Amherst College Global Education Blog
Wow, I can’t believe it’s already March; I feel like time has been slipping away since the start of the semester. I definitely feel more socially and academically acclimated than I did after my first post. The workload feels a lot more similar to Amherst, but perhaps more difficult since everything is in Spanish. A year ago, I would have
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By Lily Fang ’18
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I took my first step out of Logan airport, looked around me and sighed deeply. I was surrounded by mountains of snow. There was black ice everywhere. Temperatures were sub-zero. The wind was frigid. My nostrils soon went numb…even breathing hurt. It was at that moment that I began asking myself precisely why I had come back. The next week,
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“Vôce vai ficar para Carnaval?” Are you staying for Carnival? When I first arrived in Rio de Janeiro over a month ago this was always the second or third question people would ask me. Cariocas (people originally from Rio de Janeiro) would ask because they are used to having foreigners, both from other countries or other parts of Brazil, ambush
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When I walk into a store, what do I say? Is it rude to say hello in the English Language? What about saying goodbye in English? What about ordering food? “I’d like to have so and so.” Or I could try in Czech: “Dam si Smažený vepřový řízek s bramborovým salátem.” Whenever I try saying the
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Hello! Welcome to my first official post during my second semester in Havana, Cuba. I can’t believe how fast the first four weeks of the new semester went by! I was initially nervous to start another semester in Havana with a new program. How would I maintain old connections while also trying to fully integrate myself within a new
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But where are you really from? Where are you from? I live in the US. But where are you really from? Why does it matter? Because you don’t look like everyone else and I was wondering about your origins. The “where are you really from” question gets me every time. It follows me everywhere in Aix, from classrooms to restaurants, the dinner table to
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Homesickness didn’t immediately hit me in either semester. Each time, it started as an almost non-existent feeling, hidden by the wonder of study abroad, and slowly it grew into an urgency to be back home close to my family, warm in my bed. Right now, as I try to picture the life I am returning to, even Amherst, with its
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Every blunder in French is either blasphemous or sexually inappropriate. During the monotonous 40-minute shuttle to Marseille, I always keep my eyes peeled for a stretch of graffiti that reads “Christ est mort pour nos peches” – “Jesus died for our peaches.” In the split second the writing is in sight, I steady my phone and snapchat a picture to every French
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In the months leading up to my departure for Taipei, I began browsing the weekly billboards of Taiwan for their top 100 songs. I was ashamed, as a Taiwanese-American, to have neglected to integrate more Taiwanese/Taiwanese-American repertoire into my musical tastes. My exposure to Asian/Asian-American music had been limited to the ballads that my parents played in my childhood, the
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