Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm currently visiting Molly, my good friend from Villanova, in Perugia, Italy. It's my first time having Thanksgiving out of the country and my first time having Thanksgiving without my family. I'm sitting in Molly's kitchen, and it smells like the delicious turkey that I just pulled out of the oven. It's weird how scents are so closely tied to memories. I've only ever connected the scent of roasting turkey overflowing with spiced stuffing with my family, so pulling that turkey out of the oven and not having my Dad lecturing me on how to do it correctly isweird. I'm sure it's weird for them not having me here, as I usually take control of quite a lot of the cooking. We spend the entire night before and most of the day of Thanksgiving in the kitchen, as most families do. But the best part of Thanksgiving is cooking with my entire family. Three generations in whichever kitchen we happen to be in, adding their contribution, football or the parade on the tv in the background. One of my favorite traditions is that my family make 3 different kinds of cranberry sauces each year, each kid   makes their own kind. Unfortunately, cranberries don't exist in Italy, so we're just skipping that part. But we're going over to Molly's friends apartment, and the 3 girls happen to go to Villanova as well. I met them for the first time yesterday (weird meeting people from your own school in a totally different country) and everyone's cooking their own dish. I'm super excited. I already went for my usual Thanksgiving run, this time around Perugia, a seriously hilly town that is so quintessentially Italian, so that I'll be hungry enough for this feast!
I'm bummed that this is my last day in Italy! On Monday, I spent most of the day getting from Rome to Italy, but when I arrived I changed immediately and we went right to see the ballet Sleeping Beauty at the most beautiful opera house in Italy. The theater consisted only of boxes with about 6 seats in each. We had our own box, and we're perched exactly above the theater, which gave us a weird perspective on the stage. Afterwards we went to the best pizza place in town. Melt in your mouth Italian pizza! Perfect welcome to Italy.
On Tuesday, Molly had class all day until 5, so after getting a cappuccino in a little cafe, Molly went to class and I got on the train to Assisi, which is about 45 minutes away from Perugia. Assisi was incredible. I'd always heard of St. Francis, but never knew how revolutionary he was. His aim was to bring God to the people, make religion more accessible to the masses. He was the son of a wealth textile trader, but when he was around 20 (my age!) he renounced his father and all his worldly possessions and pledged to lead a life of poverty.

My next adventure!

After one 12 hour flight, a 2 hour layover in Heathrow, and then another 2.5 hour flight, I finally arrived in Madrid at 11:20 on Thursday night. I was sweaty, exhausted, and weighed down with my three carry ons, but was so excited at the prospect of seeing Russell for the first time after 4 months of separation that I barely felt it.

As soon as I got off the plane, I walked/sprinted the length of the terminal (the international terminal at Barajas airport may have the world record for being the longest terminal of all time), and went to collect my bag at customs. I stood there waiting for a few minutes, tense because I knew Russell had been waiting for half an hour because my flight had been delayed.  The baggage took a little while to come out, and I couldn’t help but think that the gods of travel were pushing for our reunion to be postponed for the longest amount of time possible. But then the bags started rolling down the ramp!!! So exciting!! Russell was just on the other side of customs, the only thing that stood between me and him was my one bag!! Everyone kept leaning over and selecting their luggage, but I hadn’t seen mine yet. Then, the luggage ramp stopped. All the bags had come out. Mine was missing. Sigh. I was almost expecting this. Iberian airlines may be the worst airline I’ve ever flown, so this wasn’t too surprising. I walked back across the entire airport to report my bag as lost, realizing I had no idea what Russell’s Spanish address was, and besides I was flying to Barcelona in the morning to see my best friend Deia. Travel nightmare.

But I didn’t need to worry about that. Iberian airlines had a policy that you had to wait for an hour after your flight landed to file a claim for lost luggage. I still had 45 minutes to go! But I couldn’t turn my phone on to call Russell and let him know because I still hadn’t gone through customs; there’s a strict no phone policy before customs. In the meantime, they told me to walk around the airport and look for my bag to see if it had come out anywhere. Lovely. I took a little stroll, not seeing my bright blue ribbon tied to my black wheelie anywhere, so I went to the customs area to see if Russell was on the other side. He was! He saw me walking toward the automatic doors that separated us. My first image of Russell after 4 months was him with such an excited face that I was FINALLY walking through those doors after 45 minutes of waiting, him holding a rose, a sign with my name on it (sort of), and peanut m&ms, my favorite candy.  But then, right before I got to the automatic doors I stopped. He was confused, and I had to yell through the automatic doors that separated us, which kept opening and shutting, that I needed the address of the place I was staying so that they could drop my bag off.  After a while of this, the customs lady let me go through and back in order to get the addresses I needed. It was so hectic, but so typical of us. When I finally came through customs for the final time, we were both laughing hysterically.  I was completely luggage less for the next 4 days, but I couldn't care less. 

The next morning, Friday, Russell and I went to Barcelona and spent the next 3 days Deia. When we arrived in Barcelona, the sun was shining, the weather was beautiful, and I was finally reunited, after 4 months, with two of my favorite people on this earth. 

Russell and Deia in front of la Sagrada Familia.

I've spent the past week in Barcelona, Alcala de Henares (the city Russell is studying), Madrid, now Russell and I are in a hostel in Sevilla, and we're heading to Granada tomorrow. 

After that I'll be continuing on  my Europe adventure! My next stop (after spending the night on Sunday night in Madrid with Deia and her family friends the Perezes) is Pergugia, Italy, with Molly my good friend from Villanova. Then she and I are going to the Christmas market in Cologne, Germany. Then I'm visiting Krakow, Poland, and Budapest, Hungary the following week by myself (I'm a little nervous to do the whole traveling by myself thing, but I think it will be interesting!). After that, I'm meeting Deia in Prague, where we will be visiting one of our best friends from high school, Marya, who is studying abroad there. After Prague, I'm meeting up with Russell in Paris for 6 days. Then I'm heading to Belgium and the Netherlands for 2 days each from December 12-15th (alone again!), and I'm meeting Russell in London and we're going to Oxford for a few days before we both fly home on December 18th. This is going to be hectic, and I'm seeing lots of people that I love and interesting places. I'll try to keep this blog up as I go, but I'm leaving my laptop with Russell for the remainder of the trip (lugging this bad boy across Europe would not only be annoying but I'm staying in hostels, so the less expensive things I have the better).

I've hit a few road blocks already (my luggage being MIA for 4 days, I left my only winter coat on the bus to Sevilla) but so far this trip has been idyllic. I love Espana, learning Spanish from Russell (he's basically fluent now!), eating tapas, and learning about the history. It was so great getting to meet Russell's host family, and seeing Deia's authentic spanish apartment, and seeing the places that they go to on a day-to-day basis. Now I'll know what they're talking about all the time! 

P.S. Today is Russell's mom's birthday. Happy birthday Mary Beth! We talked about you lots today! Enjoy!!

Home sweet America

My time in South Africa has presented me with a lot of challenges. It was my first time living in a city, taking public transportation, living with a family other than my own for an extended period of time, and participating in classes provided by an international university. I’ve definitely experienced a bit of “cultural fatigue” here by being completely culturally immersed. The hour long commute each way, which frequently coincided with uncomfortable interactions with strangers, who are largely, but not limited to, colored males. The long commute also meant for cultural isolation. I had little interaction with Americans on a day-to-day basis, which meant that I didn’t have many people to talk about my experience and have “cultural reaffirmation.” My home stay mom’s home cooking, which is an towering pile of white rice topped with a meat curry or stew, is delicious, but very carb heavy and fattening, a complete converse of my family’s health conscious diet. I love rice and curry, but after 3 months straight of it, a few pounds gained, and a bit of indigestion, I think it might take a while to get excited about the concept of eating curry. This was an example of cultural differences. My classes here have a pretty heavy workload, and one requires online chats two nights a week as well as meetings with other students multiple times a week, which, along with my 1 hour commute, has isolated me from the rest of the students in the program.  Moonlit hike up Lion’s head? I can’t, I have a chat session. Yoga class this afternoon? Sorry, I have an urgent meeting with the European Union. The weird timing of all these meetings has kept me chained to both my computer and the university, preventing me from getting out to explore the city as well as from volunteering another afternoon per week. However, even with all of these stress factors, I’ve still absolutely loved my time in Cape Town. And instead of spending time with my fellow Americans, I’ve gotten to know South African students. I can’t imagine having studied abroad anywhere else.

It’s been quite interesting trying to figure out what it means to be an American in Cape Town. While the city itself is very welcoming, American students seem to have developed a reputation at UCT of being silly, ignorant, or stereotypical. Yesterday in our CIEE seminar class, a student said that he had grown to hate his American accent and the stereotypical ignorant American. Given, our accents as well as several other factors make us stand out from the crowd and make it difficult for us to assimilate into South African culture, but our accents are also a symbol of the incredible experience we have been given purely by the nation in which we’ve been born. Many of my conversations have started with: “Where are you from?” because people have picked up on my accent. But then, because they know I’m not from around here, they share personal stories, Cape Tonian tips, favorite spots in Cape Town.   I’ve spoken with many people about my heritage and cultural background while here, and though sometimes I’m scorned (especially by anti-capitalist UCT professors), many people speak of my country with a tinge of envy. “It seems like everything is so cheap in the U.S.…everyone goes to college, can get an education, a car…” I’ve heard variations of this statement on several occasions. True, this is a misperception created by American pop culture, particularly by the television and films that have completely infiltrated South African society, but we, the students of CIEE, are perfect examples of the incredible opportunity that our nation provides for innumerable citizens. Throughout this semester, I have found myself wondering what made me lucky enough to have been born into an accomplished American family. It seems to me that I could just as well have been born into a family that lived in a rural area in South Africa that was oppressed by the apartheid government and as a result lives in crippling poverty with little option for social mobility. To me, our accents are a representation of the opportunity that we have been blessed with. How can you hate a symbol of such opportunity?

The Bo-Kaap neighborhood.

                Of course we’re going to be separate from the culture here. Of course we’re going to stand out from the pack. But that’s why we are called study abroad students. We’re here to have a unique experience, not to blend into the crowd. We’re supposed to get to know the culture and the history of this country, and though I agree with the concept of shedding our tourist mindsets, much of the positive experiences that I’ve had here have occurred purely because I’ve let myself be a tourist. Of course I’ve put my camera down and stopped seeing Cape Town from behind a lens. But by being unique here, I’ve learned so much: about the country, the university, the people, and, probably must significantly, about myself. I’ve never been different: I’ve always been just another white, upper middle class, Catholic girl at my largely white, upper middle class, Catholic high school and university. Here, I’m a rarity. And I like it. I’ve discovered that I’m proud of my ugly accent. As a result of being so different from my surroundings, my comfort zone has been poked, pried, smashed, and has ultimately stretched to be a much bigger “zone” than it was when I got here.

The neighborhood I volunteered in

All the cross-cultural stress factors, stressful though they are, have made me see what it is really like to live as a South Africa, not an American abroad. The privileges I’m used to at home, such as use of a car, freedom of movement, tiny class sizes at my university, and having control over my diet, I’ve come to see not as the norm but rather as privileges. That doesn’t mean that I prefer my life at home, but I’ve come to enjoy living in a way that is so drastically different from the way my American life. This is so cliché, but I’m going to come back from study abroad a changed woman. This experience has totally changed my background and the perceptions that I will form about the world in the future.  The biggest change I’ve made has been overcoming being judgmental. I was never terribly judgmental at home, but here I’ve recognized that as humans, when we meet a person we form certain assumptions about them. Here I’ve learned that those assumptions are often wrong, and that it’s best to just go into a situation with no expectations. There is so much more to a person than what you get on your first impression. Everyone has something unique to offer the world. You really can’t judge a book by its cover, even those silly stereotypical ignorant Americans. 

view from the cafe I always studied at that i promised I would never tire of (I didn't)

Goodbye, Cape Town

So. I made it. I have escaped Africa alive, unharmed, and in one piece.  I don’t know exactly how many people actually feared for my well-being during my semester in Cape Town, but I’m sure that there were some. “Don’t die, don’t get AIDS” was some actual advice that I received before my departure to the great continent of Africa. But please, don’t ask me when I return how Africa was. I have no idea. I have barely even skimmed the surface of the largest Continent on earth, but I can tell you about Cape Town if you’d like! 

Kirstenbosch, my favorite spot in Cape Town.

During my time here, I took public transportation every day to and from school. With the walk to the train station on either end, the entire journey took about an hour each way, and let me tell you, I dreaded it every single day. In truth, every time I mentioned that I was taking the public transportation system to a South African student, they wrinkled their nose and asked, “oh wow, how’s that?” At first I couldn’t see what the problem was, but after a few weeks of experiencing being so stuck between the packed masses of sweaty bodies that I could barely breathe, I began to understand what they meant. It was pure drudgery, there’s no other way to put it, but I experienced getting to university the same way that many students whose families can’t afford a car, and experienced the daily commute of a typical middle class worked in Cape Town. I will never again look at the rats in the New York City subway system with disdain.  The large pile of human feces left on the seat by a passenger that I encountered one day, which had been clearly been sitting there for the entire day, was not only more unsanitary but also much more repulsive.  Every day I would lug two large bags, one filled with workout clothes or clothes for the night, and one filled with books for school and my laptop onto the train. I was clearly an outsider: no one carries that much stuff in Cape Town, but I was never robbed or mugged, which just goes to show how safe Cape Town really is if you’re careful. 

That time i saw Prince Charles lecture at UCT

I also took classes at the University of Cape Town: Applied International Trade Bargaining, South African Political Thought, and the Politics of International Trade Relations. I met a plethora of South African students, and in two out of my 3 tutorials I was the only American student. In the third, I was one of two. I was completely immersed in the South African university system, and learned politics and economics from a non-Western perspective. Many of my professors scoffed America and looked down on capitalism, which was a complete departure from the style of teaching to which I am accustomed.

I volunteered teaching Xhosa speaking 9^th graders English in the township of Khayelitsha and found that volunteering is not the happy, rewarding experience I had always found it to be before. Finding proper ways to help people is not easy. You can’t just march in with a pre-tailored plan and expect it to work. A man I met while here in Cape Town put it rather interestingly, “if you want to make God laugh, make plans.” I’d worked with 3^rd and 4^th graders in inner-city Philadelphia before, but was given so much guidance and support on how to tutor and help them. They were under strict rules to listen to me, and I was under given an exact role. Here I was given a booklet and a group of kids and sent to work. That was difficult, and the frustrations I encountered with the program I was supposed to be teaching, as well as with the difficulty I had in actually teaching English to these students made me realize that implementing actual, sustained change in both the South African society and the South African educational system is going to take a long, long, time. 

I did an independent study while here on the relationship between the South African education system and the economy. Though South Africa invests the most money per student of any nation on the continent, it also scores incredibly poorly on international standardized tests.  Since apartheid, students have been able to go to whatever school they would like, but few take advantage of this opportunity and schools are still largely segregated. There is a massive teacher shortage, so class sizes can be upwards of 50 students per class, and the teachers are ill-equipped to prepare their students for the working world. Memorization is stressed while students never learn critical thinking skills. This poor preparation on the behalf of the education system cripples the economy because most of the student of South Africa are not being prepped to be innovative and creative skilled workers who will boost the economy and bring unemployment out of its current slump.

As I look out the window while I’m typing this, I see the Sahara stretching itself out below me. In a few short hours I’ll be in London, and a few short hours after that I’ll be reuniting with Russell for the first time in 4 months. Even though this long distance thing was actually painless for us, seeing him in person will be unbelievable.

With all the adventures I had in Cape Town, when it was time to start saying goodbyes a couple days ago, I was ready.  I didn’t have any emotional, tear filled goodbyes in my last few days. I was too excited to be sad. I’ll be back to Cape Town, but for now I’m ready for my next adventure and the final chapter of my junior semester abroad. Bring it. 

Cape Town as I was taking off.