International Blog

Anne Staeheli is an Arts & Sciences junior studying abroad in Europe this semester.

Anne (center) wearing a mask in Venice.

Ciao Ciao!

Well, I actually did not make it to Paris due to some things that came up, but instead I did some Florentine festivities last weekend. For the most part it was a very relaxing weekend, which was much needed after the trip to Amsterdam. We got to see a lot of Florence that we really didn’t expect. We did a Firenze bar crawl starting at noon and ended around 11 p.m. This kind of tour was seemingly more fun if you ask me (kidding…sort of). I can truthfully tell mom I only ordered half-pints of beer at the bars, which was more economical and “safe” for me, however, “half-pint” became my nick name for the day.

We left for Venice early Friday morning with the whole school and arrived at our campsite around lunch time. Immediately, we all jumped on the next ferry to arrive at the famous Carnevale. Our priorities at this time consisted of finding masks and food. It was definitely one of the most expensive cities we have travelled to, so it was cheap i panini e gelato for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I unfortunately left my camera in Firenze.again, but many of my friends promised to tag me on face book in all of the photos. On Friday night, we all just wandered around aimlessly; trying not to get lost…that was a bust. We walked for hours trying to find the train station, because every person we asked said, “just over the next bridge.” When we got to the train station, we realized we had no idea where the campsite was located, naturally. Then, someone had the brilliant idea to take a bus back. We found the bus station, just over another bridge, and hopped on the bus that we thought was headed in the right direction. Turns out, it was not. We eventually made it back to the transfer station, and were told to take a number 11.little did we know that there are two number 11s, naturally. Long story short, we ended up running (yes, actually running) from one bus to another, stopping traffic and so on. We made it back by midnight, which sounds great if you leave out the part where we left at 7 p.m. All in all, we got to see a lot of Venice so it really didn’t matter how lost we got. Did I mention we were all wearing masks? Picture that.

On Saturday, we got up early and went to Murano, on the right ferry, to see the famous glass blowing museums and art. This was my absolute favorite city so far. The crowds were no where to be found and the streets were wider, as well as walk-able. There were so many beautiful glass sculptures all around the city. Apparently these change all the time so every time you go back, it is always a different look. We went back to Venice for lunch and started to get ready for the big night of the Carnevale. The costumes were so detailed and intricate on all the people walking around. It was supposedly the most crowded day in Venice of the year. I believe this because I have never felt so claustrophobic in my life. You could not take your eyes off of your “buddy” for a second otherwise you would lose them for the rest of the day. I definitely needed a leash. We of course went to Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge to do some of the best people watching I have ever done. After wandering for hours, getting lost and finding il vino economico, we watched the costume contests and the dance performances. There was a parade and street dance afterwards, which everyone joined in on and created a large conga line. Costume or not, everyone did it. The music was fantastic and the people were just ecstatic. By the end of the night, the joke was that we all needed lifejackets (this may or may not have been true). It was just amazing and so much fun to be apart of. It put Halloween and prom to shame. However, I did break my awesome mask in the conga line (don’t ask), but I think superglue will do the trick. We eventually made it back to the campsite around 1 a.m. and woke up the next day to mosey the streets for the last time on Sunday. All three days we had perfect sunny weather so there were no complaints in that department. We made it back to Firenze around 7 p.m. to start studying for midterm week. Whose idea was it to put midterms during Mardi gras, seriously!? We’ll see how that pans out. I’m headed back to my homeland of Switzerland next weekend, hope all is fabulous back in the states!

From Italy with love,

Anne

Tags: anne staeheli, Paris, study abroad

             In the past decade more than being known as a former communist city where great authors wrote classic literature, kings built bridges, Catholic built stunning Cathedrals and the greatest musicians of our time performed classic productions, Prague has become known for its Asian tourists and large population of expatriates.  So choosing to study in Prague was at first sort of difficult, I wanted a place more… undiscovered. 

            But the first time I came here, over a year ago on a week-long trip with my cousin I felt that first connection, a connection to my deep Czech heritage and to the people who are inspired daily by the red roofs, the Vltava river, and the passionate artists who flock to the city to read Kundera on Petrin Hill, to see Don Giovani performed in the original concert hall where Mozart debuted his classic opera.  In Prague, there is no escaping the history, and on this stay, with patience and a few practical Czech language classes, I already feel at home.

            Living abroad is always full of confusion.  And when you travel alone you have to expect a moment or two, at least, of a wild, panicked realization… that you are on your own, and have to figure it out by yourself.  To deal with the confusion, I keep moving.  For the past three weeks it has been nearly non-stop traveling around the Czech Republic, taking Czech language classes, exploring the cobblestone streets in the day and at night exploring the bars and clubs.  Coming back to the soviet dorms where the students from my program live, isn’t high on my list of things to do every day. 

            You have to have a sense of humor to live in Eastern Europe, and you have to appreciate the small, wonderful lightness of regulation that makes the Czech Republic, especially, so appealing.  When I first moved into my dorm, brown water came out of the faucet, and I realized quickly that I would have to make myself very very tired every night to fall asleep on the beds.  Everything here is just simpler, smaller, less expensive…and so much more fun.

            Regardless of the tourists and the fact that the American expat in Prague thing has been done before, it still feels incredible to sit at the Hanging Cup and read Vaclav Havel and listen to Neutral Milk Hotel while walking across Karlovy Most on my way to Czech intensive class.  Well, I’m a cliché English major living in Prague.  Ahoj!

By Sophie Vodvarka, Arts and Sciences Junior.  Sophie is studying in Prague, Czech Republic during Spring 2009.

One of the most difficult things about living in the Dominican Republic is thinking about life back home going about as usual, especially as the holiday season is getting started.

It is also difficult not to feel bitter. After living for 10 days with a family of five whose wardrobes combined are still smaller than mine, the last thing I want to talk about is what I want for Christmas. Yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving, it was such a disjointed feeling to think about my mom, sisters, aunts, and cousins waking up at 6 am to go shopping.

I do not think this is necessarily bad in itself. But the tears in my eyes when I read about Jdimytai Damour, a Haitian man who was trampled to death by shoppers in New York, tell me that it’s not all okay, either. The significance of this event is undeniable; I cannot tell you how many people I have met, Haitians and Dominicans alike, who have family living in Queens or Washington Heights who work those same minimum wage jobs to support their families back home or to make a better life for themselves. Nor can I describe how it felt to visit a Batey, an extremely poor and marginalized community of Haitians living in the DR, and have the children beg me for a drink of water out of my Nalgene.

Should this not serve as a wake-up call to consumers everywhere? It is one thing to realize for ourselves that our general spending patterns and consumer lifestyles affect the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; I understand the difficult in making that connection, because it’s not easy myself. But yesterday, consumers, in their ruthless quest for things, literally killed a man with their own physical bodies. What are we doing?

I think it’s time for something to be done. I don’t know exactly what and I don’t know exactly how, but something has to be done. I’m not saying everyone has to quit shopping, quit going to stores, quit buying Christmas gifts, but at the very least we need a consciousness about the way we are living. Why are things so important anyway? What is so urgent and important about buying stuff? I think it’s a signal that something else is missing, and I think it’s time that we figure out what that is.

By Emily Ruskamp

Every college student has that special junk food that seems to hit the spot, especially on late paper-writing nights or before a big test. Here, partly because it’s the only food within walking distance, partly because of its amazing fried goodness, and partly because it only costs 30 pesos (about 80 cents), our go-to junk food is empanadas. If you haven’t had an empanada before, it’s a folded over tortilla-like bread (but thicker) filled with cheese, meat, or really any flavor. My favorite is pizza, which is filled with creamy mozzarella cheese and pizza sauce. The man at our empanada stand is definitely familiar with the faces of the Americans from ILAC.

Yesterday afternoon there were about three different groups of us who went; when each group brought back their empanadas, the scent awakened hunger in the rest of us. As Cameron, Andy, and I were waiting for our empanadas, we noticed some kind of commotion and lots of people and motoconchos (small motorcycles) gathering somewhere around the corner. We were excited to see what it was; there have been several riots in our neighborhood during the past couple of weeks over bad roads and poor electricity. Whatever it was, it stood between us and ILAC, so despite our directions to walk away from the scene, we couldn’t help but walk towards it.

We discovered that it wasn’t a riot at all; a drunk driver had gotten out of control and ran into a cement wall in the ditch. Nobody was hurt, and the people soon lost interest. Needless to say, it was a good empanada.

Dajabon is a city on the edge of the DR’s border with Haiti, separated from the other side by the Massacre River. On Mondays and Fridays, the bridge that joins the two sides is opened for thousands of Haitians to come to Dajabon freely for the market.

They come from all over Haiti to this market in Dajabon because the food, supplies, household items, clothes, etc., that they can buy in the DR are unavailable in Haiti. So, they flock to Dajabon, many of them camping out on the Haitian side of the river in make-shift shacks, for food to feed their families for survival as well as to purchase bulk goods for resale in Haiti.

As an observer of this event, it felt to me like a “once in a lifetime” experience. However, I have to keep in mind that this happens all year round, twice a week, always busy. It is my responsibility to share with you some of the images that have been imprinted on my mind.

As we stood on the bridge, watching a heavy, steady stream of people going in and out, I noticed that, while I didn’t see anyone missing shoes as they walked in, many people walked out without shoes on their feet, carrying on their heads large baskets or bags of rice or pushing wheel barrels and huge wooden carts overloaded with goods.

Looking down on the Massacre River, its banks littered with trash, I saw two children, a boy and a girl, sitting in the water. The girl was brushing her teeth while helping the boy rub soap all over his body. Upsteam a little ways, at least twenty or thirty Haitians were washing clothes and laying them out to dry on a sand bar, while others played games and chased each other around. Further downstream, others were drinking out of the same River.

A group of about six women, each with at least two large bags, one on their head and one in their hands, held up their skirts as they waded across the river. The guards on the other side told them they couldn’t cross there, until finally I saw one of them climb up anyway. When she reached the top, she set down her bag for a moment and she reached into her pocket and handed something to the guard. She waved over the other women, and they, too, climbed out one by one and payed the guard for their passage into the market.

As our group of six students and Kyle, our professor, moved through the market in a single-file line, the urgency of the people was apparent in the pushing, shoving, cutting off, and pocket grabbing that was going on. As we freely walked out of the market through one of its boundary side streets, a person with much darker skin trying to do the same thing was stopped by a guard and pushed back into the market. Another was allowed to stay outside the boundary after handing a few coins to the guard.

In the afternoon we drove on a highway near Haiti. On one side of us I saw the green, foresty mountains of the Dominican Republic. On the other side, the mountains were scattered with a few trees and covered only by weeds and a few small plots of thin, sickly corn growing on the mountainside. The mountains themselves, to me, were silent reminders of desperation, desolation, and death.

A mother stared at us as we drove by and watched as her daughter, wearing a tattered, faded yellow dress, ran alongside the pickup, holding out her hands and yelling, “Dame algo!” (“Give me something!”), her dirty bare feet pounding against the rough, rocky road.

 By Emily Ruskamp

Two weeks ago we spent 10 days living in the rural community (campo) of Majagual. I haven’t written about it thus far because I haven’t been able to bring myself to reduce the experience to words, but I want to try to describe it.

The “reason” we were there was to build an aqueduct with the community, because prior to two weeks ago the community had to walk a couple of kilometers to get water. Now my family there has a faucet right outside their house and a running, stand-up shower. For the first few days I showered with a five-gallon bucket and a small scoop to dump water on myself, which is how they’ve been doing it forever. When my dad, Teo, showed me the line he had built to the shower, he was so happy and so proud of it, and my three little brothers were just screaming with excitement as Teo would spray them with their new hose.

Each of us students lived with a different family (a few people were in pairs). My parents are Tania and Teo, and I have three brothers, Manuel, 8, Noni, 6, and Ariel, 4. For the first few days Ariel just started as me bashfully from behind Tania’s legs, but by the end he was attempting to play Dominoes and Casino (a popular card game) with me. Each day when us students would gather for meals we would talk about how our families were, and each day I would tell them how amazing everyone was but Ariel still wouldn’t talk to me. He finally talked to be about four days before we left, and the night before we left he said my name for the first time. It was just after I had given them a picture of my family and he walked through the door with a photo from a magazine that he found somewhere. He held it up to me and said, “Mira, Emilia!” and preceeded to tell me that one of the women in the picture was Tania and the other was me. That moment was… indescribable, really.

There were a lot of moments like this, and it frustrates me not to be able to fully capture them in words. I became especially close with Teo, who would walk me to dinner every day and tell me about all the different fruits and foods growing in the area. He is a cacao farmer, and one morning he brought me to work with him, which is a big deal because most of the men in the community were even hesitant about letting us girls help dig the trench for the aqueduct tube. But he let me go with him and he taught me how he cuts down the pods and let me do a lot of it.  It was a really great morning, just Teo and I walking around under the shade of the cacao and coco trees, two of my brothers and a friend playing nearby.

I get to go back to Majagual tomorrow because Dr. O’Keefe is making a documentary about the program.

By Emily Ruskamp

This weekend a group of us girls went to Luperon to an all-inclusive beach resort. Luperon is off the main area of beach resorts in Puerto Plata, so we hoped that it would be a little smaller and less of your typical resort, but we were wrong. When we arrived we were so excited–pay our 40 bucks and then have free food, free drinks, free beach. It seemed almost too good to be true. And for the first few hours, which we spent laying out on the beach, it was absolutely amazing. It was definitely a welcome escape from school.

But then we got a deeper taste of the resort, which is the reason I will probably never go back. As we walked by the west pool on the way to our room, there were about five men gathered around a small table, yelling and cheering at their friend, who was going through a series of stations (swimming across the pool, doing jumping jacks, five push ups, etc.). A resort employee was encouraging him to go faster over a loudspeaker. The last station was to chug a glass of beer, and the whole event was timed.

At point point we spent a few minutes in the pool and talked to three girls from Liverpool. As one of their friends was swimming over to us, she was talking loudly with a resort employee, who was talking in Spanish.
“I’m not from France. I’m from En-gland. Where we speak En-glish,” she was saying. He replied that she’s in the Dominican Republic, where they speak Spanish, and she gave an extremely rude response and said she wasn’t even coming back here.

I don’t want to stereotype all resort-goers based on these two and a few other experiences. There just seems to be a culture of drinking, getting wild, letting loose, and being waited on hand and foot. Maybe it’s just not my style, but I don’t like being lumped into that category.

But Saturday night we went down to the beach and there was hardly anyone down there, and it made every moment worth it. There’s something about the ocean that’s so cliche, yet when you’re right there watching the waves, listening to them hit the shore, and smelling the salt you realize it’s all completely true. It’s beyond my comprehension how something can be so simple… a wave comes in, and goes back out, and another comes in, and goes back out… yet so complex at the same time. Staring out at the ocean can become philosophical, emotional, spiritual, overwhelming, playful, romantic, relaxing… really anything you want it to be. Sitting there I felt like if I stayed long enough, I would probably think about almost every aspect of my life in some way, at some point.

I could never do justice for the ocean. Still, looking back, I feel somewhat ashamed for being at that resort, but at the same time grateful for the experience. And it was nice to know that even the resorts aren’t out of reach of the massive power outages that happen regularly in this country, as we were without power Saturday night for at least 3-4 hours.

By Emily Ruskamp

I apologize to anyone who read my post and was lost without some background information. My name is Emily Ruskamp, and I’m a junior Journalism major/Econ minor spending this semester in the Dominican Republic through the Encuentro Dominicano program. There are 13 of us Creighton students here this semester and we’ve been here two weeks, though it’s hard to believe it’s only been two weeks. We’re living in Santiago at ILAC, the Institute for Latin American Concern. We spent the first week in orientation meetings and activities, including a weekend trip to the capital, Santo Domingo, and a scavenger hunt around Santiago to help us become familiar with the city. Last week we started our classes; we’re all taking Spanish and a course about the DR, and some are taking an extra class. Donna Pawlowski from the Communications Dept. is down here now teaching a course and brushing up on her Spanish.

The other students studying with me here are: Andy Bauer, Anna Budinger, Celyce Graves, Cameron Hinkson, Adam Kavan, Cat Keating, Sean Kenney, Dee Kimata, Meagan Lard, Kate McKillip, Heather Robertson and Greg Wittenburg.

In addition to taking courses, we each also attend a weekly service site, ranging from schools and tutoring to a nursing home and a few others. I started service today as Hospicio, a nursing home and hospice home. I should have more to share about that later. In two weeks we will go on our first immersion in a campo, or rural community. We will each be living with a family for 10 days while building an aquaduct system for the community, which will allow them to have running water. I think some of us (including me) are a little nervous about little things like showering with buckets but I know that I am extremely excited for the experience.

That’s a basic run-down of the program. More to come soon!

By Emily Ruskamp

Tags: Encuentro Dominicano

I never really listened when they told me about culture shock at the study abroad meeting. I guess I wasn’t too worried about it–I mean, how different can people really be? We seem to have a pretty wide variety of people and cultures in the US and they seem to fit together pretty well… right?

Well, I tell you now, I was wrong. Yes, of course, all people are created equal, we’re all the same in our roots, and all that. But when I’m sitting on the torn-up cushion of the back seat of a rusty mini van that smells like a mixture of body odor and humidity, and the woman next to me–or more accurately, on top of me–is holding her baby (who, by the way, appears to have ring worm), and the man on the other side of me is asking me to hold one of two large, bulky paper sacks… and suddenly I hear a pounding on the roof and the vehicle stops, and I think, somebody must be getting off ’cause there’s no way we can pile a 17th person into this 11 person van. Then I feel the man next to me scooting over to make room for two girls to squeeze in, and the van takes off. I find myself looking out the window, watching as homes, businesses, outdoor bars, small groups of people hanging out talking and an occasional dog or two pass by, and I think, “Am I really here? Is this reality?” Yep, it sure is.

Having taken the gua gua, as this form of transportation is called, a couple times now, I’m just beginning to get used to sacrificing my personal bubble. Of course, I could just call a taxi, but then I run the risk of telling him a wrong turn and driving down a dark, somewhat creepy street (but don’t worry–that never happened).. but when in the DR, do as the Dominicans do… get cozy.

By Emily Ruskamp

Tags: Encuentro Dominicano

July 29, 2008

I decided to stick around Krakow.  Mainly because I don’t want to leave the other volunteers, with whom I’ve become very close.  Also it’s because of the logistics of actually planning backpacking in a city only a day before actually leaving (although, I have gotten used to flying by the seat of my pants and I’m sure I’d be fine…)

But I also decided because I’m so tired after clubbing last night until 5a.m. with the Polish counselors and volunteers.  It was definitely one of the top nights of my life—a night filled with trendy Krakow clubs, doing the traditional Polish vodka-pass while sitting by Wawel Castle near the river, and ending the night watching the sun come up in a field filled with fog.  Man, I love the Poles!  They know how to have a good time.

I found the most fabulous little English bookstore and café today.  It is off the main square about a mile, close to the University.  I bought a book of short stories by Fitzgerald, and a book Yeats’ poetry.  I feel like I’m coming back to my American self-sitting in a cafe filled with books writen in English.  Finally, I have ready access to decent coffee.  Eastern Europe is still notoriously ignorant of coffee, from the Soviets who only allowed for instant.  A latte has never tasted so good.

I love this city, Krakow.  The people are perhaps the most charming I’ve ever encountered.  I could be very happy here for some time. 

By Sophie Vodvarka, Scene Editor