The 8.8 magnitude earthquake occurred only after our second day in Santiago (the capital of Chile). After two weeks, the aftershocks are still coming with three today being about the same magnitude as the devastating Haiti earthquake. Luckily, none have occurred less than 90 miles away from Santiago. Don´t get me wrong - waking up to the first earthquake at about 4 in the morning was an experience I will never forget. The ground shook forever it seemed (little more than a minute really) and I jumped up when my host parent yelled for me 'ven aqui Michael! ven aqui!' Objects off shelves were flying everywhere, all you can hear is furniture rumbling and glass shattering. It was all very surreal at the time. To finish the night the entire street chatted with each other or slept outside on cushions and blankets.

Cliff Hull '11

Like Wabash, Leiden University has a very rich academic history; it lists among its alumni John Quincy Adams and the current Queen Beatrix of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Furthermore, the town of Leiden has been a university town since William of Orange founded Leiden University in 1575. Even though the weather has been pretty chilly, it has been bearable riding my bike to class on cobblestone streets lined on one side by canals and on the other by five and six hundred-year-old buildings.

For my first three weeks here I took an intensive Dutch language course. One of my academic goals for my study abroad experience has been to learn conversational Dutch. Dutch is one of the parent languages of Afrikaans, which is one of the national language of South Africa. I was born in South Africa before moving to America as a baby, so I never got a chance to learn my mom’s native language. Luckily for me, I had no idea that I would get such an intensive language course. We spent four hours per day for the better part of three weeks learning Dutch from a renowned Dutch language professor. All the work paid off, as I have had a few conversations with my mom over Skype in Dutch, not to mention with many Dutch people around Leiden.

Because the Netherlands is such a small country, I’ve had a chance to travel on the weekends to different parts of the country. This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel to the original Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam with the University’s International Student Network. We went to the Heineken Experience, where we got to tour the original 1867 Heineken Brewery, see the famous Heineken Shire horses in their stables, as well as go through an interactive museum detailing the bottling process as well as the history of the Heineken family.

And on the weekend leading up to the beginning of Lent, I was able to celebrate Carnaval in the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, one of the biggest of such celebrations which are most prevalent in the southern Catholic provinces.

The rest of my classes are starting this week, so I’ll hopefully be checking back in with more updates soon.

Next Wednesday I'm going to see the Netherlands play the United States in an international friendly soccer match, and then I'm headed the next day to Barcelona and Valencia to visit Derrick Yoder '11, Adam Auter '11, and Chris Beedie '11.
 

It’s time to start a new chapter of my stay in China. On Sunday, I’ll be taking an overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai. Initially I was planning to leave Beijing a little bit earlier, but since many Chinese are coming back from Spring Festival celebrations, getting tickets for this week wasn’t easy. However, I think I should have enough time to make a smooth transition. My IES Abroad orientation begins on March 2^nd and classes at Fudan University don’t start until the March 8^th. It’s mind-blowing to me that I was able to learn and experience so much even though my study abroad program has not started yet. This was only possible because the hospitality and generosity of a member of the Wabash family, Khurram Tahir’01. I always told prospective Wabash students that the Wabash alumni network is one of our greatest assets and now I have yet another personal experience to back these words up.  If it weren’t for Khurram, I don’t know if I would have a chance to visit China’s capital this year. It was an awesome opportunity and I did my best to use my time here wisely. I made good progress with my Mandarin and helped prospective Chinese Wabash men learn more about our college. I also started getting ready for the exciting upcoming BD Medical internship and made sure to go out to test the language and experience some of the things that the Beijing area has to offer.

Last week, for example, I completed the Jinshanling (金山岭) - Simatai (司马台) Great Wall hike. The views were amazing and I felt really lucky to have the chance to set my foot on one of the 2007 new wonders of the world. I will certainly miss Beijing as a city and all the people I met here, but it’s time to move on. I’m thrilled about the Fudan University semester. I’m sure it will be a time of personal growth, learning and… fun:) My first week will probably be quite unpredictable and very hectic. Therefore, it might take me a little bit more than usually to share my experience with you, but I will make sure that the next note gives you a good feel for China’s largest city.

Please continue keeping your fingers crossed as I’m waiting to hear about the Dill Grant. My C-ville host parents, thank you for your invaluable help this week.

As I mentioned before, with a little bit more free time on my hands this week, I plan on doing some travelling. Being here completely on my own and not being a fluent speaker of Mandarin proved making outside of Beijing travel plans somewhat difficult, but with the help of a Chinese friend, I was able to book a Great Wall hike for this Wednesday. I will travel about three hours outside of Beijing to金山岭 (Jinshanling.) I’m really looking forward to this hike and I will surely share this experience with you in my next note. Also this week, I will be finally able to start making arrangements for my transition to Shanghai.

On Friday, I submitted my Dill Grant application for a very exciting project that would let me study Mandarin in China in this summer. Please keep your fingers crossed friends!

The the upcoming semester at Fudan University is getting closer with every day. I keep receiving more and more correspondence from IES Abroad. In a few days, I will book my train ticket (in China one can only do so no more than 10 days prior to the planned departure date.) Just last Saturday, I had a chance to meet Christopher Qin, who will be one of the students in my IES Abroad Shanghai program. Chris is currently a sophomore at University of North Carolina and is originally from China. He stopped by in Beijing to visit relatives and discovered through facebook that I’m currently staying in that city. Chris invited me to join him for the Beijing Duck, probably the single most famous Beijing dish. Afterwards, we were also able to enjoy a very nice walk in the Choayang Park. It turned out that Chris is a very interesting and extremely friendly person. I really hope that all the people in my IES program will be as interesting. I also hope that I will challenge myself and learn a lot from the academic portion of the program.

This week I have a little bit of work since I have to submit my Dill Grant application. However, I plan to do so before the weekend so that I can make sure I have plenty of time to be out for the New Year’s celebrations, which I will describe in next week’s blog note.

I still have to make up my mind on how I want to spend it though. Through the work I’ve been doing for Wabash College admissions, I was invited by a prospective Wabash student to welcome the New Year with him and his family in the Hunan province located in southern China. As appealing as that sounds, I was initially planning to celebrate here and use the short break from my Chinese classes to sightsee some more in the Beijing area since I haven’t had a chance to see many tourist attractions here due to my busy schedule. Moreover, I will be heading south to start my study abroad program at Fudan University soon after the end of the Spring Festival. However, no matter what I’ll end up doing, I will make sure to share it with you on this blog:)

It turned out that with the help of Beijing friends I made during my first few days here, I was soon on my way to pursuing my January and February goals. Because my study abroad program at Fudan University doesn’t start until March, I wanted to primarily learn as much Mandarin as possible within those two months, acquire a better understanding of the Chinese culture, get to know Beijing, and prepare for the part-time BD Medical Shanghai internship.

I’ve been taking Mandarin classes for over three weeks now. Thanks to my very good teachers, I am already able to communicate a little bit in Chinese. This has been very helpful to my survival here, from everyday grocery shopping to trying to strike up very simple conversations with the wedding guests. It also helped me during my exploration of Beijing. As the capital of China and home to 12 million inhabitants, Beijing offers quite a lot, almost anything can be found here. On Sunday, for example, I attended afternoon mass in English at one of the Beijing Catholic churches. So far, my experience here has been very positive. I’m looking forward to spending one more month in Beijing. This weekend I will be finishing up my Dill Grant application, which I really hope will allow me to study Mandarin in China in the summer prior to my return on the campus.

My first week abroad has been nothing short of awe-some. I have already seen, heard, and experienced so many new sights and sounds of the Italian culture than I could have originally imagined.

I spent my first evening at a dinner on a balcony right beside the majestic heights of the Duomo of Milan, a massive cathedral towering over the surrounding buildings. I couldn't believe it was real when I first saw it; its sheer size made me think it looked like an oversized model designed for the Lord of the Rings movies.

I've spent my other nights exploring the local transportation system, finding new ways to get to and from my apartment. Along with a complete subway system, buses and trams link the various concentric circles of the city. Taxis and motorbikes constantly zip past at insane speeds, squeezing into uncomfortably close quarters with other moving vehicles, usually going another direction. I don't think I'll ever utilize that type of transportation.

For the most part, however, I've stuck close to my apartment and the surrounding area, going out for groceries and school supplies. Trying to immerse myself in the culture is still really important to me, but for now much of my time and effort has been spent establishing a reliable "home base" while I'm here. The smallest things, such as how to use the washing machine, how many grams of meat to buy, and whether or not 8,50 Euros a month for decent phone coverage is too much to spend, have taken up the majority of my first week.

Does this mean I'm doomed to remain cloistered in my room for the next three months? No way. Not a chance. It's taken me more time than I expected to get used to general living, but that's not gonna stop me from venturing outside the city -- and eventually the country -- to play a few games of REAL football with the locals.

Plus tonight was a good sign: I cooked my first genuinely balanced meal since I got here. Polposa red sauce over penne pasta with some ground beef from the deli, next to an oil and vinegar salad and italian bread and grapes. Not bad, eh? I'll get the hang of this whole "Milan" thing in no time.

This event took place in Zhuozhou City (涿州市) just outside of Beijing. In the company of my Beijing friends, I arrived in Zhuozhou on Saturday afternoon. We had a fantastic dinner with many Beijing dishes and I got to know the wedding couple as well as some of the guests. The actual celebration took place on Sunday morning. I was fascinated by all the different customs I was observing, but also a little bit nervous: my role at the ceremony was to read the official Chinese marriage certificate in front more than 200 wedding guests. Considering I’ve been learning Mandarin for just two weeks, this was a very interesting task. My friend Li Xin (李欣) wrote the text in pinyin (a Romanized system for Mandarin pronunciation) the evening before the wedding. I practiced doing the best I could to get all the tones right (Mandarin is a tonal language.) The result can be seen in the video below. The wedding guests said that they were able to understand me, which I consider a huge success :)

Overall, the wedding celebration was very different from the western weddings I attended, but it was very interesting and everybody was extremely friendly and hospitable. So far my time away from the Wabash campus has been eye-opening and truly unpredictable. Beijing as the capital of China is a great environment to learn the language. I am very thankful to Wabash for this opportunity and am also looking forward to all the things I will experience in the months to come, especially as my semester at Fudan University and my BD Medical internship start in March.

As I already mentioned, I will do my best to make sure that I am taking full advantage of the time I spend in China. Apart from being a student at Fudan University in the spring, I will also complete a part-time internship with Becton, Dickinson and Company, a global medical equipment producer. I will be working at their Chinese headquarters located in Shanghai. I received this remarkable internship offer from Greg Spencer’76, BD Business director for Asia-Pacific. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Spencer in Beijing on Thursday. We drank coffee and Chinese green tea while discussing the nature of   work at Becton Dickinson. I am very thankful for this internship opportunity and will work hard to significantly contribute to BD Shanghai.

Since Wabash does not offer Mandarin classes, I am also currently preparing my application for the summer project Dill Grant available to Wabash students through the generosity of Michael Dill '71. I would like to stay in China for the summer in order to learn as much Mandarin as I can before returning to Wabash for my senior year.

I devoted my first week in Beijing to learning Mandarin, getting to know the city, and making local friends. I survived a record snowfall and witnessed China dethroning Germany as world’s biggest exporter. Being a native of Upper Silesia, the most urbanized region of Poland, I really feel at home in the Beijing metropolis. It’s a great environment to learn the language. Chinese people are 

friendly as well as extremely helpful and patient with foreigners who try to learn their language. I really feel that that this spring (and hopefully summer) will be a life-changing experience.

Departure.

I'm finally here. After three long weeks of Christmas Break, my trip to study abroad in Milan begins. I know why I'm going abroad this Spring semester: to pursue film studies courses through another culture's point-of-view. I know what airport I'm flying into, where my apartment is, who I'm rooming with, and how much I will have to spend in the first week. I have the equipment necessary to shoot video for this blog. I'm as ready as I can be for this trip, which starts tomorrow.

But to be honest, I have NO idea what to expect over there.

Don't blame Wabash. David Clapp in the Off-Campus Study office has helped me get all the way up to this point, including helpful tidbits and factoids that will prove quite helpful once in Italy. Howard Hewitt in the PR department hooked me up with video-editing software, with which I can develop some nice footage into quick, informative, and realistic insights into the fashion capital of the world. More than anything, my liberal arts background will help me adapt and adjust my own assumptions, which I will improperly and inevitably apply.

There is simply no amount of preparation nor any pre-designed method that can make the transition from one culture to another fully seamless. The "acculturation process", a fancy phrase for the transmission, acquisition, and understanding of another culture compared to my own, is not a switch that I can just flip. It is, as noted, a process, and it will take time.

In view of this, I am nothing less than excited. This journey will not only aid my studies in film, but also broaden my understanding of Italian cultural viewpoints, identifying what specific ideals or customs I assume as standard for people of all nations. My personality will take on a new Italian twist, and my creative writing will persist and flourish. Above all, Italy will change me, and the change will benefit me for the rest of my life.

As the author D.J. MacHale states in the prefaces of his grand Pendragon novels: Hobey ho. And so we go.

I talked to my language professor in the cab from the airport and asked her about Shanghai. She told me that it had 16 million inhabitants. I assumed that I had heard 6 million, about the size of Chicago. It took me a while to grasp what she was saying. I have since learned that estimates range from 16 to over 20 million. Shanghai is the economic capital of China. As the largest sea port, with a developing financial center, and the headquarters of many international corporations it is the wealthiest region per capita in China. Shanghai is its own administrative region, equal to a province in political terms. The city has a very large international community and many virtues for hapless foreigners. For instance, Shanghai has what we call “the magic number;” a call center where you can ask them anything in English and then give the phone to the Chinese person you’re with and the call center will explain to them in Mandarin. This is useful for everything from telling the restaurant what you want to finding your nightlife destination to telling the barber how to cut your hair.

In China they work 7 days a week. Students at Fudan University ask us why we are so frivolous with our time in Shanghai, instead of studying every waking moment. I told him that this was one of our last opportunities to do anything like study abroad for many years. Soon we would have to get jobs and settle down. The students typically respond “Oh, I never thought about it like that. We always work hard and try to get a good job so that by 35 or 40 we can take care of our parents and take vacations and have fun.” To my American ears this sounds depressing, but it’s the view point of everyone in China. It’s also something that I welcome on occasion. Construction projects that in America take months are completed in days in China.

During the National Holiday (60 years of Communist totalitarian rule woo-hoo!) a group of us traveled down to the city of Guilin and then through the Yunnan province. We bought cheap knock-off backpacks and regretted it hours on the trail. My own broke both shoulder straps before lunch. The mountains near Tibet were majestic and beautiful, the roadblocks and checkpoints less so. I was so used to Shanghai that being in the countryside and the absolute poverty there was a surprise. For a socialist society, China is not very egalitarian.

In photos: Top right, Weber with Charlie Kelly '11, who is also studying in China. Center left, Weber's class visiting Taiwan. Bottom right, Will and class visited a Chinese Meditative Garden.

Matthew Scheller '11

When it came time to move into my apartment and head to orientation, I immediately made 5 new friends, one of whom was my roommate. Over the course of a mere 6 days, I felt as if I had gained 100 new friends and had been welcomed into a new community in a foreign environment. It felt as if I had crash landed on some strange planet shaped like a boot and was thrown into a new life.

After a couple of weeks I had already traveled through three quarters of the entire country and had established some very comfortable and what I think will be everlasting friendships with people living all over the United States, people from Pennsylvania, Washington State, Oregan, California, Texas, and even a young woman from Depauw University. Now, before you break down my door carrying torches and pitchforks for befriending the enemy, I must inform you all that her father and uncle are Wabash Men, and she STILL TAILGATES ON OUR SIDE AT THE MONON!

By the end of the second month, I had been from Italy, to Spain, to France, To Greece, and back to the West to Ireland. I had seen the Ancient Sector of Rome and all its riches, I had been to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, visited countless churches and museums all of extravagant beauty, and I had ran in the Olympic Stadium in Athens.

Having said this, I must admit, that though I have seen so many things and experienced so much in only a matter of months, the thing I cherish most about my trip are the friends I have made. I am part of an enormous family of 180 students that are placed in a situation that can be exciting and dangerous, but we have grown together, learned many life lessions, and leaned on each other when in times of need. It really means a lot and strengthens your bond with people when you lose two family members so far from home, and those people are with you every step caring for you and supporting you. I thank God for this experience that no one can ever take from me, but I thank him even more for the people he has introduced into my life.