Amherst College Global Education Blog
Tadaima! I’m back! As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the last week traveling down to Okinawa, then up to Tokyo before returning on an overnight bus to Kyoto, arriving girigiri into Monday morning classes. It was nice having some time off before spiraling into these last few weeks of the semester, and luckily my program funds these
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This past weekend I traveled to Amsterdam, my first trip out of the Iberian Peninsula this semester! I flew there by myself, and spent two days exploring the city on my own before meeting up with another friend for the rest of the trip. Amsterdam is famous for being a liberal city, full of new opportunities, and that certainly proved
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Hey guys! This week I’ll be writing a bit about forms of art I’ve encountered so far during my time in Japan. It’s forced me to reflect on gigabytes of pictures and a 6 page bucketlist I’m still working through, so bear with me! My general impression of art in Japan, be it through music/entertainment/performance or more traditional forms such
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Hello readers! My name’s Omar and I am currently studying abroad with the Associated Kyoto Program (AKP) at Doshisha University in Japan. I decided that I would be coming to Japan by the Fall of my first year, but I wasn’t completely sure of when, for how long, or which part of the country I wanted to come to. My
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Amherst’s Japanese department has an annual winter Curry party at Tawa-sensei’s home along with a sushi party in the spring, which I always made sure to take advantage of. Besides that, my experiences with Japanese food before coming here were limited. NYC restaurants can be pretty expensive for one, but finding one that is actually authentic has its own challenges.
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I started learning Japanese for several reasons but one of my biggest motivations was a desire to learn more about a people that I had few interactions with. Language facilitates cultural exchange, especially in using it to communicate nuances that are otherwise lost in translation. You can learn a lot through language, but there are many things that can only
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I came to Spain speaking almost none of the language. I took one semester of Spanish way back at the beginning of Freshman year, but that didn’t stick with me for very long. I figured, why not just go? I’d immerse myself in Spanish and come out, if not fluent, at least able to cobble together a coherent conversation. I
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Back in the States I never drink coffee. Maybe it’s the terrible coffee served in Val, maybe it’s the excessive price of a latte at Rao’s or Starbucks, but coffee has never been my thing. Within three days of getting here though, I was addicted to café con leche. Café con leche is pretty similar to an American latte without
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Hey, reader! Did you miss me? (¿Me extrañaste?) I just got back from a weekend trip in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. It was my last chance to relax before I would have to begin attending orientations for the possible universities in which I could study. In Valparaíso, I visited the port, major monuments, and enjoyed some seafood. I also
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Journey to the Corner of the Earth: Arriving in Santiago, Chile I honestly felt like an astronaut as I boarded that international flight heading from Atlanta to Santiago. I’m not talking about a contemporary astronaut going on a trip to the moon. I felt more like I was in some kind of time dilation science fiction story where the interstellar
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