Monthly Archives: October 2012

A Working American

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Well, dear readers, I’m happy to say that I am once again employed in the field I love. In fact, I’m over-employed and working part-time for both a study abroad company and as a study abroad advisor at a small Christian college here in OKC. While the freedom of unemployment was somewhat enjoyable, I am thrilled to give it up in return for working with students again and helping them experience the world beyond. I’m also looking forward to blogging again about all the cultural events of a college campus. Hopefully the lunch series will be back up and running soon!

This week is Global Vision Week at the college I am working at and with that came the study abroad fair and international cuisine in the cafeteria. I spent the day meeting students and talking about their dream destinations. Unfortunately the international cuisine was nowhere near as good as the conversation. I would not recommend the college cafeteria as the appropriate place to try ceviche. I’m just hoping it didn’t scare anybody off the idea of studying in Peru!

Let’s just say that this ceviche needed a lot more chips to be enjoyable.

 

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Giving the Bird

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I have to say that working with the children in the refugee community has been quite a learning experience. It’s funny what comes from their mouths and just how innocent they are.

Before I started volunteering, I did my research on Burmese and Iraqi customs. Don’t touch their heads. Don’t point with my feet. Don’t give the thumbs up sign. I was reminded this week that just as I am learning their cultures, these kids are learning ours.

As I was playing with a group of children at the playground this week, an interesting topic came up. The middle finger. All the sudden one of the little girls runs up to me and says, “I can’t use my middle finger, right?” Before I could even answer, several of the little girls are pointing their middle fingers in the air and saying, “You can’t do this, but you can do this.” And then they quickly switch to their pointer finger. From there a whole conversation ensued about why we don’t use the middle finger in America. Thinking back on the conversation, I’m sure it became a topic of our discussion because one of these little ones unknowingly gave “the bird”. I can imagine one of these little girls raising their own middle finger to read a book or scratch their face, and being met with discomfort, discipline, or distraught behavior by their fellow American peers or teachers. If I were in their shoes, I’m sure I would make the same mistakes. If I went to Iraq, could I stop giving a thumbs up? If I was in Myanmar, could I ensure that I never touch a child’s head? I highly doubt I could. I just hope and pray that I can give the patience and guidance to these little ones, just as I would need if I were learning the customs of their home countries.

The Non-Fighting Irish

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My Hubby loves American football. If his life weren’t so busy, I am sure he could watch games all of Saturday and Sunday. He even partakes in a game called Pigskin Pick’em with my brother and cousins. I, on the other hand, could take football or leave it. While I’m happy to watch a game in person, watching it on television just doesn’t excite me very much. However, I do like spending time with Hubby so this past weekend we decided to find a win-win solution.

I love cultural food and activities. Hubby loves football. We both love to hang out together. So we compromised and watched the Falcons beat the Redskins at Dan McGuinness, a local Irish pub here in OKC. While Roddy White made touchdowns, Hubby and I enjoyed fish and chips and a corned beef sandwich while traditional Irish music played in the background. While I sort of doubt the authenticity of Dan McGuinness, I still enjoyed myself and so did Hubby. Which in the end, I guess that’s all that matters.

Time Capsule

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When I was last home I spent some time in my parents’ basement. Its large and unfinished and my brother, cousins and I have consistently used it as a storage unit. The fun part is that it’s like going through a time capsule every time I go down there. As a kid, whenever my closet got full, I would just gather up all my pictures, mementos, yearbooks, etc., put them in a bin and take them down to the basement. I’ll admit that I was kind of a pack rat back then. But years later, as I begin to go through all the things I kept, I have to say I’m glad that I had some hoarder tendencies. In those boxes, I found some great memorabilia from my childhood through my years of studying abroad. Here are just a few things that stuck out from my time capsule.

My friends and I have decided that there are two things that women who travel wear: scarves and hats. As you can see at the age of 5, I was already embracing my future as a traveler. Or I was trying to be Anne of Green Gables. One or the other. I’m the shorty on the right.

When I was a junior in high school, my family made a trip across the Atlantic for the first time to visit my big brother who was stationed in Germany. Upon getting off the airplane, this was my first picture. The airport bathrooms in Germany had the self-cleaning toilets and I was beyond amazed with German ingenuity. Now having traveled with lots of students on their first experience abroad, I’ve discovered that foreign bathrooms are a common interest. And I’m not going to lie, I know for a fact this isn’t the only toilet I’ve taken a picture of in my past 14 years.

Also buried in the basement were all my old study abroad journals. This one was from my second summer in Italy. It was written in (poor) Italian and was full of my vocabulary, sketches, and the daily challenges and triumphs. As I read through the words that I decided to look up, the questions I wrote down, and the experiences that I struggled with as a 21-year-old college student, I see how much I grew up through my time abroad.

But of all the pictures and notes, this one is beyond far my favorite. After I graduated from high school, I spent four weeks in the mountains of KwaZulu-Natal attempting to teach economics in the local high school. As I look at this photo, it is a reminder that we all need to leave our comfort zones for a while, take risks, and that often what we are most afraid of is actually quite harmless.

Have you kept journals and pictures from travels gone by? Read and look through them and share your old memories that have come back!

 

 

 

 

Abroad Blog of the Week: Milk and Whisky

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Since I’m American, I always think of an abroad blog being outside of the U.S. But if your Cambodian, Argentinean, or French, the U.S. is definitely a foreign country. So when I found Andy’s blog, Milk and Whisky, I thought it would be a great abroad blog of the week. Andy is a British college student who is studying at Ball State University in Indiana for the next year and pointing out the cultural differences along the way. He’s funny and opinionated and he has made me learn new things about my own culture.  I was able to catch up with Andy to ask him about his experiences so far in the middle of America.

How did you decide to study abroad at Ball State?

It’s not a terribly exciting story. Our university offered a study abroad program. I thought it might be fun. I’d always been kind of interested in going to America. A side effect of too many Hollywood movies. That and I knew I wouldn’t have the patience to study anywhere where English wasn’t a first language. I put down three colleges that did my course and I happened to get Ball State.

Did you watch the presidential debate last week? What did you think?

I watched long enough to get a feel of what was going on. I get tired of political debates because you simply don’t know who’s telling the truth. There’s no way of quickly checking whether what’s being said is actually correct. On a purely charismatic level, I thought Romney was better whereas Obama appeared hesitant.

What have been the most surprising differences between home and Indiana?

It’s not really the major differences that get you but the accumulation of small differences. That being said, the two most noticeable differences were in assessment and night life. When it comes to night life, Ball State has made me so glad to be British. I miss our students union and university bars.

The college does organise events but with a few exceptions, they’re pretty poor. I feel sorry for the RAs because I know how badly they want people to go but at the same time I’m rarely interested in what they have planned. If you want to have any fun around here you’ve got to go off campus and find a good house party.

I knew I was going to have frequent assessments before I came but I wasn’t aware of how difficult it would be to adapt to it. It’s good that it forces you to consistently study and you get a deeper knowledge of your subject as a result but at the same time I think the workload for some of my classes is unreasonable.

Will you give football another chance?

Maybe. Probably not college football, I don’t really enjoy standing on crowded bleachers for hours pretending to care about something I barely understand. I did watch an NFL game recently which wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of commercial breaks though. Like every fifteen minutes. It got a bit tiresome.

What do you love/hate about being a Brit in the U.S.?

The best thing about being here is the people I’ve met. I’ve made some great friends. Our university offers a friendship family program and their hospitality has been mind-blowing  Going sightseeing in New York. Taco Bell. Corn dogs. The library computers here have two monitors. Ask me when I’m back in England and I’m sure I’ll have a list that would run for pages, haha.

A few things have bothered me, mainly to do with the lifestyle shift. The night life I’ve already mentioned. Meal plans are a nuisance. It’s only real purpose is to restrict what, where and when you eat. I’m not at school any more. I can buy and cook my own food.

I’m also not a fan of room-sharing. I don’t have any problems with my roommate but I like having my own room. Room sharing doesn’t really serve any purpose (except for being a good excuse to squeeze more students into dorms) and it’s just an unnecessary nuisance.

What advice would you give to another student planning to study abroad in the U.S.?

Meet Americans, straight away and as soon as possible. They’ll know where to go, what to do. If you’re only hanging around with people from your home country, you’re wasting an opportunity.

Remember you’re not there for very long. Here’s one of your few chances to try things with no long-term implications. Make of that what you will.

Here’s Andy with two of his fellow study-abroaders from England tailgating before the football game. He’s in the middle holding the squirrel, his university’s mascot.

Czech This Out

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It was only 45 degrees outside but thousands of people still lined Main Street to watch the Czech Day Parade come through downtown Yukon, Oklahoma. To celebrate the immigrants from Czechoslovakia that settled in Yukon in the early 1900s, the town puts on quite the party each year. The two day festival blended traditional Czech culture with its Oklahoma setting.

Traditional dances were matched with the local high school cheerleaders.

The klobasy were sold as the cowboys rode on by.

The Czech ribbons and crafts could be found right across from the painted bull’s skulls.

But most of all, Czech and Oklahoma pride were blended into a great celebration for this little town.

The Language of the World

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The sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.

~ The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Sitting at the top of the slide, his five-year old body was slumped and his face was marked with a scowl that was almost impenetrable. I called his name several times but he didn’t budge. I asked what was wrong, but there was no answer. He pulled his knees up to support his chin, which supported his protruding, pouting lower lip.

Finally, not knowing if he understood my words, I substituted them with funny faces. It is my honest belief that almost any child can be redirected if I try hard enough. I did moose ears, the pucker-faced fish, but it was the blown-up monkey cheeks that did him in. His lower lip slightly retreated and he lifted his flip-flopped foot up to show me a small scrape on his ankle.

“Ouch,” I said. “Let me blow your boo boo a kiss.” I put my hand to my mouth and made a kissing noise as I pulled it away. He then followed suit and kissed his hand and put it on his ankle. Miraculously healed, he came down the slide and raced me to the merry-go-round, laughing as he ran. In that moment, I understood Paulo Coelho’s idea of the language of the world. This little boy from Malaysia could not understand my words, but in the end he understood my message.

The Kettle Question

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I’m a coffee addict. I get up every morning, turn on the coffee pot, and sip my two cups. My mother, on the other hand, is a tea junky. If I ever want to show her I care about her, I could just go make her a cup of tea and she would be thrilled. She taught me how to make tea at a young age. Get out a cup. Drop in the tea bag and fill with water. Microwave for 90 seconds.

I think I may have just heard gasps from across the pond.

I remember reading a post from one of my students last year who was studying in the U.K. She had put her tea cup in the microwave and all of her British roommates looked at her like she had a second head. They could not believe she was not using a kettle. On the other side, Andy from Milk and Whisky faced a dilemma when he first arrived in the U.S. and discovered Walmart does not sell electric kettles.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the choice between using the microwave or the kettle is a reflection of our cultures. As Americans, using a microwave is an indication of our values of ingenuity and efficiency. While for the Brits, the kettle is a symbol of quality and tradition. I’m sure both sides would argue which way is better, but in the end, I think I each society will choose the way that reflects what is important to them.

For me, who is attempting to be global from home, I’ve decided to start using the kettle. I tried it for the first time about a week ago and was so excited to hear it whistle when it was ready. Although it took a while longer, I have to say it was a delicious cup of tea.

What do you use? Microwave or kettle?

Abroad Blog of the Week: Turkish Musings

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I started following Hayley from Turkish Musings almost four months ago when she was just in the process of preparing for her semester in Ankara. As a study abroad advisor, I can say from experience that Hayley put a lot more time into preparing than most. She debated whether she would wear a headscarf, started learning Turkish on her own, and even got a pen pal. Hayley is now in her fourth week in Ankara and though she’s had her ups and downs, her research and preparation have definitely paid off. Her posts are now filled with her stories in which Hayley has a way of making you feel like you’re traveling with her. For the next four months, she has officially given up Lake Michigan and figure skating (she’s an official for USFS) for the Mediterranean and exploring the history and culture of Turkey. I was able to catch up with Hayley this week to learn more about Turkish Musings and her first few weeks in Ankara.

Your very first post was actually not written by you. How did Turkish Musings get started?

Oh, I forgot about that one! Yes, my friend started my blog for me and she wrote the first post as a type of “friendship love letter.” I keep it because it reminds me of the primary audience I write this blog for: my friends and family back home. After I found out that I was accepted to study abroad at Middle East Technical University, I told everyone that I was going to create a blog to keep in touch with them. But for me, the study abroad process started several months before I arrived in Ankara; I began researching about Turkish and Muslim history and culture and bounced my thoughts, ideas, fears, and goals off my friends. They suggested that I start a blog as soon as possible to share my ideas but I was wary because, really, who wants to read a study abroad blog when the person isn’t even abroad yet? Finally Elizabeth, who I think was sick of my silly excuses, started Turkish Musings and wrote the first post. It jump-started by blogging; I edited some drafts I had been working on, posted a couple posts, received positive feedback from friends and strangers….and here I am right now!

 Now that you’ve been in Turkey for a few weeks, what have you found the most surprising?

This is going to sound silly, but everyone back home told me to look out for Turkish boys because they love blonde girls. But actually, no guy seems to be interested in me–which is awesome because it was never my goal to “find love” or anything like that while I’m here. From what I’ve observed, 1) Most of the people on campus are already in a relationship, and Turkish men are loyal to their women; and 2) If a Turkish guy is looking for a foreign girl, he is first-and-foremost looking for a Russian or Ukrainian. Don’t know why, but that’s what I’ve noticed so far here. I would say guys seem more interested in me in the more touristy parts of Turkey (such as Alanya), but at least I’m safe in the capital!

A second surprising thing is that despite being in a Muslim country, I have yet to see anyone pray during the day. I have noticed several mosques in the city and I hear the call to prayer on campus (in fact the sundown one is going on as I type this), but Turkey is truly secular in that the work day continues and you can’t deter from it!

 At this point, how would you spend a free day in Ankara?

First-and-foremost I would visit a mosque because I have yet to get to one. The largest mosque in Ankara is the Kocatepe Mosque and I’ve heard that it’s worth seeing. I would grab some lunch at a little restaurant (none in particular, there are so many and they’re all good!) and accompany the food with çay (Turkish tea). From there I would go to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations for a few hours–by myself–and take my time going through the exhibits. Even though I went there with the orientation group, we only had 45 minutes and that is not near enough time for a place like that! Shopping would be next; I’d probably start to buy little gifts as Christmas presents for my friends back home (because it’s never too early to shop for Christmas). Finally, I would venture to Kızılay, Ankara’s downtown, with friends and finish off the evening in a cafe with İskander (a meat, bread, and tomato sauce dish that is to die for), live music, good company, and nargile (Turkish water pipe).  🙂

 How are you feeling being away from ice skating?

Being away from skating is somewhat like a double-edged sword. On the one hand it pains me to be gone from my skating family (i.e., other USFS officials) because they have been a formidable part of my life since I was fourteen. Yet I know that in leaving them, if only for a few months, I will come back with my own travel stories and evolving perspective on life which will make me a better-rounded official of U.S. Figure Skating. And actually, a few of my peers will be on a Mediterranean cruise this fall and will be in Izmir in early November for a day. I’m currently researching the possibility of me meeting them there–hopefully I can make it work!

 What did you do that helped you best prepare for your semester in Ankara?

One of the things I did extensively over the summer was listen to Turkish music and watch Turkish movies. I played music constantly during my commutes in the car–probably much to the chagrin of my friends and family. Basically, I found find several songs and artists that sounded cool, found the lyrics to them (and if possible, the English translation) and listened to them….over and over and over. This helped me learn how to pronounce the letters of the Turkish alphabet, learn the inflections and emphasis of longer words, and it helped familiarize my brain with Turkish in general. Even though I didn’t know the meaning of the words, by the end of the summer I could sing along with many of the songs. And now that I’m attempting to learn Turkish here, I can concentrate more on vocabulary and phrases than on my pronunciation.

Hayley, thanks for the great interview!  

Where Are You From?

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In the past, if I heard anyone speak with an accent, I would always wonder where they were from but would never ask. I thought it might be rude or make them feel uncomfortable. Well, I’ve thrown that notion out the window. For someone who is trying to be global from home, that just won’t work. Over the past several weeks, I came in contact with three individuals who were clearly not born in the U.S. based on their accents. Rather than just smiling politely and going my own way, I took the risk of asking where they were from.

The first was a Mexican man who was working at a restaurant here in OKC. I noticed he was a little shy telling me where he was from, but when I immediately responded that I had recently been to Mexico and really enjoyed exploring it, his mood visibly changed. He began to tell me about his hometown, how long he had been in the States, and then asked me my opinion on safety in Mexico. He said he had not visited home in years, but based on the news, he questioned how safe it would be to return to Mexico with his family.

My second experience was with a man who had recently come to the United States from Iraq. He told me about having to leave his wife and baby daughter in Baghdad but has hopes that he will be able to bring them over soon. He told me he wants to get his master’s degree in engineering and how his father went to college in the U.S. at the University of Georgia. We ended up spending several minutes talking about taking the TEFL and the quality of the Georgia football team this year.

The third person I met owns a furniture store in Atlanta and moved to the U.S. from Turkey 18 years ago. But before coming across the pond, she also lived in France and the UK. She talked about having her mother still in Turkey and the challenges of going back home to see her three or four times a year. She told me how she speaks four languages and her brother speaks five. We talked about technology and how something that is suppose to help connect us, often disconnects us from the person sitting beside us.

What I’ve been discovering is that behind the accent there is a story. Leaving your home country and moving is never easy – there are language challenges, family left behind, and new customs to learn. And while I certainly hope that I’m not offending the people I meet, I am so curious to hear about their stories. I am entranced as they tell about what they’ve overcome to be where they are, and I’m eager to hear why they left the familiarity of home to come here. In the end, each time I ask the question “Where are you from?” I believe I am taught something new about the world that I never would have learned if I had to decided to be just be polite and mind my own business.