Amherst College Global Education Blog
Over two years have passed since I returned from studying sustainable development in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Since then, I graduated with a degree in environmental studies and took a post-bac job at Amherst College’s Office of Sustainability as the Sustainability Green Dean. All of these experiences are fueled by my lifelong interest in the environment, but they’re also influenced by
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In my second post, I introduced what it is I wish to explore during my time in Japan. It was split into roughly three categories– food, the tea ceremony, and traditional festivals. The initial research I conducted about these topics was accurate, but the real experiences were much more impactful. This fifth post will serve as a conclusion of my
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Some (but not all) of my favorite eats 🙂 Traditional Japanese breakfasts can be eaten at hotels and ryokans (traditional Japanese inns). There’s often natto (fermented soybeans), some kind of fish, rice, soup, and vegetables. Okonomiyaki & Yakisoba The leftmost and rightmost pictures are okonomiyaki and the center is yakisoba. Hiroshima and Osaka were the two most popular spots I ate
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Beginning My Reflections Boy, what a semester it has been. As is always the case with me, time felt so slow– too slow– in the beginning, but looking back at it from the end, it went by extremely quickly. My semester in Japan has been full of surprises (both good and occasionally not-so-good) and so with this post, I will
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After much consideration, the most useful lesson I learned this summer was to “always try everything once”. Obviously, there are boundaries to this saying– there are a handful of things I absolutely recommend never trying. But, in terms of cultural immersion through history, friends, and food, it’s hard to go wrong. I strongly believe that giving everything a try lets
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I think many of us can relate to wondering or being asked where we are from. I often go into a run-on sentence of self-instruction. It goes, “I was born in Korea but then adopted as a baby to the United States and so I grew up in New Jersey!”, and that tends to be the best-abbreviated version I can
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Hi! My name is Kendall Levine and I am a political science and Asian languages & civilizations double major finishing up my 3rd year. This fall I will be studying at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan on the language intensive track in hopes of returning with fluency in Japanese. I’m super excited to experience a culture different from the ones
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After my semester in Singapore ended, I packed up my belongings and traveled around Southeast Asia with my friends for a couple weeks. On my flight back to the US, I opened up the in-flight entertainment and found myself gravitating toward the movie Crazy Rich Asians, perhaps an attempt to savor the last bits of Southeast Asia. The first few
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Hello! As I find myself writing this, it is the very middle of the summer. Since I returned from Thailand, I have started a new internship in New Haven, a city that I have never lived in before. Thailand seems like worlds ago. When I reflect back to my time in Thailand, I think of so many wonderful experiences. Some
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Although Amherst offers few courses on urban studies, I’ve always been fascinated by our urban environment and topics such as the social life of cities and the intersection between sustainability and urbanization. Singapore has proved to be the perfect setting for me to explore these topics. My urban studies course at Yale-NUS is unique for its breadth and comparative focus,
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