Stamped Fall 2016

STAMPED fall 2016

CONTENT

06 |

real magic in paris

12 |

olympics in rio

14 |

mythos of st. petersburg

18 |

making mates over mate

20 |

beyond the bucket list

32

musings of a temporary international student

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STAMPED EDITOR IN CHIEF...........................................................Riane Puno MANAGING EDITOR..........................................Amanda Geiser CREATIVE DIRECTOR.......................................Talia Lieberman PHOTO DIRECTOR....................................................Garett Nelson MARKETING DIRECTOR..............................................Steph Wilf

WRITING Justin Estreicher, Kiara Hernandez, Stella Lemper-Tabatsky, Rebeca Maia, Kathleen Norton, Robert Willard, Lacy Wright, Lily Zirlin

DESIGN Kendall Bearly-Malinowski, Garett Nelson, Sabine Nix, Kathleen Norton, Hadeel Saab PHOTO Jessica Griff, Joy Lee, Sabine Nix

MARKETING Kendall Bearly-Malinowski, Rebeca Maia

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from the editor:

I

have always loved taking off on airplanes late at night – preferably after 10:00pm when a quiet darkness blankets the runway, lit up only by the flecks of multicolored lights that pave the way for a flight’s departure. My last trip was a few days before Christmas last year and started with an evening flight in JFK (I’m not kidding when I say I try to book all my flights this way). There’s a greater sense of calm that permeates the airport at this hour that extends itself into the walls of the plane and throughout the seats. A silence, broken only by the occasional cries of scattered babies, filled the air, creating just the right backdrop for looking out the window, listening to “Home” by Michael Bublé and reflecting on life (cue in the sentimental vibes of long train rides).

Staring at the playground of lights sitting outside my window, I thought of the 22 hours that stood between me and the Philippines. 22 hours until the 90ºF air swept over me and I was sitting in front of a table laid out with tocino (Filipino bacon), garlic rice, a fried egg and mangoes, surrounded by the family that I had gone without seeing for close to 5 months. As my mind buzzed with the excitement of being home for the holidays, I became overcome by the realization that so was probably everyone else’s. Peek under the veil of silence that hung atop all these strangers sharing a vessel of space and you would have stories of love, loss, hopes, dreams – yet somehow, in that moment, I felt the overwhelming desire for home. That we were all peacefully sitting there, hopeful that when the darkness lifted and the sun-

light broke, we’d be in a new day in a new tomorrow in the familiar place we call home.

As we approach the peak of the holiday season, planes, cars and trains become the physical gateways to home – but increasingly, home is becoming less of a tangible place and more of an abstraction. In fact, I only return to the Philippines once a year now, having come to the realization that only the Christmas holidays are emblematic of everything that made it feel like home. Some people can point to a place; some can point to a feeling – I’ve learned that it’s an amalgamation of so much more: from the place to the people to the food to the comfortable feeling of knowing you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here.

There is such beauty in travel and the way it allows for constant redefinition of home, whether it be getting on a plane and uprooting from the Philippines to Philadelphia or riding a train to move from a house in the suburbs of Pennsylvania to a dorm in the city. In this issue, Stamped invites you to explore the fluidity of home – how it can be found sipping the Argentian drink mate (18) or strolling through cobblestone streets under the Parisian lights (6) or simply reuniting with the people so inextricably linked with your conception of the word (30). You don’t need a plane, a car or a train to find home, nor do you need them to travel – and the latter is something that Stamped has believed in since the very beginning.

Thanks for reading!

Riane Puno EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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real magic in paris

WORDS: STELLA LEMPER-TABATSKY

The city of lights, the city of love, the city of magic. Paris has many names and many grand stories. It is a place that has, over many centuries and through countless books, films, and songs, been cast as the setting of wonderful dreams, epic love stories, and world-changing history. This mythical canon of tales and images makes the idea of creating a real, normal, college-student life in the most magical city on earth incredibly daunting and confusing.

I was born in Paris, moved to London when I was three, and then to New York until college. So, it’s safe to say I am no stranger to big cities and the lifestyle they entail.

Paris’s sites — the ones everyone knows — are not foreign to me. I have been up the Eiffel Tower and to Sacre Coeur, fought for a photo of the Mona Lisa and eaten macarons sitting outside Notre Dame. Arriving in Paris this September, rather than facing a long checklist of things to do and see before I leave, I faced the challenge of actually living in the city I had only been given small tastes of through the lens of a passing tourist.

This is not to say that these popular destinations are not worthy and completely thrilling

PHOTOS: GARETT NELSON

fetes, and I have been back to them all at least once or twice this past month. Yet, there is something more nuanced and hidden lying beneath that holds the true magic of the city.

When I walk the streets, eyes perpetually fixed upwards at the perfectly chipped black rooftops settled against the milky grayblue sky, all I know of the big attractions of the city quickly becomes eclipsed for me by the thrilling beauty and soul of the everyday Parisian life.

Sitting on my bed writing an essay, with immense help from the French-English dictionary and my host mom, I jump towards my window at the sight of yet another dreamy Paris sunset. Cotton candy clouds coat the sky in smooth ribbons, tracing up my uphill e in tears every time I go back.

Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Degas, and all the greats are preserved owalls of the ancient train station-turned-museum, situated stoically beside the flowing banks of the Seine.

It is an impossible amount of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional beauty thrust into the heart of a relatively tiny city.

Paris is a work of classic literature. New and increasingly stunning details emerge

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with every reading. There’s no question as to why it’s the backdrop and inspiration of so many of the world’s most famous and prophetic writers. As a lover of language and literature, I am endlessly fascinated by the places that have inspired my favorite stories. Walking to class last week, I passed by a cafe that Hemingway used to frequent, and immediately thought back to my copy of A Moveable Feast and its gorgeous descriptions of the Parisian life of the 1920s. While having yet another delicious dinner with my host mom, she off-handedly mentioned that Voltaire and Débussy used to live just down the street from us, and that a cafe by the metro station was formerly a hub for 19th century French philosophers as they wrote their most defining works. The city teems with history of an incomprehensible magnitude, and one that makes me feel wonderfully and uncomfortably small. It offers inspiration for creativity and critical thought, yet simultaneously conveys that all the work has been done and all there is left to do is to admire the past and mourn the present.

This dichotomy of past and present in Paris rears its head constantly. A city so steeped in rich history can struggle to catch up to what has become today in all its modernity. But Paris, when looked at beyond its major historic sites and ancient architecture, is a seamless fusion of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The Louvre and all its ancient royal history is neighbor to a giant, glass Apple store and is easily accessible by multiple lines of the metro. The Comédie Française, one of the oldest theaters in Paris, is complemented by a host of modern concert venues that attract all the most popular acts of today.

Université de Paris IV — la Sorbonne, where I take my classes, is a stunning structure constructed in the 1600s during the reign of Louis XIII, and in 2016 continues to nurture and educate the most promising minds of tomorrow. Paris is the setting of the history books we read and the backdrop of those being written. The chance to exist in the center of it is one that I still cannot fully fathom.

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A few nights ago, sitting with friends at the Philharmonie de Paris, awaiting the beginning of a Brahms symphony, it occurred to me that the “normal” Parisian life I had been so nervous about finding has been unfolding all around me for the past two months. Here, it just happens to present itself in the form of orchestra concerts, ancient cathedrals, and midnight strolls in the rain, in stark contrast to my “normal” Penn life of work, Netflix, work, and more Netflix.

I have come to the realization that Paris is simply incapable of being “normal.” This comparison is of course unfair and does not take into account the plentiful attractions Philadelphia has to offer, as well as the wonderful times Penn has given me the past two years. Yet, I had been waiting for a mundane routine to set in here, as it does in Philly, and for the glimmer of fairy dust to fade from the buildings and the cafes and the museums.

But the Parisian magic is a permanent fixture. My new French friends can admit that despite growing up here and being jaded by the thrills of the city — as I often describe my feelings toward New York — even they are not immune to its ethereal beauty and its ability to move even the grimmest of souls.

I find new ways to appreciate, learn, and think every day living here. I have felt a connection to this city from a young age both from regular visits and as my birthplace, but I never quite understood the immutability and depth of its magic until these past months.

The wonder does not fade, and my eyes never lose their sparkle, no matter how late I stay up trying to survive school in French or how horribly crowded the metro gets. Walking past any sign that says “Paris,” my heart jumps a little and I look up once again. The crisp sky, the chiclet-white buildings washed by the morning sun, the buzzing of motorcycles coming this-close to collision, the harmonious tones of French conversation, and the pitter-patter of thick rain all weave into one another: a living, breathing symphony.

Another day in Paris.

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olympics in rio

WORDS: REBECA MAIA The odds did not seem to be in our favor. Just a couple of weeks before it started, reputable news websites were publishing articles about how the bay was unsuitable for water sports and about how little had been invested in urban safety. To top it all off, the country was going through a phase of extreme political unrest as its president was undergoing impeachment and was thus kept away from her post.

And her substitution, interim president Michel Temer, was meanwhile polarizing the population as partisan politics gained even more fervor.

With this unlikely backdrop, the Olympics began in the misty weather of the Carioca (Rio) winter on August 5. With renown Brazilian film director Fernando Meirelles as one of the masterminds behind the show, the Maracanã Stadium put on a flamboyant display of music and dance to acclimate the athletes to the country’s vibrant culture.

After much speculation as to who would light the ceremony’s cauldron, marathon runner Vanderlei de Lima lit its flame and thus commenced the anticipated spectacle.

Tourists flocked the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema night and day, enjoying what they could of the city’s main attractions while they were not watching any games. The commotion reverberated in all corners of the city, uplifting the originally dull mood of national self-esteem. The collective effervescence of it all was contagious.

The city was infused with a new vitality, which reminded us of why it was chosen as the Olympic city in the first place. Sports were played in four different locations around the city, and public transportation was surprisingly effective in get-

PHOTO: PAULA PEREIRA ting fans to their destinations, to the disbelief of the most skeptical of people, including many of us Brazilians who did not have high expectations for the Olympics logistics.

As for me, I had the privilege of witnessing the it all firsthand. I recall having a hard time deciding whether to root for Rafael Nadal, a tennis player who I have followed for a while, or Thomas Bellucci, a fellow Brazilian who had the support of the audience.

During the match, Argentinian Juan Martín Del Potro was playing on another court close by, and the vibrant chants of his Argentinian fan could be heard from a distance, only rivaled by our own. Despite a few indiscreet attempts to make Nadal lose his concentration, he won and received applause from the audience all the same.

The cherry on top for Brazilian spectators was the gold medal in men’s soccer, won during the penalties against Germany, rewarding for a crowd still reeling from the 7-to-1 loss during the 2014 World Cup. Neymar and his crew redeemed themselves and gave us vague hopes of adding a new star to our beloved jersey in the near future.

Now, we are all back to political memes and arguing with our friends and family via resentful WhatsApp group messages. Yet, those two weeks provided some breathing space from all the turmoil happening, reviving much of the nation’s lost faith in its own potential and more importantly, if I may, in the national sport.

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"I LOVE THEE, CITY OF PETER'S MAKING; I LOVE THY HARMONIES AUSTERE, AND NEVA'S SOVRAN WATERS BREAKING ALONG HER BANKS OF GRANITE SHEER" - A.S. PUSHKIN, THE BRONZE HORSEMAN

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mythos of st. petersburg

WORDS: ROBERT WILLARD There are places whose essence cannot be comprehended without having been there.

There are cities that possess a mystical aura, a conglomeration of hundreds of years of writers, artists, thinkers, demagogues, mafiosas, and swindlers all unifying into one single experience. This is St. Petersburg, a city with a mythos. A place whose windows, bridges, cobblestones, and solitary men smoking in dimly lit courtyards create a spirit, which, though first unnoticed, comes to enrapture you one night.

Of course, there are many instances when you'd lose hope in St. Petersburg. When you'd conclude all the heritage that it has lived upon for three hundred years has finally died out, replaced with the ever-encroaching pressure of globalization and Americanization. Through crumbling walls that have witnessed tsarism, fascism, and communism and nonetheless still stand, the people no longer care to be part of the spirit they have had the privilege of growing up in.

And yet, there'd still be that one summer night, when wandering in the gray, semi-deserted streets of St. Petersburg, you find the city restored.

First you step out from the humid theater into the cool St. Petersburg air, rekindled with thoughts on the nature of humanity.

Engrossed, you wander deep into the city, past the hipsters gathered around a spontaneous jam session, or the couple sprawled on the park bench, or the lone guitar player strumming a solemn Hispanic tune upon a dimly lit bridge. Having crossed the mid-

PHOTOS: GARETT NELSON night swing dancers on Malaya Konyushena, you stumble onto Nevsky Prospect, reverberating with the sounds of reckless bikers pulling wheelies under the shop windows’ golden light. Engulfed into the stream of elated pedestrians heading home from the opera, you are pulled ahead between boutique restaurants and old Soviet ladies staring at you from a ledge. Pushed forward by the crowd, you are thrown onto the English embankment, overlooking the vast Neva River.

Then it strikes you. The full majesty of the city, stretched 360 degrees around the river, stands before you illuminated in all its glory. Domes, bridges, fireworks, all amidst the faint murmuring of the tiny ribbon of pedestrians splayed across the length of the embankment. Below, the dark shadows of oil barges emerging from the depths of Russia ominously creep west, toward Europe, a brief reminder of the clandestine politics hidden within the city’s fabric.

But it is time to move home. You turn onto a deserted street leading back into the internal maze of the city. In a perfect balance of exhaustion and excitement, you observe as occasional clusters stream in and out of restaurants, clubs, and theaters. You are about to turn home when it happens again.

A faint Bossa Nova rhythm echoes through the street. Tired, yet tempted, you follow the trail down a small alleyway you’d never seemed to notice before. You find yourself in a small, cramped jazz club overlooking the nighttime glow of the Cathedral of the Savior on Spilt Blood.

At first you're shy. Then someone grabs your hand, pulls you in — into the crowd of vibrant, dancing bodies. You first hesitate, looking back at the bartender, pensively leaning against the table. Then you give in.

You disappear into the crowd, melt into the rhythm, become one with the mythos.

It is 2 a.m. You slowly stagger home, inspired, rekindled, and reassured that the 300-year-old mythos of St. Petersburg lives on.

St. Petersburg has a unique character made from a history of contradictions. It is a new, artificial city, and yet carries a strong tie to its past. It has seen unparalleled violence and cruelty and yet is home to some of the warmest people I know. It has a reputation as a city of mobsters and yet has produced some of the greatest cultural achievements of mankind.

Following the conquest of Swedish land in 1721, Peter the Great chose to build a city that would act as Russia’s new capital and its first year-long port. Symbolically, this city was to become Russia’s “Window to Europe” — an ultramodern statement of Russia’s new status as a superpower. The city was built in the worst location possible — mosquito-infested swamplands (to this day, you will not survive a night without waking up covered in red spots) that are annually flooded over.

Nevertheless, Peter’s word was law and the city was built, though at the expense of hundreds of lives: a martyrdom that would not be the city’s last.

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In the next 200 years, St. Petersburg would, through both the organized projects of strong-willed autocrats and the gradual evolutionary pressures of a rising lower class, come to take on a unique spirit of its own.

Neither Russian nor European, it garnered mixed reviews from the intellectuals that inhabited it. Writers like Pushkin and Gogol were both entranced and disgusted by its glossy, elitist, and yet rusted nature. Within this period, an incredible intellectual flurry gripped Russian society. In the expanse of one hundred years, the capital of a medieval backwater would come to produce an unprecedented density of cultural achievements: Mendeleev, Tchaikovsky, Repin, Dostoyevsky, and Stanislavsky, to name a few.

Nevertheless, St. Petersburg could not escape the violence and bloodshed it, as the capital of autocratic Russia, was built upon.

In the twentieth century, the city became the host for the Russian Revolution through which many of the city’s artists would be systematically exterminated. Petersburg became a symbol of yearning and exile for those who fled, and the host of a new Communist culture for those who stayed. Then, as if to solidify its demise, the city was subjected to the worst siege in history: enveloped by the Nazis, a third of the city (one million people) perished from hunger. And yet the city lives on. Artists still meet in cafes, self-made men still race down Nevsky Prospect (though now in Mercedes-Benzes), and the legendary Mariinsky Theatre still opens its doors to sold-out nights where your only resort is bootlegged tickets.

It is this mythos of Petersburg that I have come to know, and that I hope each world traveler can partake in. Petersburg is a city of the young. It is the home of a new, post-Soviet renaissance where the millennial generation both embraces its complex past and builds a new lexicon for its future. You can either see this firsthand at the opera house, filled with college students critiquing a choreographer’s NYC stylization of Eugene Onegin, or at the dingy heavy-metal cellar where a bodacious rising artist tries to incorporate Brodsky into rock. Student-run hostels and canteens have quirky murals with Soviet cartoon characters or broken pottery stylishly plastered onto the walls. (For future visitors check out “Friends”

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Hostels and Ginza Project- “Obed Bufet”) The fabric of the city is undeniably evolving to become increasingly vibrant and young.

Finally, there is the adventure. In no other place have I had the chance to experience as much life as in the strange city of Petersburg.

A lot of it, of course, has to do with inebriation.

I have been involved in three distinct instances where I found a man blacked out on the streets and helped him get off the sidewalk before the cops showed up. There was also the time I took part in a Paratroopers’ Day bus ride, where all the drunken veterans climbed on top of the moving vehicle.

They then taught me how to assemble a Kalashnikov rifle. In another instance, someone chose to pole dance on a stop sign to the sound of a street musician’s electric guitar rendition of The Phantom of the Opera. He ripped out the sign, prompting the cops to arrive and everyone to collectively defend him.

In many ways, the people themselves are the adventure. I have met extravagant artists and a crow that can untie shoes. I have met oligarchs pulling deals with Gazprom and opera divas who are the friend of a friend of a friend. The most characteristic example of St. Petersburg, however, is one man I met while acting as a 19th-century noble as an extra in a film shooting at the Mariinsky Theater. Hailing from Novosibirsk, he made the choice, one day, to become a big rock musician in Russia’s cultural capital. He and his wife thus hitchhiked all across Siberia, and couchsurfed their way through St. Petersburg. He now works as an opera-scenery trucker and an extra as he strives toward his dreams.

I do not need to describe the mythos.

The mythos is felt through everything I’ve experienced. It is a conglomeration of the man from Siberia, the jazz club, and everything else I brought up. These things come together to make something truly magical.

Something you can only understand when you come there. I’m not saying St. Petersburg can’t be often disappointing, but it is the only place where these strange little moments can arise in everyday life. And remember, only in St. Petersburg can you find two drunk, middle-aged men having a poetry battle at 3 a.m.

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making mates over mate

WORDS: KATHLEEN NORTON

“¿Quieren volver a mi casa para mate?”

“NO!” I screamed internally. No, of course we did not want to go to the apartment of some guy we just met to drink tea! “¡Sí!” my roommate said. I could have strangled her right then and there. Was she trying to get us killed?

It was my first week in Córdoba, Argentina, and I still could not get a grasp on the mate culture. Mate, pronounced mah-tay, is made out of the ground leaves of the yerba mate bush and is traditionally drunk out of a hollowed gourd through a metal straw that also functions as a sieve. People sit for hours, replenishing the communal cup as needed and sometimes adding sugar. As I quickly learned, it is expected that you will drain the cup every time it is passed to you. “¡Salud!” I was in the apartment of the boyfriend of my roommate’s Spanish-speaking partner. He passed me the gourd and I tentatively slurped the liquid through the straw. “¿Quieres azucar?” He took my hesitancy as distaste for the bitterness of the tea leaves. I shook my head, silently praying that I’d live to see my mom, or at least my host mom, again. I declined to drink anymore and refused to touch the pastries that we had stopped for. Meanwhile, our host and my roommate yammered away in Spanish, seemingly having the time of their lives.

In America, you don’t invite people you’ve only just met over to your house. And if you’re a young woman in America and a man invites you over to his house after you’ve just met, you absolutely do not agree to it. But that’s not the way it is in Argentina, and that’s

PHOTO: JESSICA GRIFF

especially not the way it is when it comes to mate.

After that night, I asked my host mom about it and she explained its cultural significance.

“Es la bebida nacional de Argentina,” she explained to me “pero también es la bebida de la amistad.” The drink of friendship. Being invited to share mate with someone is an honor — it’s a chance to get to know someone, and as a study-abroad student, a chance to share cultures. I guess my fear and discomfort surrounding the situation was somehow a way of sharing American culture, but it made the experience very unpleasant.

Once I understood the significance of mate, I quickly learned all of the rules that went along with it. Through trial and error, I discovered that it is extremely rude to say thank you (this is taken as a sign of not wanting to continue the friendship), to stir the mate with the straw (this insinuates that the mate brewer did not do a good job), and to wipe the straw off in between drinkers (I still don’t have an explanation for this one). I also quickly got a lot better with directions as the mate is supposed to only be passed in the clockwise direction.

The amount of respect that Argentinians have for the rituals of their culture is beautiful and allows for people to connect with one another in a safe space. While I can’t say that I ever mastered the art of draining the mate in one fell slurp, after my disastrous first encounter with mate culture, I never approached it in the same way again.

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beyond the bucket list

WORDS: JUSTIN ESTREICHER For months after the fact, my mom and I answered all sorts of questions about our visit to the Land of the Pharaohs in the summer of 2010: What was it like to see the Sphinx?

What does it look like inside the pyramids?

Is Abu Simbel as awesome as all the photos make it seem? How beautiful is the Nile?

We loved answering these questions. I think I can speak for both of us when I say that an unbeatably wonderful mixture of joy and nostalgia accompanies reminiscences of the trip of a lifetime.

But that feeling changed when winter came. Egypt’s January 25 revolution began to dominate the news, with headlines about riots, regime changes, and military rule, and friends and relatives started asking different kinds of questions. Had we seen signs of

PHOTOS: JUSTIN ESTREICHER what was to come? Had we ever felt unsafe?

My mom and I answered that we couldn’t have predicted any of it, but reflecting on the instability that consumed the country just months after we were there, we were glad we went when we did. Very quickly, “We’re glad we went when we did” became part of our standard account of the journey.

So, what did we feel? Were we worried that the revolution would result in the destruction of some of Egypt’s greatest treasures? Unquestionably. Were we distressed by the thought of a country gripped by chaos? Absolutely, but there was something more, something in those words — “We’re glad we went when we did.” Eventually, I realized what that feeling was: relief.

Relief is satisfaction with the idea that

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something is over or will never happen again.

Relief means having gotten something out of your system, so that you never need to try it again. But how could I feel relieved thinking that I might never return to one of the most incredible places I had ever known?

I’ll never get Egypt out of my system. It’s under my skin, and I cannot help but feel that I must return someday. I need to see what I missed the first time around — the amazing tombs of Tuthmosis III and Nefertari, the richly historic city of Alexandria, the beautiful resort towns of the Red Sea coast, and any number of other incomparable locales. I need to marvel at the pyramids of Giza and wander through the sprawling temple complex at Karnak once more. I need to feel the presence of the greatest kings of the ancient world again in a way that no museum or book could ever simulate.

These words are no exaggeration; when I close my eyes and reflect on what I experienced in Egypt and on what awaits me there in the future, I feel more than a longing. I genuinely believe that there is something there that I need to feel whole, some part of myself that I left in the sand at Saqqara or in the waters of Lake Nasser — or perhaps that I have yet to discover for the first time.

Of course, I’m glad that I’ve been to Egypt

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already. Few places on Earth have brought me the sort of joy that I found there. Still, I no longer say that I’m glad that I went when I did. To frame my journey in such a way, as if Egypt were just one of many items on a list (a bucket list, you might say), is to do a disservice to that magical country and to my memories of it. Furthermore, such an attitude cheapens the very experience of travel.

We should not explore the world in search of stamps for our passports or stories for our friends. We should set out on excursions that are truly worth memorializing in such ways.

In other words, we do not travel because we need memories, we travel because we need experiences that deserve to be remembered.

Viewed this way, our travels really have no importance beyond our lives. No matter how divine it may seem, even the greatest trip is far from otherworldly. There is no point in collecting destinations on a bucket list so that we can feel more ready for death. My recommendation for any traveler or wouldbe traveler is to seek out places that will make you feel more alive, that will simultaneously make your life feel more complete and make you hunger for more. And if you happen to stumble upon a place that provides what is missing in your life, don’t be afraid to return.

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WORDS: LACY WRIGHT

PHOTOS: STAFF

Your favorite books and movies can allow you to escape to other worlds that feel more magical than anything you’ve experienced before. You’ve gone through the wardrobe to Narnia, pictured yourself on the train to Hogwarts, maybe even played with the idea of competing in the Hunger Games.

But what if you didn’t have to just travel in your mind? Here are four fictional worlds you can explore in real life.

LORD OF THE RINGS

GAME OF THRONES

They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

Well, technically Harcourt Park. While the majority of Tolkien’s books were influenced

by Nordic mythology, most of the movies were filmed in New Zealand. The lush nature shots throughout Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy mean that the movies could have easily been turned into a tourism advertisement for New Zealand.

Many of the sets from the films are preserved and open for tourists to visit. In Wellington, New Zealand, you can tour Weta Studios, which was responsible for the creation of many of the weapons, outfits, and props that make the film’s otherworldly creatures come to life. Visit Kaitoke Regional Park just outside of Wellington to literally step into Rivendell.

If you’re the kind of Hobbit that prefers a quiet, calm day, visit the set of Hobbiton in Matamata. But if you’re a braver soul who’s willing to follow in Frodo and Sam’s footsteps all the way to Mordor, then you must visit Tongariro National Park. Its volcanic peaks served as the filming locations for Sauron’s domains. Trek through Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which leads you to Mount Doom’s (also known as Ngauruhoe). And don’t worry — you can make it there and back again in less than a day.

Winter is coming … in Northern Ireland. For those who pledge loyalty to House Stark, you can visit Winterfell, otherwise known as the real life Castle Ward. Just be sure to leave before the Boltons arrive.

Those disciples of the Lord of Light might find more of interest in Cushendun Caves — simply stunning for those who don’t watch the show, but more than a little eerie for those know it as where Melisandre gives birth. The night is dark and full of terrors; so light it up with a fire at Downhill Beach, the location of Dragonstone, where Melisandre burned the Seven Idols of Westeros.

But above all, avoid the Tollymore Forest Park at all costs, lest you dare risk running into White Walkers.

Don’t want to pledge loyalty to a house quite yet? For those who feel they are Free Folk, Iceland is only a ferry ride away.

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SHERLOCK

INDIANA JONES

Seeking something a little more modern? For those who fancy themselves Cumberbitches, retrace Sherlock and Watson’s steps throughout London. The show features some of the city’s most famous landmarks, from Parliament to Buckingham Palace to the Tower of London.

In the BBC show, Sherlock’s apartment sits above Speedy’s Cafe. Though tragically not at 221B Baker Street, the cafe is real and located on North Gower Street. It’s still a wonderful place for classic bangers and mash. Actually at 221B Baker Street is the Sherlock Holmes museum, an old townhouse filled with recreated rooms, including Sherlock’s laboratory and study.

Right around the corner from the London Eye on Southbank are two more Sherlock locations. South Bank is a popular attraction for its graffiti-filled skate park, where you can take a gander at some of the best skaters and bikers in town. Fans of “The Blind Baker” will also know this as the spot where Sherlock and Watson seek out the threatening Chinese graffiti hidden on the walls.

Afterwards, if you need information from Sherlock’s homeless network, cross over the Thames and meet them on the Waterloo Bridge. More than 200 hundred years old, the bridge also provides one of the best views of the London skyline.

And if you ever find yourself ill while you’re touring, swing by Bart’s Hospital in Smithfield, where John and Sherlock first met. Don’t worry, the UK has universal healthcare.

Hoping to race through the Peruvian jungle like Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark? While the jungle scenes were actually filmed in Hawaii, it’s still possible to have an exciting archaeological adventure throughout South America.

Two of Peru’s major museums are the Pre-Columbian Art Museum in Cusco and the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History house many of the types of artifacts Indiana Jones worked so hard to save from falling into the wrong hands. There you can find objects similar to the Golden Idol, without threat of boulder.

Or if you seek something more scandalous, you’ll find the Larco Museum in Lima, which is famed for its collection of erotic pottery from the pre-Columbian era.

If you’d rather get out of the more modern cities and travel to the past, visit the Incan ruins of Choquequirao, just a two-day hike outside of Cusco. Unlike Machu Picchu, which is overrun by tourists, this royal ceremonial site is remote enough that only the most determined can reach it. The hike is difficult, but it gives an authentic Indiana Jones feel — and don’t worry, the view of the Amazon from the top of this 3,000-meter-high hill is breathtaking enough to make it worth it.

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WORDS: LILY ZIRLIN

I walk into my new host family’s home. I sit on an unfamiliar couch and try to communicate with facial expressions. I have my 80 liter backpack next to me with all my necessities. I’m in Northern India for the second summer, and it’s not getting any more comfortable.

Ama kindly offers her hand to show me my room. The little ones on the street hear some students have come and they walk in through the curtain “door” to greet me. I show them the PipSqueak markers I always travel with and we color in my notebook.

I can’t understand what they’re saying (is it about me?), I’m sweaty in my advertised “breathable” clothes, my water tastes funny: I’m drowning in uncomfort.

The sun sets - it’s my first night “home.”

Why do they call it a homestay if it doesn’t feel like home at all? A smell of spice wafts down the street, the kids play outside, the little girls entertain themselves with their baby cousin. I settle into my room and go to the kitchen to check on dinner. My ama urgently shakes her hand to notion to come to her. I sit cross-legged on the living room floor and smile. She’s rolling the dough for chupati, a pita-like bread commonly eaten in the area. I’m handed a carefully sized portion and shown how to roll a perfect circle, how to slap it onto a slab of wood, and evenly roll it out to the perfect size. I fail miserably. My sphere of dough looks more like a diamond,

PHOTOS: NEHA GUPTA & GARETT NELSON

my rolled out “circle” amorphous. Who knew such a simple task could be so difficult?

They laugh at me and I, I laugh with them.

We’re bonding. I’m using the “uncomfy” to c ommunicate. My ama takes me to the stove and shows me how she flips chupati in the air. “No thank you,” I motion. And we laugh in the mutual understanding that there is no way I could do that. When dinner’s ready and we sit at t he table, ama tells baba in Nepali about my cooking experience.

He bellows with laughter and uses the little English he knows to learn more about me. I look in my notebook and demonstrate the basic Nepali I learned in class. They giggle at my pronunciati on. I eat way more chupati than I should’ve, distracted by the liveliness and laughter at the table. We grow tired and I go down to my room - it looks totally different from a couple hours ago when I put my stuff away. I feel home.

It’s hard to believe how you can adapt to a culture completely different from yours - different language, different customs, differentexpectation s. Everything is just so outside your comfort zone that you just learn to accept the typically unacceptable.

In college, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I’m surrounded by a lifestyle very similar my old one and somehow still, I feel completely unadjusted. And it’s not like my professors speak a foreign language or my friends have unfathomably different cultures than I do...

so what is it then? How can the adjustment to college be so much more difficult than the adjustment to India?

I can’t use the “uncomfy” to communicate.

There is no understanding that we all come from different backgrounds from which we can connect, as I did with my ama. No, we are stuck in a belief that we aren’t supposed to feel uncomfortable. Yeah, NSO was uncomfortable. Yeah, going from eight hours of school a day to barely two is uncomfortable.

Yeah, zero structure to my daily schedule is uncomfortable.

And that’s okay. But it’s not something we connect over because it’s not really something we prefer to admit.

Adjusting to college has, above all, been frustrating. It’s hard to so quickly find “home” in a place on the other side of the world, while finding “home” at Penn has proven more challenging. Whether my classmates have traveled abroad or not, undoubtedly, they’re feeling uncomfortable too. We shouldn’t feel discouraged, in fact, we should feel motivated. Motivated to step outside of our social comfort zone and admit to all our new friends just how uncomfortable we are, how weird it is that our beds are four feet tall and that we have a fridge in our room. Or that family time is carved out by the school calendar and that we miss our parents. And maybe, just maybe, in this acknowledgement of our discomfort, we find home.

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musings of a temporary international student

WORDS : KIARA HERNANDEZ “Home” to me is a feeling, not a place.

Over the past year, this has become more and more tangible to me. But really, this idea came to me fairly early in life. My family lived in a couple different places growing up — first California, then Germany — before setting up base in the suburbs of Houston. We failed to assimilate to the football-obsessed, Suburban-driving culture. But we made the space around us ours, and the Hernandez family unit flourished.

While we did have this base camp, my family was hardly stationary. Several summers my dad’s work took us back to Germany, where a longer school year lasting until mid-July allowed my siblings and me to be guest students at local schools. Though we (especially my brother and I) felt isolated in these experiences — the American guests who turned up one day and seemed to be gone the next, the strangely international suburbanites who returned to school with inexplicable experiences — we were never completely solitary in our solitude. Our isolation was shared, and we became the pillars of each other’s displaced experiences growing up — each other’s conceptualizations of home when home seemed to take on so many different forms. But of course, any experience is subject to the individualistic impressions placed upon it by the experiencer,

ILLUSTRATION: GARETT NELSON who herself is subject to change and volition.

It was inevitable that our home together could not last forever.

This first became evident in high school, when I lived abroad without my family for the first time as an exchange student in Munich one summer. It was the first time that I faced outsider status on my own and had to internalize my feelings of displacement, becoming my own home base. I returned to my family at the end of summer and found everything the same — my bed, my books, my pre-pubescent siblings. My family was my unit, my home, but for once they had remained anchored while I was adrift. We evolved differently. This continued as I started becoming more and more of my own person, forging my own path.

I left for college on the opposite coast from where my parents had their own collegiate experiences. My interests and thoughts became my own, my vocabulary changed, my tolerance for cold weather increased, my threshold for sleeplessness jumped. I, along with most of the other first-year students at Penn, felt like a cosmic island of maturity and independence.

Halfway through my first semester, I found out that my dad would be going on sabbatical the following year, taking my siblings and mom with him. This time they’d be going to Frankfurt, a city we’d never lived in before.

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This time they’d be going to Frankfurt, a city we’d never lived in before. Our phone calls devolved into updates on the process of finding schools for my siblings, finding tenants for our house, figuring out where we would store our cars. I found myself back home for the summer and caught in the whirlwind of the move. It felt important to be a part of such a huge transition in my family’s life, even though I wouldn’t be the one undergoing the transition myself — or so I thought. When I came back to Penn for my sophomore year, I soon began feeling what I called my own version of “temporary international student syndrome.” I had felt emotionally separated from my family already, so I assumed that their living on a different continent wouldn’t present any particularly new challenges. But this time around the geographic distance between us felt surprisingly palpable. So many of my thoughtless, everyday habits became apparent. I could no longer simply call my parents whenever I pleased — I had to think six hours ahead. This was especially difficult at night, when I was having issues with my laptop or printer, or simply wanted my dad’s help with one of my abstract readings and my mom to read over my essay before I submitted it. I learned to stop assuming dependence on them every time one little thing went wrong.

I also, of course, saw them a lot less frequently. I stayed with a close friend from high school in New York City during fall break.

I spent Thanksgiving with family friends in Maryland. I visited my extended family in Mexico during spring break. I was forced to seek comfort in other places, challenging myself to relinquish total dependence on my family. And of course, when I did go to Frankfurt for winter break, I cherished every single hug from my mom, face-to-face introspective conversation with my dad, and annoyance from my brother and sister. I asked endless ques-

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tions about their daily lives and travels, and inspected every corner of their flat and all of their new belongings, trying to find my place in the new space they were inhabiting.

Then, when I was on my way back for the second semester of school, it really hit me that I wouldn’t be seeing my family until they moved back to Houston in August — a whole eight months. It seemed unfathomable. I tried to convince myself that consistent FaceTime would suffice and that everything would be fine. I’d go visit my grandma in California before I came back to Philly for my internship. I would occupy myself constantly. Yes, I would be fine. But I still couldn’t stop crying on the flight back to Philadelphia.

I dreaded another slumpy semester, but I resolved to gather my wits and get ready for the long haul. I learned to lean on my friends more and to be more certain in my actions, not constantly needing to report every occurrence, accolade, and worry to my family. I felt a familiar, calm, restorative sense of cohabitated independence. Except this time, I was both the anchor and the drifter — I was my family’s connection to reality, yet I was creating my own existence. We all seemed to be simultaneously drifting and holding each other down.

When we all returned home to Houston at the end of the summer, it felt as if we hadn’t been gone at all. As we unpacked our material lives and everything was put back in its normal place, I felt the true unimportance of the physical objects we consider so central to our home — the impermanence of seemingly durable representations of familial and personal history. Our home, and the home I was slowly beginning to build within myself, was much more than this immateriality. Although I returned to the same house with the same furniture, home was more about the people I was surrounded by and my interactions with both them and myself. It is a feeling, not a place.

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