we set off to find the icon of Paris – the Eiffel Tower. We bought tickets, hopped in the elevator, and zoomed to the top. The advantage to Paris in January is virtually no lines for the major attractions.

However, the downside is that the top was closed because of weather.

The elevator stopped at the top of the second section, which felt like the top.

We could see the clouds below us. In the Tower café we snacked on pastelcolored macaroons, buttery croissants, and steamy hot chocolate.

As the weather cleared, we admired the views of Paris stretching endlessly in every direction. When heading back down we braved the stairs, passing by skaters on the skating rink on the first level and getting to examine the amazing construction up close and personal as we descended back down to earth.

Paris is BIG. Huge. Unending. There is so much to see and do in this French capitol city. This is exciting, but makes it difficult to walk to everything we wanted to see.

Thank you - Merci Goodbye - Au Revoir

Plus, the cold rain hampered our progress around town. So, near the end of our second day in Paris we found a

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big red double decker “Hop On, Hop Off” bus. We hopped on.

We happily huddled inside the warm bus looking out at the city lights through raindrop-studded windows.

We met a family from Australia here on holiday – it was their summer and they were freezing. We all listened to our narrator on the English channel of our headsets describe the wonders of Paris as we traveled around the city.

We circled around the Opera Garnier, the Opera House setting for the Phantom of the Opera, and the Petit and Grand Palais. We passed by numerous museums including the Musee d’Orsay, Orangerie, and Napleon’s Tomb.

We crossed over the river Seine multiple times. If the historical buildings are the sentences of Paris, statues are the punctuation. The Statue of Liberty is from here. There is a copy of Liberty’s Flame near the tunnel where Princess Diana died. There’s even a statue of George Washington on a horse.

It turns out if you buy your bus ticket after 4:00 p.m., it is good for the entire next day. This was very good news for us.

Day 3 PACKING TIPS Pack lightly - only a carry-on and a backpack Portable phone chargers Rain gear - check the weather Camera

USEFUL APPS Ulmon - CityMaps2Go Next Stop Paris Rick Steves Pinterest

The third day, we boarded the big red bus again. This time, we braved the top level. A frigid breeze kept the other passengers snuggled below. But in the sunshine, we stood like Jack and Rose on the tip of the Titanic, snapping photos in every direction.

This new height gave us access to things we had missed huddled inside. We stared eye to eye with the gargoyles on the medieval Notre Dame cathedral, and “The Thinker”

by Rodin peaked at us over the hedges surrounding his garden.

The third time around Paris in our bus, we finally got the nerve to actually “hop off.” We studied our map of the city and decided to hop off at the Louvre Palace.

The Louvre was a twelfth-century fortress that became home to French kings during the 1500’s. It houses the world’s largest art collection and is home Mona Lisa, Venus di Milo, and hundreds of other world-famous works of art throughout the centuries.

Using the visitor brochure as a guide to an impromptu scavenger hunt, our goal was to find the most iconic work in each area of the museum.

In the process, we also go to see thousands of other incredible, if less known, works. We took a quick break in the café and refreshed with salmon and chicken sandwiches, gourmet chips, and hot jasmine tea. France has free and discounted rates for attractions for people with disabilities. We both went in the Eiffel tower for $8, and the Louvre for free.

We also hopped off at the Arch de Triumph. We climbed the steps to the

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top. Once again, breathtaking views of Paris in every direction. Back at the bottom, we waited at the bus stop for several minutes before we finally figured we missed the last bus.

It was cool and dark, but still early.

We contemplated going to a nearby train stop, but decided to walk back to the Eiffel tower. We headed down the middle of Champs-Elysees, Paris’s grand 19th-century boulevard that leads to the place de la Concorde. It may be full of modern stores, but it’s also dripping in history. Napolean and Hitler marched through here, and on this cold January evening, we marched through here, too.

Fortunately for us, the Eiffel tower can be seen from just about everywhere in Paris, making it an easy destination for wanderers. We pulled up our CityMaps2Go app and headed towards the tower. Walking along city streets, passing business people and shoppers, we visited like tourists wanting to visit like locals peeking into store windows and into their lives.

Across the street from the Tower we got hot Nutella crepes from a sidewalk food vendor. We walked to the fountain pools and sat on the marble stairs of the Palais de Chaillot.

Couples strolled under the Eiffel tower sharing their reflections in the puddles. At the top of the hour, the Eiffel Tower sparkled from top to bottom like a magic wand. Warm Nutella dripped out of our crepes and down our fingers. We sat spell bound.

Paris worked its magic.

s y a e e r d Th ris ni isPanot n earulygh eno

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W H A T T O PA C K

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Maranda Vandergriff

Iceland ONE WEEK IN

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Maranda Vandergriff

I

celand has been on my radar for a while (probably since I first watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) but I’ve never really heard much about it as a travel destination.

I guess that’s not very surprising considering it has the word “ice” in its name. Even though it isn’t named after literal ice, it still isn’t a very welcoming sounding name. But after a week on the beautiful arctic island, I can easily rank Iceland in my list of top favorite places ever. Maybe even THE favorite.

The best way I can describe Iceland is raw natural beauty.

It’s a tiny island with an even tinier population. A mixture of sprawling green fields and empty rock deserts, topped with volcanoes and glaciers, and edged with black sand beaches, it seems too beautiful to be real.

My family rented a car when we landed in Reykjavík and drove along the south coast. Aside from the periodic napping, I spent almost the entire car ride trying to soak in as much of the scenery as my eyeballs could handle and sticking my camera out the window in an attempt to capture the amazing beauty that surrounded us. And that was just the drive.

I tried my best to photograph the incredible scenery and gather up my favorite images to show off this amazing country. In no particular order, here are some of the absolute highlights of my week-long trip (aside from, you know, every minute).

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THE BLUE LAGOON Our first stop after flying in was the Pinterestpopular Blue Lagoon. It’s a very touristy spot, but totally worth it. It’s a geothermal spa in the middle of expansive rocky Icelandic scenery. We booked our spot in advance. Even though our flight was delayed coming in, they honored our reservation. We got the standard package, which includes entrance and a silica mud mask.

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SELJALANDFOSS “Foss” is Icelandic for waterfall. And if there’s one thing Iceland is good at, it’s the foss game. We visited three major Icelandic waterfalls and each one was as breathtaking as the last. Our waterproof rain jackets were lifesavers for walking behind Seljalandsfoss. I didn’t get any pictures of that part because we were basically inside of a waterfall. If you plan to take a camera, be sure to protect it when you’re close to the spray.

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BLACK SAND BEACH We stayed in the town of Vik, which is famous for it’s black sand beach and the basalt columns there. These formations are featured in the music video for Bon Iver’s song Holocene (and yes, I was geeking out the entire time). The beaches are made up of super smooth pitch-black volcanic rocks.

The contrast between the churning waves and the black shore is stunning.

We visited several other beautiful spots in Vik, including Dyrhólaey, a small peninsula not far from the basalt columns. Atop the highest point sits a lovely lighthouse that looks like it belongs in a Wes Anderson film. Looking out in each direction, the view is unbelievable from all sides.

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SKOGAFOSS

SÓLHEIMASANDUR PLANE WRECKAGE One of the more haunting sites we visited is the wreckage of a plane on Sólheimasandur Beach. In 1973, the US Navy aircraft was forced to crash land.

Fortunately all the crew survived, leaving behind a reminder of how small we are in this great big world.

The access road is closed to vehicles, so we hiked nearly 5 miles round trip to see the wreckage. But watching the moon rise over the carnage against the pink twilight sky made it totally worth the trip.

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Arguably THE waterfall in Iceland, Skogafoss is one of the largest in the country. It’s huge and powerful and sometimes gifts viewers with rainbows on sunny days.

THE HIDDEN POOL AT SELJAVELLIR

This geothermal pool is built into the side of a mountain and pipe-fed by spring water. It was a little crazy to change from 3+ layers into swimsuits, but the combination of the warm natural water and the surrounding mountainous view made it feel almost like a spa. You know, a spa that’s carved out of a mountain and filled with Icelandic spring water.

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JÖKULSÁRLÓN GLACIER LAGOON AND DIAMOND BEACH

Jökulsárlón is a glacial lagoon full of icebergs from one of Iceland’s glaciers. The icebergs break off into the lagoon, occasionally breaking free into the Atlantic Ocean. The huge chunks of ice are then washed ashore onto the black beach, creating a stunning contrast known as the diamond beach.We spent several hours here skipping rocks off of floating icebergs, watching seals bob their heads in and out of the water, and occasionally hearing the distant sound of a new iceberg calving from the glacier.

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Don’t be

Afraid to go it

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Angel Chaffin I first dreamt about studying abroad in New Zealand when I learned about tree ferns in my freshman botany class. After much preparation with a substantial amount of necessary determination, I decided to travel across the hemisphere where I would live on New Zealand’s South Island for almost six months. I attended the University of Canterbury because it was highly regarded as a having the best forestry program in the country, even though it did not have a connected program with the University of Tennessee. In my forestry class at UC, I learned a completely new collection of tree species.

My favorite trees included Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) because of its distinct trippy bark and Black Beech (Fuscaspora solandri) since scale insects suck its sap and produce edible honeydew. For my main class project, I completed field research on the diversity of forest biota and invertebrates based on comparison of forest types of Podocarp-angiosperm forests in Hari Hari, NZ. Results reported that the Kahikatea forest type showed the highest species diversity for forest composition including tree species, woody vegetation, and invertebrates.

With no Friday classes, I gladly took full advantage of the four-day weekends and traveled across the South Island and some of the North Island. One of my favorite weekend trips was traveling to Queenstown in my friend’s car named Clyde and camping out at the Twelve-Mile Delta where Ithilien Camp was in Lord of the Rings. Also nearby, we went tramped in Glenorchy, another LOTR referenced location. “Tramping” (also known as hiking) is my favorite activity and I’m grateful to have been apart of UC’s tramping club. My favorite tramp with the club was summiting Mt. Somers

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where we explored glowworm caves and communed around a cozy fire on a bluff.

My favorite group adventure was a South Island road trip during study break week where a group of my friends traveled to places such as Omaru celebrated for their iconic steampunk culture, elephant rocks in the Waitaki Valley of North Otago, the Catlins, Curio Bay petrified forest, and so many other places until we reached our main destination in Te Anau, Fiordland. In Milford Sound, I saw an incredible waterfall, the largest I have ever seen.

The ferns, moss, and mushrooms on the Kepler Track entranced me to believing I was in a wonderland.

taking a picture of the license plate and sending it to a friend updating them on my location and situation and carrying at least one form of protection for self defense. * The man who picked me up in Nelson had a dog, so I felt good vibes about it.

About 5 miles down the road, he said needed to go to the store because where he was going, St. Arnaud, only had one small overpriced store. He asked me to stay in the car while he went in the store because he “had a gun in the back”. At first I got really nervous, but it quickly made sense that he was a hunter. He talked to me about his beloved daughters during the drive over to the Nelson Lakes DOC center.

During my spring break, I decided to decide take the advice of great British philosopher Alan Watts to “go it alone” and embarked on a solo-backpacking adventure. I prepared by mapping out destinations and packed essentials including a jar of Pic’s peanut butter (the best), borrowed gear from a couple of my new Kiwi friends, and bought a train ticket to travel from Arthur’s Pass to the west coast New Zealand’s South Island. I learned to trust myself during the two weeks I was ‘alone’, and felt connected to myself and the Earth more than ever. My NZ dream had come true. Exploring NZ’s beautiful South Island solo was my favorite part of my NZ journey.

I learned to trust the kindness of strangers, and they in return trusted me. The hunter let me off road his manual Land Rover, even though I had never driven stick before. A family who stayed in one of the huts in Nelson Lakes learned that I was hitchhiking and gave me a ride to my next destination. I met another girl at a hostel in Hanmer Springs that asked if I would go hiking with her to a waterfall. This was truly a godsend, because Hanmer Forest was on my list and she had a car. These encounters of connecting with others while “going it alone” were blessings of good energy that impacted me and restored my hope in humanity.

During my trip, I met a Dutch girl named Lisa in Nelson while I was eating falafel downtown. We traveled together to Abel Tasman National Park where we hiked the Abel Tasman coastal track and kayaked around islands and encountered the friendliest seals. Lisa and I hitchhiked back to the hostel in Nelson. The day after we got back, I decided to solo-hitchhike to Nelson Lakes. * side note: I took several precautions hitchhiking alone such as

New Zealand also taught me about impermanence. A lot of change occurred during my New Zealand journey, and I learned to accept that change. I believe in seasons and that nothing remains constant forever.

This acceptance of change learned from experiences in NZ has impacted me intensely, and I have chosen to carry on this beautiful realization through meditation and applying it to my daily life.

NEPAL Holly Nehls

I

fell in love with Nepal in sixth grade after I wrote a research paper on the country for English class. I knew I had to find a way visit and immerse myself in the culture. Ten years later, I began looking for opportunities abroad to fulfill my “Ready for the World” requirement for the Chancellor’s Honors Program at UTK. I wanted to find a way to go to Nepal, but knew it was unlikely.

While I was serving as the Service Chair for UTK Collegiate 4-H, I was approached by an acquaintance about organizing a letter-writing workshop to benefit children in Nepal. After I said yes to the workshop, I was connected with the founder of Letters in Motion, a nonprofit organization that promotes literacy and education in Nepal and Kenya. I met with John Sellers, the founder, and he mentioned the possibility of traveling to Nepal to hand deliver the letters. I knew this was what I was supposed to do. I organized letter-writing events with students at UTK, fundraised, and won a scholarship to prepare for my trip. In June 2016, I fulfilled my ten-year goal.

I arrived in Kathmandu as part of a team of eight on June 8. My initial jetlagged observations were of the roads.

The traffic laws felt essentially nonexistent. The speed did not matter and the side of the road often did not matter either. Most Nepali rode motorcycles, although there were a few personal cars. My next major observation was of living situations. Makeshift homes lined the streets. People lived wherever SONDER

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they found space. There were no “Western-style” homes. There were no suburbs or yards. Piles of trash and wild dogs littered the streets. Cows roamed free and unprotected. The monsoon rains came in the morning and the sun dried the land by afternoon.

On the second day, a group of us walked to the open-air stores to buy breakfast.

We were staying with John’s parents, who are teachers and missionaries in Nepal. They lived in a gated community of apartments, where many Buddhist Tibetans lived. I learned that Tibetans are known for living a quieter life than Nepali, and they are not to marry into Nepali families. There is a distinct caste system in Nepal.

We visited Swayambhunath, which is also known as the “Monkey Temple” due to the large number of monkeys who reside there. Swayambhunath is one of the most famous and visited Buddhist temples. Although the stairs were steep, the top had a breathtaking view. While enjoying the temple, Nepali visitors wanted to take selfies with my group. They seemed to want to take the most pictures with me, which I believe may have been because of my hair.

Due to the language barrier, we were unable to converse, but they called me “sister.” The language barrier was almost never an issue during the trip as most people we met spoke some English, or we were with someone who could speak some Nepali.

The only time it was an issue was during our Kurta fittings. Kurtas are the cultural clothing worn by most of the women. We picked out the fabric and style we wanted. During our fittings, we discovered that the word

for tall in Nepali sounds similar to the English word “ugly.” Americans tend to be taller than Nepali, so the women kept pointing out that we were “ugly,” which was a humorous exchange.

After lunch, we went to the Collin’s Children Home, which was the orphanage we spent the most time at throughout the trip. We met the kids and played with them for the afternoon. We played on the roof with balls and chalk. They enjoyed drawing chalk pictures and playing hopscotch.

One of my favorite moments from the trip was from this time. I told two of the kids that my favorite Bible verse was Psalm 42, and they began singing “As the Deer.” They loved the song and it was a beautiful moment.

That evening, we packed literacy packs, which we would deliver to the public schools and children’s homes.

We packed each bag with pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, an eraser, a notebook, candy, and a handwritten letter. Nepal has traditionally been a closed country, so receiving permission to visit two public schools was a major moment. John and his dad spoke with the principals of the schools before we visited to ensure they would allow the literacy packs to contain letters students in America wrote, since some of the letters mentioned Christianity.

The principals gave their permission since children wrote the letters.

We visited the first public school on our third day. The school buildings were destroyed in the 2015 earthquake that devastated the country. The school operated out of temporary structures, so the younger students went to school for half the day and then switched with the older students.

We arrived at the school when both groups were there. They lined up for us and sang their national anthem. They gave us well wishing scarves, which is a cultural symbol of safe travels. We each spoke about our college majors and what education means to us. John flew a drone for them and they cheered and were excited. We walked down the rows and handed out the literacy packs, and they were so gracious and kind. The teachers loved on us and the principal invited us to return again.

One boy we met at the school later stopped us on the street to give us a reply letter and a picture he drew.

Photos by John Sellars

After lunch that day, we shopped in Thamel, which is an area of Kathmandu known for commercial industry and tourism. The shops are mostly open-air, and you must haggle at them. I was uncomfortable at first with the thought of haggling, as I did not want to seem rude, but it becomes natural, as it is what is expected when doing business.

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The shop owners were kind and shopping was always a wonderful opportunity for meeting people and learning a little more of the language and how people interact.

The next day was a Saturday. Churches in Nepal meet on Saturdays because people have to work on Sundays. We wore our Kurtas to church like the other women. Everyone must remove their shoes before entering houses and places like church, so we were barefoot and sat on the floor, since they do not often use chairs. The service was in Nepali, so we had a difficult time understanding, but we did see the children from the Collins Children’s Home. Some of the girls drew pictures in our journals and we enjoyed visiting with them.

After lunch, we went to Mercy Now Children’s Home. This home is not an orphanage. They go to isolated villages and ask parents to send their children to school in Kathmandu.

They teach and train the children so they can return to their villages and become teachers, doctors, and otherwise serve the needs of their village. Some of the children at this home were actually around our age, so we talked with them about their career aspirations and played games with the younger children.

The next day, we visited the Pashupatinath Temple, which is one of the most sacred Hindu temples.

We used a Nepali tour guide to better understand it. It is the location where bodies are cremated by the river.

Most Hindus in Nepal that are able to travel to Kathmandu are cremated at this temple. There are Hindu ascetics, which are said to be living gods. They live at the temple and depend on visitors to survive. The temple is also where marriage arrangements and marriages take place. It is also the location ofsacrifices. Hindus take part in both animal and human sacrifices. Our

tour guide assured us that criminals are the only human sacrifices at that temple. He explained that they use it like capital punishment. Criminals like rapists and thieves are sacrificed when the elders decide it is better for them to not be in the world.

We then visited a Buddhist stupa, which is the second largest Buddhist monastery in the world. It was under construction after it suffered damage from the earthquake, but I still recognized it from my sixth grade pictures.

We had lunch at the Bakery Café, which hires deaf service. Disabled persons in Nepal are often forced onto the streets as beggars. I would like to see this restaurant idea in more locations. You simply point to the menu and there is no issue with language barriers.

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The next day, we worked all day on repainting a room at the Collins Children’s Home. On one wall, we painted a mural of a map. We marked the locations of Nepal, Tennessee, and Kenya, and connected them with a dotted line. On the map we wrote, “Bridging the literacy gap one letter at a time,” which became the motto of Letters in Motion.

The following day, we visited another public school. Similar to the first school, they lined up in straight lines, we talked about education, and John flew his drone. At one point, the students came out of their lines and formed a big crowd to try to come see us, but they were ordered back into their lines. After we gave out the literacy packs, they walked out of the courtyard in their lines and high fived

us. One girl came by and kissed me on the cheek. I was taken aback, but it was such a sweet moment. We also had the opportunity to then go and meet with the very small children who did not understand what was happening, but were adorable. We also gave each of the teachers a journal made from handmade paper.

That evening, we walked to a house fellowship on the edge of the city on the side of a mountain. The house was a temporary structure since the woman lost her home in the earthquake. The structure was nothing more than a piece of curved metal, but the woman fed all of us with beaten rice and vegetables. The experience was magical with the spectacular view of Kathmandu and singing with an amazing group of people.

The next two days we spent in Nagarkot, which is a beautiful village in the mountains. We intended to have a spa weekend. The hotel was in a cloud, so it was too foggy to see the view, but it was gentle and peaceful.

We had massages, ate well, and enjoyed each other on the first day of the mini trip. However, things took a turn the next day.

I felt a little unwell the next day, but was excited to go hiking. The first half of the hike was enjoyable. However, everything would go downhill from there. One girl fell and hurt her knee.

She required assistance to be able to walk. Half of the group went on ahead to see if the trail led to a main road.

However, they came back and said it led to a back road where none of the locals spoke English, so they could not find directions.

We decided to turn around and go back from where we came. Along the way, I almost passed out and felt like I would be sick. We finally hobbled our way to a hotel, Club Himalaya, for lunch. No tourists were there, so we track mud in and sit at the restaurant.

We are exhausted, hurt, and I am sick.

Half of the group then discovered leeches on their feet. The tears began to flow along with the blood. We felt bad for the hotel staff trying to help us clean up and calm down. After we drove back to Kathmandu, I did become sick and threw up. It was disappointing, but I stayed home the next day while the group visited the children’s home.

from Kathmandu and visited Chitwan and Pokhara. Chitwan National Park is home to elephants, rhinos, tigers, crocodiles, and other creatures. We rode elephants, saw a baby rhino, and found a large crocodile in his home.

Children’s Home with the children we came to know and love. We gave them their literacy packs that day and it was a far more intimate moment than we had been able to experience at the other schools and children’s homes.

We went rafting in the river that eventually becomes the Ganges and watched a cultural dance exhibition.

In Pohkara, we explored a cave that is home to a Hindu temple and canoed on the Phewa Lake. We also took a trip to the farms that are more isolated.

We had to walk between where two mountains meet.

We knew their names, their ages, and their favorite colors. We played with them and read with them and were reminded that we had to say goodbye to them the next day. However, the mood stayed up that day as we went to the mall to watch Finding Dory.

The movie theater in that mall was the greatest I have ever seen. I celebrated my birthday with cheesecake and friends.

The rice farms were expansive and we saw water buffalo plowing fields.

We went to a family’s home, where we talked with them and met their neighbors. They fed us bread with large slabs of butter and ice cream. Butter and ice cream are expensive, so we were very gracious of their hospitality.

When we returned to Kathmandu, we visited two more children’s homes, which were near each other.

At the first, we played games and the children enjoyed jumping on the trampoline with me. I became tired, but they wanted me to keep jumping.

The second home was a boys-only home. One of the older boys wanted to become a surgeon. His letter in his literacy pack was from a surgeon in America. The boy proudly showed us some of his taxidermy animals. A few of the boys wanted to be musicians, so they sang for us and with us.

On June 18, we went to another church and visited a children’s home after. We played and sang with them and gave out the literacy packs. One girl was so excited about her letter that she continually showed it off to everyone.

One small boy had a tear on his cheek, and a teacher told me that he was very touched by the letter, even though he could not read it.

The following day was June 26, my birthday and our second to last day in Nepal. A few years before, I saw an interview of Demi Lovato, where she explained that she chose to go serve in Africa for her 21st birthday. I was inspired and wished that I could go serve in Nepal for my 21st birthday, but I did not think it would ever happen. But it did. I had the greatest 21st birthday.

The next week, we took a vacation

We spent the morning at the Collins

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On our final day, we said goodbye to the children and the beautiful country.

The 20 days I spent in the country I dreamed about for 10 years were some of the greatest and hardest of my life. I learned that Wai Wai and Mo Mo are delicious, Kurtas are far more comfortable than American clothes, riding an elephant will leave you sore, paved roads and road laws are a blessing, so is toilet paper, and children will steal your heart. After I returned home, I led more letterwriting workshops, talked endlessly of Nepal, and still do, and hope every day to return.

Experiencing other cultures is crucial to personal development. It helps us appreciate our brothers and sisters around the world and shows us the blessings of what we have. I learned not to take hot water, electricity, or privacy for granted. I also learned how powerful love and kindness is.

My team and I went to Nepal with the purpose of spreading love, and we received that back ten-fold. Strangers gave us well-wishing scarves, tilkas, hugs, kisses, and food. We were welcomed everywhere we went. I hope we can always show that welcoming spirit back when strangers visit our homes.

THE BROKE STUDENT’S

l e v a Tr

s o ’ D and

s t n Do ’

Elisa Vandergriff

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There are many lodging options that are not expensive hotels! Hostels are great when travelling by yourself, they are inexpensive and offer the opportunity to meet all sorts of interesting people. Airbnb’s are great when travelling with a group because you can split the cost (if you don’t mind sharing a bed sometimes). For the braver travelers, couch surfing is also an option just about anywhere!

Hostels usually hold luggage before/after checkout, Airbnb’s do sometimes (check with your host), or you can pay a small price to have your luggage held in most train stations.

If you are unsure which train station in a city to travel to, the central station is usually the best option but check a map to make sure it is the closest one to where you want to go.

When you are moving around a lot, pack a backpack instead of a suitcase that rolls. It might look less glamorous but it will be much less irritating in the long run.

Pack once completely and then go back and repack until your suitcase is light enough to carry and you have only what you really need. A pair of jeans and a few V-necks can go a long way!

You CAN survive abroad without phone data: look everything up, save tickets, find maps and directions to and from everywhere you plan to go, and take screenshots of everything while you have wifi.

Bring multiple forms of payment and make sure to notify your bank of your trip before you leave!

Anything can happen and you don’t want to be stranded abroad with no money!

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Buying train tickets online before the trip saves time and stress while travelling - make sure to get email receipts!

The best places to stay are the ones closest to the train station. After a long day of exhausting travel, walking out of the station and right to a fresh bed is the best feeling.

Give yourself plenty of time to get to unfamiliar airports and always look up how to get to and from the airport and the city center/where you’re staying before you leave or while you have wifi.

A good bar of soap can make your life so much easier – it doesn’t take up precious liquid space and can be used as body wash, face wash, shampoo, and can even be used to wash clothes.

Invest in a good portable charger with a USB port and carry it with you everywhere. It is almost guaranteed that your phone or camera battery will die at some crucial point and if yours doesn’t, a friend’s might!

Eat local cuisine at least once everywhere you go, Trip Advisor is a great tool for finding good restaurants. It’s okay to forget about counting calories every once in a while!

Don’t over-plan! Cramming a thousand activities into one day seems doable while planning a trip, but, travelling is exhausting. Give yourself a break: see sights in the morning/afternoon, go back & take a quick nap, then go out for dinner & see the town at sunset & night, you will thank yourself!

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STRANGERS ON A TRAIN Katie Vandergriff

The train from Paris to Germany is crowded with many different people from many different parts of the world going to the same destination.

We are strangers together only for a while.

Sharing a common goal only to the next stop.

No one is speaking louder than a whisper.

Everyone maintains their personal space, even when we are physically touching.

People glance and smile, but no one glances for too long.

Here we are on the train - strangers speaking many different languages, going many different places, for many different reasons.

Yet, for a time we are all here together on the same train going to the same place.

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A D AY I N

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Zoë Hester

L

ike most members of the millennial generation, I have dreamt of travelling the world since I was a child. The intrigue of history has always cast a spell on my every thought, beckoning me to journey to new destinations and have new adventures.

When I started studying at East Tennessee State University in the fall of 2014, I knew that it was time to start pursuing this dream on my own. As a child and young adult, I was fortunate to have been given several opportunities to travel with my own family. As rewarding as those experiences were, I knew that I would continue to wander, unsatisfied, until the day that I die.

During my freshman year, I was offered the chance to study art history for two weeks in London during the summer of 2015 by one of my professors in the Fine and Performing Arts Honors College.

I knew that it would be the perfect beginning to a new era of adventure.

I felt as if the trip met a good set of criteria (short length, English speaking country, professor that I knew, etc.) for my first study abroad trip with ETSU,

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so I began the process of enrolling myself in the class.

When I found out in January of 2015 that I would definitely be going on the trip to London, the City of Bath, England instantly became one of the places that I had to see. As a loyal Jane Austen devotee, I knew that I would do whatever it took to catch a glimpse of the city’s curved walls and ancient Roman remains while in England. Luckily, it wasn’t that difficult of a dream to realize.

One day off from the endless museums visits (it was an art history class, indeed) and two train tickets was all that my friend and classmate Shelby and I needed to journey away from the rest of our class.

The day was a much needed vacation away from hectic London; the City of Bath drew us back in time and comforted us with her history.

“Why do adventures have to begin so early in the day?” I asked Shelby as we pulled out ourselves out of bed before the majority of London was awake that Thursday morning; the alarm clock had starting blaring at 4:30 AM. We donned our usual black and gray garments, added some red lip stick, and sleepily packed everything we thought we would need for the day into my maroon Patagonia backpack.

We were out the door by 5:00 AM, as our train was scheduled to depart from London Paddington Station at 7:00. Like we did during all of our days in England, Shelby and I began the morning with a groggy tube ride out of Sloane Square full of unquestionably exhausted travelers.

Our train ended up being an hour later than we had expected, so we spent our extra time wandering the station; we found the iconic Paddington Bear statue, and, as always, followed our noses to the nearest coffee venue.

Living in a city full to the brim of wonderful coffee and tea shops, Shelby and I were beginning to find that Starbucks just didn’t cut it anymore, but that still didn’t deter us from getting caramel macchiatos from the double tailed mermaid that morning.

Our train finally arrived after we had attempted to stay awake on the platform for over an hour. The distance to Bath was about 100 miles — 2 hours on the train. As we began to jet out of London, my excitement kept me from falling asleep like most of the other passengers on board. We sped past central London, through Suburbia, and eventually, the slums of the city. Before I knew it we were sailing through field of green towards our destination. The English country side presented us with views of rolling farms and hills and enough adorable little cottages to keep any fairytale lover content.

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Upon our arrival, sleepy and excited voyagers alike stepped out of the train and into the city of Bath. As we crossed the canal into the lower city, I couldn’t help falling in love with a day that had not even happened yet.

As breakfast and brunch addicts, Shelby and I headed straight for the first open café that we found. Unlike many of the coffee shops we had been in in London, our destination had a neighborly feel to it. Everyone seemed to know each other, but more importantly, everyone seemed to be enjoying their coffee. Two lattes later, we were back out on the road.

We meandered through alleyways filled with creeping vines of periwinkle flowers, enjoying the peace and quiet that was so different than the business of London. After spending some time wandering through the lower part of the city, we began our ascent into old Bath. We stayed with the Kennet and Avon Canal, which runs throughout the City of Bath from Bristol, finding frolicking mutts and even a swan with newly hatched bundles of soft white feathers by the water.

The first glimpse that I caught of the Bath Abbey was absolutely breath taking. The religious center was originally built in the seventh century, but it was redone multiple times before it took on the Georgian Gothic style that it presents today.

The Roman Bath house sits directly next to the Abbey. The Roman Empire

built the Bath house in the valley in 60 AD because it was said that hot springs in the area had restorative properties. From the time that it was built, the house invited the weak and the weary to bathe in its waters.

The popularity of the baths during the Georgian Era influenced the rest of the city’s architectural style and the novels of Jane Austen, who spent many years living in the city.

“Don’t you just feel like after we walk through we’ll be off to buy the newest and trendiest hat ribbons and to go to the ball?” I pestered at Shelby as we waited in line for our turn to walk through the bath house’s history.

I couldn’t help but to think of the Georgian social scene that reminded me so much of the works of Austen, and of just how many people had travelled to that plot of earth.

The floors in the entire bath were sloped inwards where so many people had walked upon the same path. Many had come hoping to be healed, while others in more recent history had arrived for the society, but they were all there.

All of these lives and souls that we can’t even imagine were at some point standing in the very spot that I stood.

This realization was just as stunning as the bath’s timeless architecture and green waters that were once full of bathers. The structure contained an amazing amount of history, and it was set up so that even the most clueless visitors could learn about the years that they were walking through.

ls u o s d n e a r e s e w v i e l n i e s g e a in the h t m i f o n All e cant evestanding od o w t t s t n i a o h I p t t e a h m t o at s ry spot ve Ed 1 P 40

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When the baths were originally built, the Romans mostly separated the house by gender. Each gender would have had sets of rooms to relax in: hot baths, cold baths, massage rooms, steam rooms (much like modern day saunas), and the equivalent of a modern day locker room.

Visitors were able to see this history by touring through several small baths and steam rooms as well as the enormous outdoor pool. Water still trickled over worn stone, and rooms missing their floors revealed the small brick pillars that allowed heat to pass through underneath the feet of the bathers.

Staying true to its history, Bath is still brimming with day spas and salons, but it is also home to stores and restaurants galore. After visiting the Abbey and Bath, Shelby and I spent the rest of the day meandering through stores that we couldn’t afford anything from (Anthropologie really needs to look at lowering their prices for me), falling in love with every new sight we saw, and wanting to spend every last pence we had on crêpes and coffee.

The streets were crowded with Fiats and people from every edge of the earth exploring just like we were, and every corner held a new store that we just had to enter.After lusting over expensive shoes and baked goods, we wandered towards The Circus:

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an iconic architectural and spiritual center of Bath. It uniquely displays Bath’s famous Georgian curved apartments in a whole circle, complete with a road through the center, a bright green lawn, and an overflow of floral window boxes.

The Bath Circus is picturesque in that if you can focus on a section without any traffic or tourists, you can be in any time period you choose. The flats are still habitable (and adorable), and their cast iron rods and warm neutral walls invite every eye that glances over them to wonder about their histories.

Shelby and I spent the rest of our afternoon exploring the park that lay down the hill from central Bath; stretching lawns and creeping blooms inhabited every inch of our sight. As fellow art and literature students, we meandered through the gardens quoting Wordsworth and Keats. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” had been one of our favorite Keats quote since we studied British poets at ETSU earlier in the year, and now we were seeing all of this beauty in the nation where our favorite poets had lived. All of these little realizations added our own versions of allure to our trip in England.

Our day fled by until we, exhausted but ecstatic, realized that it was time to return to the station. As we had

wandered randomly throughout the entire day, it took several maps and a few friendly locals to get us back by the canal. While waiting for our departure, we grabbed one last cup of tea in a café across the street from the station. My little blue ceramic pot of chai was the last picturesque memory of the city; I find myself thinking of it every time that I envision that day in my mind.

While returning to London that night, I kept thinking about how visiting the city of Bath was a point of realization in my life. I would not label it as an epiphany, because it was a feeling that I always knew dwelled within me. My body longs to be everywhere and see everything, and it was in Bath that I really knew that I would always choose an experience over anything material.

I have lived my whole life waiting to be able to give into my case of wanderlust.

Bath was such an exciting destination because it was the first time that I got to experience travelling as an independent adult; I’m proud of how I experienced the day without any fear.

As I was riding back to Paddington Station, I couldn’t stop thinking about my day in Bath and how I have my entire life to leave different destinations feeling the exact same way that I did in that moment: fearless and adventurous and utterly happy.

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WHERE MY SELF WORTH WAS HIDING Jen Kusmer

S

tudy abroad is arguably one of the best experiences of your life.

Everyone tells you beforehand how amazing and life changing it’s going to be. You wait and wait for that departure date to come, full of nerves and excitement. Then you finally get on that plane, arrive in your new city, and fall into this state of confusion, trying to learn the language and lifestyle. But once you get out of that first phase, it’s like a state of euphoria.

For me, it felt like I was on a high for 4 months straight. I was invincible. Traveling from country to country, I was constantly learning and taking in different cultures. Every single day I would experience something new.

I think I learned more about the world and myself in those 4 months than in the other 21 years of my life. My perspective shifted almost immediately.

Before, small things seemed so terrible; a fight with my friend over a stupid comment or a simple mistake I made in school was detrimental to my self-worth.

But now, in this new place with new people, nothing mattered. My life was so small compared to this magnificent, historic place where people had lived and died for thousands of years. I was in one of the biggest cultural centers in the world.

I would call friends back home, and they’d catch me up on the latest drama within the friend group, but I could not care less. Those problems seemed so pointless to me. I loved this new mentality I’d developed. I wanted this to last forever. But just when I was thinking this was a new chapter in my

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life, it was time to go home and go back to reality. About a month or so after returning home, I felt stagnant.

Those meaningless arguments and disappointments had begun to consume my life again. I didn’t know what happened.

Just a month ago, I was so carefree, so unbothered.

My self-worth was through the roof. But now, it’s almost as if I’d taken a few steps backward. Now I was aware of how pointless these things were, but I still let them get to me. How could this have happened?

Study abroad was supposed to be life changing in the best possible way; it wasn’t supposed to make me feel worse about myself.

This period lasted much longer than I’d like to admit. I needed to go back. I needed to be that blissful again, and being abroad was the only way I could get it. But my chance to study abroad was gone, and I resented that.

Finally, after a couple months in this pit of hopelessness, I was rejuvenated. I was able to visit with my friends I made abroad, and it was like I was back in Italy without a care in the world.

That’s when I realized what really changed my life about study abroad. Those friendships I made were what was extraordinary about that experience. Those experiences I had were so special because of the people I experienced them with. The type of friendships you make abroad are unlike any other. You’ve seen them for who they are, who they are without all the extras, without all the drama or worry.

At the time, I had no idea the impact they were making, but now I realize the impact they had was greater than anything in the world. They made such a huge contribution to my new sense of self, and I didn’t need Europe for that validation. I just needed them.

This publication was created as an

H O N O R S T H E S I S for the FINE AND PERFROMING ARTS HONORS PROGRAM at E A S T T E N N E S S E E S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y Creator Elisa Vandergriff Advisor Jonathan Hounshell Honors Advisor Scott Contreras-Koterbay Photo Elisa Vandergriff (unless otherwise noted) Writers Molly Bee, Libby Schwartz, Elisa Vandergriff, Logan Craig, Zoe Hester, Lynsey Jones, Katie Vandergriff, Maranda Vandergriff, Angel Chaffin, Holly Nehls. Jen Kusmer

SONDER

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SONDER

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows