Amherst College Global Education Blog
I have been here for four weeks now, just under a month. Long enough to begin to feel comfortable, to touch the cultural nuances of this country, but not long enough for the raw newness to have faded yet. I am still surprised by the manicured hedges on the side of the highway, the silhouettes of shipping cranes over the
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“Monsieur, c’est pour les femmes.” “Oui,” I respond, “oui, oui… je suis la faim.” Faim? La faim? Really, Ellen, you are The Hunger, is this some new superhero? You took the time to take off your sweatshirt, cover your hair with a hat, and pull the necklace out from under your shirt, but somehow, you forgot to prepare your tongue.
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The first day of the class The entrance to the school building was packed with people where three guards were checking ID cards and bags of each student. Entering the lecture room, I was struck by its gigantic size. Rows of seats were filled with students, about a hundred and more at the lowest estimate. Presently, the door opened again
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I thought I would structure my first post as a primer to Yale-NUS, hopefully to give some context on where I will be going to school for this upcoming semester. Yale-NUS is liberal arts college that was founded as a partnership between Yale University and the National University of Singapore in 2013. This means that all of the current seniors
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Moi! My name is Ellen and I am studying in Finland at the University of Helsinki. I am a mathematics major at Amherst but at the University of Helsinki I am a student in the Faculty of Arts. I have come to Finland hoping to explore Nordic life and to experience a more self-guided education system. While I am
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Kia ora! My name is Marc Daalder, and I’m studying this semester in Wellington, New Zealand. At Amherst I’m a Class of 2018 History major, and at Victoria University of Wellington I’ll be taking a mixture of History and Political Science courses, while also involving myself in the local journalism and activism scenes. Although I’ve lived internationally
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Hi! I’m Tasha, a junior Environmental Studies major and current exchange student at Yale-NUS, which is a small liberal arts college (much like Amherst) in Singapore. I am spending my time here taking classes on environmental policy, climate change, and urban studies. I’m excited to learn more about the implications of urban planning and cultural diversity in
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“A realistic goal for the semester is to make one good French friend.” I scoffed then. It was early September, during orientation for my study abroad program in Bordeaux. Confined to the stuffy university classroom, I was antsy. I longed to begin the experience already, to be free from the long hours of powerpoint presentations and overwhelming logistics. I had
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Moscow is lit for NYE. Going to Europe and the States for Christmas is overrated. Go to Russia for New Year’s instead. I’ve been at my grandparents’ in Moscow for the past few weeks, and before that, traveling with family around Germany around Christmas. I’ve been relaxing, talking with family, celebrating the New Year with traditional extravagant Russian festivities. This
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I write now a little less than a month before my flight home. It’s at this point in my stay that, when spending time with our now close-knit group of friends, someone occasionally mentions that we have less than four weeks together before we all part ways. Then someone else tells that person to shut up. At this point, I’m
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