This past Saturday started out as any good trip day, with the alarm clock going off at 5:15 a.m. Gotta love early morning wakeups. Surprisingly, It also seems like the best trips start out ridiculously early.

The IFSA-Butler group went to Caral, which is the oldest civilization in the western hemisphere. I am not sure exactly what makes a civilization because there are older “places” in the western hemisphere, but this is officially the oldest civilization.. who knows.

Caral is over 5,000 years old, and was only “discovered” in 1994. There is a ton of excavation going on still, and there is still a ton more work to be done. It is pretty impressive to think that a civilization could have flourished as much as it did in a time that hadn’t even discovered the use of ceramics.

Anyways, we were promised that it would be sunny and warm in Caral, as it was lightly nasty misting as we left Lima. That, however turned out to be a lie. It was COLD and completely cloudy all day. Lovely. I miss the sun. I don’t know how I am going to survive the US winter. It’s been winter since August for me.. yikes!

Anyways, we had a really good time just hanging out and walking around the ruins. After touring Caral we went out to lunch where most of the group tried cuy (guinnea pig) for the first time. I had a great time watching them squirm over the food, as I enjoyed my duck and yuca.

We briefly stopped by another archeological site that was just discovered in 2001. I’m sure it will be much more interesting once it is excavated more, but there really wasn’t too much to see right now. The only thing that was really neat was a freshwater lagoon that was right next to the ocean. It has an amazing amount of wildlife, and was gorgeous.

It is about a three hour drive to Caral, so we spent over six hours in a van, I am definitely getting sick of traveling by car and bus. When I got back home at 7:00 tonight, much to my surprise I found my face bright red! I am so pasty that I can be outside with absolutely no sun all day and still get sunburned. Fantastic. Just another reminder of how white I am in predominately darker society..

This semester is wrapping up already, and I must say that I am NOT ready to leave yet. I have so many places that I still want to go and so many things I want to do. One semester is definitely not enough time to really see Perú. I would definitely stay for an entire year if I wasn’t graduating (and getting married…) in May. My number one suggestion: make the most out of your college experience, try everything, and don’t regret anything!

Where from? …First of all from a four day trip to Campeche, Palenque, and Bonampak during our September break, though that’s hardly news by now.  And also, of course, from a several week long absence from this blog while I’ve been struggling to upload my pictures from said trip.  I WILL figure it out, I promise, and they’ll be up here as soon as possible.  In the meantime though..

I decided at the very last minute (meaning, the morning we ended up leaving) to spend my September break traveling with two friends (who are also exchange students, from Baja California.)  We set out to Campeche on the day of El Bicentenario without knowing where we would go, where we would stay, or exactly when we were going to get back to Merida.

We got back four days later, slightly worse for wear due to lack of sleep and showers, our feet being covered with ant bites from the second cabin we stayed in, and down one computer (stolen from my friend on the bus, we believe) and the contents of my wallet (which I had left on  different bus.)

In between, we saw the bicentennial celebration in Campeche, visited the Palenque and Bonampak ruins and the water falls at Agua Azul, played hide and seek with three or four children in Crucero Bonampak, ate several bags of rambutans (a lichi-like fruit that is popular in Palenque,) and spent as little money as possible on transportation, food, and shelter.

I have pictures of almost all of this – and I WILL get them up here, I promise.

I feel like I’m definitely settling into life here in Merida – But finally really  having people I want to see, places I want to go, and  things I want to do has also made me realize how much of the semester has already passed – and how much I’ll miss it here when I leave.

I’m off now to Yaxunah with the rest of the IFSA Butler group – add that to the list of things I need to post photos of!

If I have painted a positive picture of Ireland and Dublin to you so far it is because my experience has been really quite nice.  But this has been no utopia however, and because I am still grounded in reality there are some negative things that I’ve had to persevere through, namely Trinity College Dublin’s archaic class registration system and having to deal with registering with the Immigration Bureau.  The latter is less important, and also not very interesting, so I shall spare the details of that misadventure and focus instead on the unique trials of registering for classes with Trinity.  I will make up for some of my unkind words by talking about how my classes are going, to end on a positive note.

Trinity was established, according to Wikipedia (and the college’s website for those who disapprove of the almighty Wiki), in 1592, giving the college about a four-hundred year history.  Four-hundred years is a wealth of time for an institution to build up a towering heap of bureaucratic regulations and red tape that has survived quite healthily to this day.  Most, if not all, U.S. colleges and universities, and most of the rest of the world as far as I understand, have you registering for classes well in advance of their starting date.  In addition, you probably do it online, correct?  Not so at Trinity, no.  Resisting modern technological advancements in educational system infrastructure, Trinity has you as a visiting student meeting with a ‘Visiting Student” advisor for whatever school or subject you are pursuing to “register” for classes.

I was accepted to study in the English and Psychology schools, and I had very different experiences for both.  For Psychology, I was told to go meet with the advisor on a certain day and I’d get signed up for classes then.  Sounded simple enough, so I went.  And it was that simple, actually.  If we had any questions, the gentleman who was the advisor was more than ready to help out, and encouraged all the visiting students, all Juniors/third-years, to take courses at the level we think we should be at, so basically all year-three courses.  With a signature from him, a photocopy of our schedule, and we were out of there.  Done and done.

English was a touch more of a struggle to understand what to do and how to get it done. To explain: the English Department was lax in its posting of the course timetables, i.e. when the courses you would be taking would take place each week, but wanted you to meet with the Visiting Student advisor before these were posted.  So you were being asked to choose classes when you didn’t know when they would be.  As someone who is used to meticulously scrutinizing my schedule to make sure I get all my classes, this wasn’t something I could easily adjust to, especially because I needed to take certain courses for my major back home.  Plus, I had my Psychology courses to account for as well and make sure those and the English courses didn’t conflict, to add to my stresses.  The other little bit of it was that they would only let us take courses from the first two years, and if we wanted to take a Sophister option (years three and four) we had to fight for it.  By “fight” I mean you just had to ask and if the one you wanted to take had available spots you could take it, but they made it out to be a much bigger deal than it actually was.  I ended up meeting with the advisor on about three separate occasions, and waiting in line with everyone else for an hour each visit, just to make sure I was “signed up” for the classes I wanted and needed to be in.  It would turn out that besides the one Sophister course, I didn’t need to register for any of them.  At some point I do believe I had an aneurism because of all of this.

My advice?  In the immortal words of the great Douglas Adams, “Don’t panic.”  That’s it, that’s all you need to do, don’t panic.  Everything ended up working out great for me.  Most classes had open caps so I didn’t need to worry about not getting a spot, in both English and Psychology, and there were hardly any time conflicts so I ended up getting all of the classes I wanted to get.

So what are the courses like here?  Well, for the most part they are enormous lectures once a week, and my English courses also have “tutorial” sections once a week as well.  For me, someone who goes to a small liberal-arts college and a “big” class is one with over thirty students, “enormous” to me is over a hundred students, but for lectures I guess the size doesn’t really make a difference one way or another.  If you have spent any time researching studying in Europe you’ve probably read or heard a million billion times how it is “different,” “harder,” and the schools expect you to “do more on your own” and so on and so on.  Well, basically, that’s more or less true.  You only spend a small amount of your time during the week sitting in on lectures, though tutorials help bolster it for me, while the rest of the time is yours to do with it what you will.

While I do have to prepare things to talk about and discuss for my tutorials, I have no “busywork” for my classes except for the assigned readings.  Granted, my four English courses combined give me a hefty reading load for the semester, I counted approximately seventeen books that I should be finished with by the end of the term, but I don’t have to waste my time doing worksheets or other things like that, which is absolutely wonderful.  Also, because lecturers only have a couple of courses they lecture on per week, they spend an impressive amount of time preparing for these lectures of theirs, and so almost every single one is top-notch quality.  The lectures for me have ranged from the serious (debating sexism in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew), to the quirky (the overabundant sex in the Victorian era, including a man who claimed to have slept with over one-thousand women and wrote a detailed account of his exploits), and to the utmost hilarity (mockingly comparing the similarities between Wuthering Heights and Twilight).

Though the whole registration system was a tad on the side of FUBAR, it got easier once I stopped caring and just let it work itself out, and so if you go in ready to take your time and not panic, it’ll be a much more relaxed process.  And if it wasn’t apparent, I really do love my classes, which were one of the big reasons I came to TCD.  I get to take a wide-range of topics, and the lecturers really do know their stuff without coming across as stuffy, over-learned windbags.  Can’t really complain too much with that being the case.

Incredible. It’s been 100 days now here in Buenos Aires, and I only have six and a half weeks left.  Time is passing by so quickly, and I still have so much to see and do.  When they prepare students for studying abroad, they tell them that all students fall into this rushed period of needing to get everything done in a short period of time.  Most students think they can avoid this, but everyone gets in the same trap: the trap of routine.

We become so set on becoming part of the city life and culture that we live its daily life as if we didn’t have a number counting down the length of our stay, until we realize that we do.  From then, its a crazed struggle to schedule bus trips, flights, concerts and the like.

Luckily, I am realizing this now, so that I can work to schedule events soon.  Still left on my list: trips to Mendoza, Argentina, Calafate to see the glaciers, Colonia again for Thanksgiving, take part in Tango lessons, and see a local soccer game (not the Argentine national team).

One of my previous goals got knocked off the list this past weekend.  Our study abroad organization took us on a two day trip to Rosario.  Unlike Colonia, Rosario is an Argentine city, but in the same vein it has little in common with Buenos Aires.  Rosario is a city of 1.25 million people, making it tied for second place (with Cordoba) on the list of Argentina’s most populous cities.  Like Buenos Aires, it is a city built on a river; in this case, the Rio Parana, one of South America’s longest and widest rivers.  However, its coastline couldn’t be any more different.

Buenos Aires’ coast, lamentably, is only made up of shipping docks and dirty water; no beaches can be seen, and there is relatively little green space along the shore.  Rosario, on

the other hand, has a coast lined with parks for Argentines to enjoy during great weather, which we had the fortune to experience, along with great restaurants as well specializing in seafood.

We arrived in Rosario on Saturday about midday after a four-and-a-half hour drive.  We stayed at the Holiday Inn of Rosario.  For those of you don’t know, I don’t have a television in my host family’s house and my bed is about the size of my body, so the ability to stretch out and flip through cable TV offerings was truly rewarding, as odd as it sounds.  Anyways, we were then taken to a fantastic seafood restaurant along the coast, and my friend and I polished off an entire fish.   For the first time, I ate a fish eye, and I have to say it was quite delicious.

The rest of the weekend was filled with many walks and tours along the parks of the coastline, which were throughly enjoyable, and another dinner on Saturday night at a very classy joint.  However for me, the highlight of the weekend was visiting the National Flag

Monument.  The Monument is an absolutely enormous concrete structure in the center of Rosario paying homage to the heritage of Argentina and its (in my opinion, great) flag.  At the center of the tower is the crypt of Manuel Belgrano, Argentine statesman and creator of the flag.  At the Southernmost end of the Monument is the flag itself, and at the Northern end is the gallery of honor featuring the flags of the all the Americas.

The monument itself was overwhelming and fascinating.  It is regarded as one of the only examples of fascist architecture in Argentina, built in the 1950s and characterized by its imposing, concrete structure and language engraved on the statues speaking of defense of the “homeland”.  The front of the tower was made to look like a boat, representing the discovery of Argentina, and statues on the sides depict various figures, such as the Atlantic Ocean, the Rio Parana, the Andes, and the Mother Protector of the Nation.

I couldn’t get enough of this massive monument and took lots of pictures of it, and you can see them in my latest photo album on Facebook.  Aside from the aforementioned activities, we also took a 3 hour boat ride up and down the Rio Parana, from which we could see the

entire Rosario coast and the nature on the other side of the river.  It was a perfect afternoon, and a great weekend to get away from the daily grind of Buenos Aires.

Well, there’s still so much to do! Next up, hopefully, are a club soccer game and Calafate.  I’ll keep you posted.

I just got back from the Ifsa-Butler Adventure Weekend last night, and it was amazing.

Studying in London has been an amazing experience so far. There’s so much to see and do, and I don’t feel like a mere semester here is anywhere near enough time to experience it adequately.  Yet there is so much more to England than just its capital city, and this past weekend really helped me to explore more of the country.

The Adventure Weekend for students studying in London was a trip to the famous Lake District National Park, in the county of Cumbria. We were staying near Keswick, in the far northern section of the Lake District, close to Scotland and exceptionally far away from London; the drive took over seven hours! However, the views of the countryside were amazing; I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much green in my life, nor so many sheep. Once we arrived, some of us stayed in the activity center’s hotel, while the rest of us spent our nights at the local hostel. I’d never stayed in a hostel before, though I had looked into online. It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined when reading about sharing a room with random people; we all got to know each other really well, and were really only in the hostel for sleeping and eating.

The first night, after dinner, everyone went to the activity center for the ‘Pub Quiz Night’, thrown by the Ifsa Butler staff. The categories covered a wide variety of ranges, and things quickly became highly competitive. I was lucky to be in the winning group, and I’m definitely going to need to look into quiz nights at the local pubs around my university.

Saturday was the best day of the trip, with dozens of activities to choose, from the leisurely to the terrifyingly exciting. I chose Archery and Coracle (traditional Welsh boat) building for my AM activity. As expected, I got soaked pulling my coracle across the river, but was lucky in that mine didn’t sink or capsize! Gorge Scrambling, in the afternoon, was amazing; my best way of describing it would be to say that it’s like a combination of hiking, swimming, and mountain climbing. My friend Anya, a literature major, preferred to go on a more relaxed tour of the famous countryside, heading out to points such as the Castlerigg stone circle and Beatrice Potter’s cottage. Later that night, the Ifsa Butler staff hosted a dance party. I’m usually picky with music, but I feel like the DJ did a great job keeping everyone happy despite different tastes.

Sunday I chose to walk around Keswick, the largest town in the Lake District, rather than hike around the lakes; my muscles were exceptionally sore from the fun of the previous day! I’m positive that a lot of people shared my sentiments, as the bus was crowded and from what I could tell only a handful of people went on the hike. Afterwards, around noon, we began to the long journey back to campus.

Overall, I think that the Adventure Weekend was an amazing event. The English countryside is beautiful, but if not for this trip I would never have even thought to explore all that it has to offer. Normally when I think of traveling, I think of cities, or particular sites that I would love to visit; yet I’d never heard of the Lake District before this trip, or understood why it’s such a popular vacation spot for the British and Scottish.  Now, I wouldn’t mind going back again on my own, if given the chance.

Not much to say about my life so far. A little drama regarding one of the other programs but hopefully future students wont have to deal with it. So it’s not worth relating.  Life goes on. The food is getting a little more… depressing. We have the same thing every night. But then when I go out to eat it makes the food taste so much better. College is college. Do your homework, try and stay awake through class, answer questions.

The next few weeks should be more interesting though. We’re planning on going to El-Alemain this weekend and on Monday we have tickets to see Tutankhamun the Musical, then Dahab on the Red Sea for 5 days. Shortly after that a cruise down the Nile. Then finals week. After finals my two best friends from home are coming to visit! Then back to the states.

I have a lot of video. But the internet here is so unstable and for uploading video it takes forever. The maximum file size we’re allowed to upload at once is 100mb, and that takes on the order of an hour. Assuming it doesn’t crash mid-upload. I’m going to wait until I get back to America to upload the rest of them, sadly. I will have an internet connection on the order of 500,000x faster (not exaggerating..) and my home computer is much faster, so I will be able to manipulate the video so they are longer and better quality.

Hey all,

Today a bunch of us ran a marathon to benefit a Children´s Hospital down here called Conin that provides food and checkups and in some cases a home for malnutritioned children here in Mendoza and around the world. It was a great time. 5 of us promoted the marathon for our Desarrollo Regional concentration class and more than a dozen of us ran it! Annabel, Alana, Meg, Melanie and I ran the 10 k along with Robert and Angus. Joy, Stephanie, Kate, Mary and Brian ran the 4 k! And I´m pretty sure I am missing a couple people. Dan, Ivonne and my host mom came to watch us finish.

It was the only marathon I have every been to that began and ended with a group mambo class (the latin american warm up and cool down hahaha). Who knew running six miles could be so fun?? There were about 1500 people running, so that means CONIN raised at least 50,000 pesos!! It was 50 to run the 10k and 30 for the 4k.

Here´s a great pic of our 5 girl group running the 10k!

Cariños de Mendoza,

Nikki

This past weekend, I went to the Lake District, or the mountains North West England. A rather popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes and its mountains (or fells), and its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth. I was lucky enough this weekend to stay in the same area once inspired Wordsworth. IFSA Bulter Adventure weekend in the mountains of England’s Lake District; a well preserved national park.

Honestly, I don’t know how describe to you how beautiful this area is. I was content to be able to absorb this picturesque scenery on my own, for personal benefit. The first night, we arrived after a 6 hour journey and settled into the Glaramara Hostel. Then we all gathered for a delicious 3 course meal of your choosing at the hostel. Homemade ice cream was phenomenal. After dinner, we sat in the common room, with the fire place for some pub quiz, more or less, a trivia night! I was happy to make some new friends and reunite with some old ones that I’ve met at orientation that night whom also provided enjoyable company for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday we had a choice of two activities. So after a hearty traditional English breakfast, we departed for our respective activities. I chose to via ferrata for the first half of the day. Via Ferrata, the literal translation from Italian is “iron road”, it is a mountain route which is equipped with fixed cables, staples, ladders, and bridges. The use of these allows otherwise isolated routes to be joined to create longer routes which are accessible to people with a wide range of climbing abilities. They are found in a number of European countries, and quite the popular recreational leisure sport in Europe. The first via ferratas were built in the Dolomite mountain region of Italy during the First World War, to aid the movement of mountain infantry.

This activity provided an opportunity for me to see the beauty of being in the countryside. Below are a few of the many pictures to capture the beauty that I witnessed on this trip.

Saturday night was disco night! There was a small bar at one of the hostels, dance floor and a DJ. It was nice to hear American music and dance like we are used to. The night was a lot of fun joined by wonderful company of friends.

The next day we all groggily crawled out of bed to another delicious breakfast and I realized that we had another activity that morning-walking tour of Keswick. We walked around the town of Keswick (pronounced Kesick, w is silent) for about 2 hours. Fun Fact-pencil was discovered in Keswick, England. It was a cute little town, reminded me of Brighton.

This picture was taken in the Hope Park in Keswick.

This sums up an exhausting but amazing weekend! I thank Bulter for this well organized trip. It feels good to get out of London for a weekend, a change of taste makes the return way sweeter. I returned to Pooley House around 9 pm Sunday night to a hot long shower and bed, I never felt more content.