Category Archives: Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

A New World in the Ordinary

October 27, 2016 cbradley

I had dreamed of traveling abroad since I was in the sixth grade. That year, I began to learn Spanish. As I went to class every Tuesday and Thursday, it became much more than a new language. While I saw photos of fantastic cathedrals and monuments projected onto our blackboard, researched holidays and traditions for homework, and sang along to popular songs at class fiestas, I began to fantasize about what the world looked like outside of my small corner of suburban New York. I decided that if I were to ever travel abroad, Spain would be the first place I would visit.

Eight years later, my middle school ambitions were finally realized as I touched down at Madrid-Barajas airport for a semester abroad. My first few days in the country were a complete whirlwind, five cities in ten days, and hardly enough time to absorb my new reality. Life behind the postcard-perfect sights seemed irrelevant, even nonexistent.

Catherine Bradley But when I finally arrived in Córdoba, where I was to live for the next four months, I began to realize that Spain was more than a giant tourist destination. As my host mom showed me her apartment, as I ate dinner every night with her and her son, as I walked through town center into clothing stores and supermarkets, a jarring thought entered my mind, one that I hadn’t considered before.

People actually live here.

One afternoon, on my way to grab a pre-lunch coffee, I noticed a crowd gathered in the central Plaza de Tendillas. I stepped closer to see a circle of dancers, all dressed in traditional flamenco skirts, large flowers clipped in their hair. At first, I was mesmerized by the movement of their feet, furiously tapping out complicated patterns on the hard concrete. But as I watched for a little while longer, I began to focus on their faces, wrought with concentration. Their intensity belied the fact that many of these dancers were no more than 15 or 16 years old. How many years of practice did that take, to memorize those steps until they were mere reflex?

When the performance was over, many of the girls were embraced by beaming relatives. In many ways, it reminded me of scenes after dance recitals back home. But in other ways, the warm hugs and back pats felt distinctly foreign. The flamenco dances the girls had performed were rooted in hundreds of years of tradition, a celebration born out of the pain of the Romani people as they were exiled from Spanish society in the 18th century. Dancers now make careers out of flamenco in Spain, with some performers enormously popular. Were these girls inspired to dance by a famous artist? Was it a tradition passed down through their family? What was it like to literally be performing years of history with every stamp of your foot?

As I walked back from Tendillas, I thought about how, in many ways, Spanish life was very similar to mine back home in Connecticut. Spaniards go to department stores. They go out to lunch. They watch dance recitals and hug their children tight after the show. But somehow there is always a sense of the foreign. Watching that performance, I felt tradition grip me tightly. I wondered what it was like to grow up in a culture steeped in centuries of history, and to face that history almost daily. I wondered how that affects someone’s childhood and the way they view the world.

Perhaps they are so accustomed to it that they don’t even notice it at all.

I went home. My host mom served lunch. My host brother’s friend came over. We all watched the afternoon news. We made fun of politicians. We cheered at the sports report. We groaned at the weather forecast.

Maybe we weren’t so different. Or maybe we were. But for now, I was content to serve myself another helping of pisto, reach down to pet the family dog as she scratched at my chair, and remind myself once more:

People actually live here.

And right now, so do I.

Catherine Bradley is a senior history major and education minor originally from Ridgefield, Connecticut. She studied abroad in Córdoba, Spain through the PRESHCO program in Spring 2016 and hopes to return soon. In her spare time, Catherine enjoys writing, cooking, and watching baseball.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Notes From the Field: On Being a Travel Writer

October 27, 2016 Laura Itzkowitz

I’m a travel and lifestyle writer and editor, though sometimes people seem to see me as a unicorn or some other mystical creature. When I introduce myself, my interlocutors often express incredulity that I’m able to make this lifestyle work—sometimes I’m incredulous myself. Since I went fulltime freelance last February, I’ve spent 86 days on the road, including 26 days in Italy, 12 days in Australia, 8 days in Portland, Oregon, 5 days in Madrid, 4 days in New Orleans, and a weekend in Marfa, Texas—and that’s just the beginning. I’ve logged hours on planes, trains, cars, boats, and a helicopter. I couldn’t even tell you how many pages I’ve written—suffice it to say a lot. I feel very lucky and privileged to have my dream job, but it’s not magic. I’ve worked extremely hard to get where I am, and I hope my path will inspire others to follow their dreams too.

When I’m not on the road, I’m in Brooklyn—where I share an apartment with three roommates—working from home, a coffee shop, or library. A typical day starts at 7:30 am, when my alarm goes off. Some mornings I go to the gym or yoga class, shower, and sit down to work on my laptop with coffee and some yogurt. Depending on the appointments I’ve scheduled, I might head into Manhattan to meet a publicist or colleague for lunch or coffee. In the evenings I often attend industry events, like previews for new hotels, book release parties, new menu tastings, or just meeting over drinks or dinner to talk shop. Though writing is a solitary activity, I’m always out and about gathering intel about travel industry news and learning about places to visit and write about. Writing for travel magazines and websites, there’s a lot of pressure to keep track of the hottest new openings and predict what people are going to be talking about, which I find both challenging and thrilling at the same time.

So how did I get here? In a way it started at Smith, where I began to learn how to channel my passion for traveling, cultural immersion, and writing during my Junior Year Abroad in Paris. Back then, I penned notes in small journals never intended for publication, though they would become the basis for some personal writing I did in grad school. Some of my fondest memories are just sitting in Paris cafes nursing a café au lait and recording my observations and thoughts about the city around me. I kept journaling after I graduated from Smith and went to live in Rome. Being a writer still seemed like an impossible dream until I showed friends some of my vignettes and they encouraged me to do something with them. When I got into the creative writing MFA program at Columbia’s School of the Arts, I knew I had to go.

After two years spent teaching English and writing constantly in Rome, I moved to New York for the two-year grad program and quickly immersed myself in life in the city. I began looking for opportunities to get my work out in the world and started writing for, and then editing, an online magazine called Untapped Cities run by a then-grad student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning (GSAPP). I wasn’t getting paid, but I was gaining experience writing, assigning articles, managing an editorial schedule, and editing work by fellow students. The Huffington Post and Business Insider syndicated some of my articles, and from there I started getting paid assignments. I took a job as a fact checker for Travel + Leisure—which I had long upheld as the gold standard in travel magazines—and for whom I soon began writing and editing.

Christo's Floating Piers at Lake Iseo — Christo’s Floating Piers at Lake Iseo

In a way, the year-and-a-half I spent in T+L’s office was like a second grad school. I was constantly learning about the world through the lens of the talented writers and editors who contribute to the magazine, and I was seeing first-hand how print magazines are produced at a time when print media was working harder and harder to hone the power of the web and social media. Shortly after I started, the longstanding editor in chief retired and a new one took over, ushering in a new era for the publication. Many of the editors I worked closely with over that period have since left, but like old classmates and friends, we’ve stayed in touch and continue to work together at the other magazines and websites they’re now editing. I really can’t overstate the importance of maintaining a strong network of collaborators, especially for freelance journalists. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

I still have those frustrating days when it seems like no one is interested in my ideas and none of my writing is any good, but I have to remind myself that it’s a job like any other. There will be frustrations and setbacks—days when time seems to drag on at a glacial pace—but the rewards of traveling to beautiful places, meeting fascinating people, and contributing to society in my own small way keep me forging ahead toward new challenges and opportunities.

Laura Itzkowitz is a New York City-based writer and editor. She spent her junior year on Smith’s Paris program and lived in Rome for two years after graduating. She holds a BA in French from Smith and an MFA in creative writing & translation from Columbia. She is a contributing editor at Untapped Cities, and her writing has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Brooklyn Magazine, Surface, Architectural Digest, and others. She co-authored New York: Hidden Bars and Restaurants and contributed to Fodor’s Brooklyn. She was named a New York expert blogger by Time Out New York and one of the Top 20 NYC bloggers by Hotel Club. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter @lauraitzkowitz.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

SMØRREBRØD in Copenhagen

October 27, 2016 rlusiaga

When I arrived in Copenhagen for my spring semester abroad, I did not even notice that I walked right past Amman’s airport restaurant, an outlet of downtown’s most famous place for Denmark’s most famous food. Smørrebrød is a broad category of traditional Nordic cuisine, which was rather mysterious to me. It is not pronounced “smore broad” but rather closer to “smoe boe”, and a direct translation from Danish is not very accurate at all; “butter bread” doesn’t describe these decorative dishes at all.

ratna_lusiaga_2016-09-26-essay-image — Danish smørrebrød – beef tartare with egg.

“Decorative” might be an understatement here, as I would rather think of the underlying slice of rye bread as being the chef’s canvas, where he lays on a collage of ingredients that are as pleasing to the eye as tasty to the palate. The brown rye bread sets off the meat possibilities which come next, traditionally either a strong fish such as pickled herring or smoked lox, or else a mound of beef tartare with the bright yellow raw egg yolk shining on top. While I preferred the herring (shying away from red meat), I certainly enjoyed sampling some of the New Nordic innovations such as prawns, crab, tuna, and even carpaccio.

The vegetable ingredients are often the most attractive given the laciness of dill or the stodginess of avocado, or anything in season. These vegetables generally divide into two classes. First there are the staples such as diced onions and capers, obligatory in perhaps 80 percent of recipes. But then come the charismatic ones such as the aforementioned dill, or chives, and perhaps a clever slice of cucumber or radish delicately carved and sculpted. These higher-class vegetables seem to always land on top with just the right angular attitudes, which I doubt come from being tossed at random.

I got my smørrebrød briefing one morning in January , and drew lots with my fellow classmates to determine my destination before setting off from school into the chaos of the Copenhagen lunch hour. The target of my research was the Slotskælderen Hos Gitte Kik restaurant, whose Michelin star and location across

from Parliament attract the sort of official clientele which appreciates the more traditional forms of these dishes rather than the Neo-Nordic.

It wasn’t always this way, these decorative meals for the power elites. Smørrebrød’s origins were more humble in the fog of earlier times: simple finger-food for field workers on limited budget, for whom rye bread and liver paste were the most affordable ingredients. But this all changed in 1883 when the Nimb restaurant, in the famous Tivoli Gardens, served it as equal to their fancier Nordic dishes.

But where can a girl go to find some less traditional smørrebrød? For fancy New Nordic, the famous Schønnemann restaurant would seem a likely candidate, but their high-quality ingredients seemed a bit lost in the concentrated saltiness of their sauces.

Fortunately, on my third outing, I finally connected with Amman’s, the parent restaurant of the very same airport outlet I had totally ignored on my first day in Denmark. It was marvelous.

I had great experiences testing all of these smørrebrød offerings; now I enjoy making my own seafood version. I prefer it without any sauce or butter, and relish the opportunity to decorate it with a favorite fresh salad or fruit.

Ratnasari Lusaka is an Ada, Fall 2017, and food is one of the important parts of her future career, as her professional experience is mostly in event planning. Thus, she took the Anthropology of Food class in Copenhagen as my study abroad program. The New Nordic style of cuisine has given her new appreciation for thoughtfully including local ingredients, particularly seasonal produce.
Her tasting experiences with New Nordic smørrebrød were part of her explorations of a new genre of food where decoration and ingredient are intermingled in ways that leave plenty of opportunity to innovate for years to come.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

A Taste of Cultural Change

October 27, 2016 ieyman

I wanted coffee that day. Not the espresso finished in a matter of seconds that had become habit in the four months since arriving in Paris, and not the immense, watered-down interpretations of coffee reflective of what could be found back home. I wanted filter coffee, a mug of something strong, standing as coffee without pretense, without cream and sugar.

It was a forty-minute metro ride from my apartment in central Paris to the 11th arrondissement, where the Beans on Fire situates itself on the perimeter of Maurice Gardette Square. Walking into the café, you’re immediately confronted with a mass of heavy roasting equipment, which serves as a cooperative where many of the other coffee shops in Paris come to roast their beans. I looked around, shocked to see a crowd of young professional Anglophones eating scones with their coffee, the barista responding to customers in English, and the baker behind the counter frying doughnuts. And then I saw it, café filtre for three euros.

Satisfied with my coffee, I began speaking to the barista and baker about this business structure and learned they each functioned as independent entities within a common space. Amanda, the baker, is an expat from North Carolina and runs Boneshaker Sweet Rolls, while Tim, a native Parisian, is the head barista at O Coffeeshop whose travels to the UK, Scandinavia, and Australia have exposed him to a coffee culture entirely different from what was traditionally found in France. They each described themselves as “pop-ups” in their respective focus, spending Monday through Thursday at the Beans on Fire and then distributing to and setting up business in other cafés throughout the city the rest of the week.

Because of social media’s prevalence in the food world today, I compared this conversation to similar discussions on Instagram. Everything currently trending in Paris’ food realm confirmed this development of expat influence in the city. Images of avocado toast, chia pudding, açai bowls, pizza, and burgers dominated searches of the hashtag “parisfood,” confirming my suspicion that Amanda’s doughnuts were not simply a result of her nostalgia for what she could find back in the States, but rather a fulfillment of what customers, both Anglophone and French, wanted to eat.

This phenomenon appeared throughout my observations in the city. When I was told to go somewhere new, whether for coffee or for dinner, it was always a place where English was spoken and foods reflective of Anglophone culture were in demand. What’s more, I found that previous searches through print publications geared towards food proved antiquated, that this method of finding a restaurant had become obsolete. Food establishments were gaining attention not through Le Fooding or the Michelin Guide, but rather through bloggers and patrons who had found Instagram fame. This rise in social media’s influence over where and what we want to eat drastically changed the atmosphere of these cafés as well. Rather than simply enjoying the food and company, restaurant-goers’ immediate reaction to the food being placed in front of them was How will this look in a picture? How should I situate my latte so that it gets the best lighting, without glare, without compromising the barista’s work? It was commonplace for the person next to me to spend several minutes aligning the various plates on her table, proceeding to stand on her chair to get a better angle, a better shot. In Paris, food has gained what is almost solely a visual interest. Comments on these images of food no longer raise a question of taste.

This focus on aesthetics applied not only to the food but to the people as well. Patrons are always conscious of how they appear in a restaurant, driving one food critic I spoke with to deem them the new clubs, a definition which applies an entirely new social understanding and hierarchy to what previously fulfilled a simple human need: eating.

I created a blog during the year to document my findings. It was titled Sobremesa and served as an online journal composed of interviews with people who I saw as contributing to these shifts being made in the changing identity of Paris’ food. “Sobremesa” is an untranslatable Spanish term describing the time after lunch or dinner you spend in discussion with those who sit around the table as well. My intention for the blog was to become the online equivalent, a space where I exposed the connections between food and culture and showed how this interaction revealed a new image of Paris defined by its food.

Updating the blog allowed me to construct a narrative which gave voice to these developments, bringing to light the observations that visual representations like Instagram only skimmed across. Though I applied my findings to a general impression of Paris’ food culture today, I also heard the personal stories of the people behind such developments, reminding me that though food is indicative of the culture which drives it and reacts to it, food also serves as an intimate connection between people who would otherwise remain strangers.

Though so much was answered in these interviews and in my research, I’m left with the constant reminder that these are occurrences in continual development. Yes, the larger factors and results of cultural and culinary movements take years to generate significant change, but the smaller shifts are instantaneous. As a result, the question of what will happen next is always present in my research, a thought that can manifest itself in so many ways: What will be Paris’ next food trend? What social media platform will appear and completely change the way we see food? Will any of these developments be sustainable enough to alter the external perspectives of Paris’ food?

This all ends in a question of endurance. Before associating Paris with croque monsieur or steak tartare, we think first of the city’s appeal to inventive and authentic thought, a characteristic which will always put Paris at the forefront of creation, whether it be of literature, art, music, or food.

Isabelle Eyman is a senior English Literature and French Studies major. Her favorite places to read are in coffee shops, parks or in any window seat she can find. Upon graduating this year, she hopes to work as an English teacher in the private school environment, later working towards a Ph.D. in English Literature, focusing her work on food’s appearance in 19th and 20th century literature.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Living with the Patriarchy in Madagascar

October 27, 2016 cdeeg

As I prepared for my semester abroad in Madagascar, I heard many warnings and pieces of advice from my family and friends: “Don’t drink the water!” “Hide your money.” “Did you know every person eats 2lbs of rice per day?”

But the most challenging part of my experience abroad wasn’t about health, safety or food – it was learning to adapt to a new culture. Throughout my semester I lived with many different people and experienced many different cultures, but there was one specific instance with which I struggled most.

12112345_10208348785303728_3911451221259690412_n-1-1 — Harrison and Claudia with their hosts

I spent a week living in the village of Antanandava in the Tandroy region of Madagascar. The Tandroy region is one of the poorest in Madagascar, since the sub-arid climate makes it hard for any food to grow. For this week, another student from my study abroad program, a boy named Harrison, and I lived in Antanandava with very little outside contact. Harrison and I were lifelines to each other – familiar faces in an unfamiliar place. Yet as the week wore on, the differences in how he and I were treated became painfully obvious.

Tandroy culture is highly patriarchal. As a woman and a Smithie, I have always been a staunch feminist. This situation put my personal beliefs at odds with my desire to respect the local culture. My first test came when during our first meal together, our host parents suggested that Harrison and I serve ourselves first. Traditionally, the women at a meal serve the men first, eldest to youngest, and then the women may take food from eldest to youngest. The offer for Harrison and me to eat first was because we are vazaha, or white foreigners. We didn’t want any preferential treatment because we are white, so we insisted that traditions be followed. For me, this meant taking my place on the bottom of the totem pole and allowing the men to be considered above me. This was a relatively easy pill to swallow. Some of the other differences, like our separate duties when farming, were clearly split along gender lines but not obviously sexist. So initially, I think I adapted quite well.

12141539_10208348791783890_7156983508789273547_n-1 — Cooking in the Kitchen

The most difficult challenge for me came halfway through the week. Our village received news that a relative living in a nearby city had passed away. It was an extremely sad and painful time for all of Antanandava. There are certain customs surrounding the local culture of mourning. All of the men in the village, including my host father and Harrison, sat for days under the shade of the tree at the center of our village and discussed where the dead girl would be buried. All of the women, including myself, cooked for and served the men. Our kitchen was a small wooden hut for cooking and preparing food which often entirely filled with smoke from the fire. I soon began to resent the fact that as I sorted rice, ground corn, chopped vegetables and developed a cough that would persist for months, Harrison lounged in the shade and ate food I prepared. On a few occasions I literally served food and water to the male elders. It took everything in my power to swallow my pride and play my clearly inferior role.

My anger, however, was directed at the system – not at any of the individuals. If I had encountered a rude, sexist man who raved about female inferiority, it would have been easy for me to stand up for my gender and argue. But everyone I met was excited to meet me and to share their lives. Neny, my host mother, loved leading me around and teaching me new tasks. So if I truly wanted to experience life in Antanandava, how could I begrudge them for treating me how any other woman would be treated?

I never answered that question, and I don’t have any take-away lesson for you, the reader. I never gave a passionate speech on feminism or protested the unequal treatment. Should I have? I don’t know … but for me, my time in Antanandava was not a time for me to force my worldview on others. It was my time to set aside my own preconceived ideas and to come as close as possible to understanding life in another culture. And as difficult as it was, I changed and grew as a person.

She is a senior biology major and geology minor at Smith College. She is very passionate about marine ecology, geo-biology and environmental conservation. She is also a member of Groove A Cappella at Smith, and she loves scuba diving and white water kayaking.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Mutually Intelligible

October 27, 2016 jbouzaher

“Are you incapable of complexity?” –Mountains beyond Mountains

When twenty-four American teenagers and I stepped off a bus and into our new homes in cities nestled in the heart of China’s Sichuan province to start a six-week study of Chinese, we had been told that we were the brightest crayons in that year’s box of applicants, ready to study the official national language of China, Mandarin Chinese, known within China as “the common language.”

imag0979 I could talk and ponder for hours about the experience that followed, an experience that simultaneously taught, pushed, and comforted me every day, but instead I will only tell you about one thing, a thing that was mentioned only in passing during the program’s extensive orientation process: the Sichuan provincial dialect.

Now, when I say Sichuan dialect, know that in China there are dialects within dialects, and that two people who grew up fifty miles apart within the same province do not necessarily understand each other, especially in the southeast where the dialects are notoriously complicated. People have rightly argued that many dialects can be considered separate languages within a Chinese language family.

Keeping that in mind, take the Sichuan dialect and add in teenage web slang, personal habits of speech, and a few dozen idioms. This is what our host families, friends, and pretty much everyone else spoke to each other every day, which meant we felt out of the loop just studying the standardized national Mandarin in the classroom. In addition, since many of the host families spoke dialect or heavily accented Mandarin directly to us, we struggled to communicate the little Chinese that we had a solid grasp on, not to mention adequately respond if a nice auntie gave us a beautiful toast completely in dialect while her faith in our understanding twinkled in her eyes.

The reality showed we were effectively studying Mandarin and dialect, and so dialect became like the ubiquitous pepper of Sichuan cuisine; present at every dinner table, handled differently by everyone. Sometimes we successfully bargained with it, sometimes we were laughable as we tried to speak it in a stilted accent to someone who knew it intuitively, and sometimes we completely gave up.

imag1015 Dialect was another reminder that the world is a lot more complex than anyone likes to think. Historically, there had been no Mandarin, no internet to unify China linguistically, only vast expanses of geographic, cultural, and linguistic variation. I have seen a teenager code-switch from Mandarin to dialect to English, then tell me that she had just finished a masterwork of classically written Chinese literature. I have walked the tactile paths for the blind in a city with a vibrantly oral culture, and visited its school for the deaf and blind. I have watched national news subtitled with the widely understood written language. I have heard a Sichuan dialect speaker sing a song in Guangdong dialect from the bottom of their heart, and listened to an elderly man speak in dialect as thick as the summer heat.

Let me end this field diary by saying that as a language student I wanted to understand everything and to be understood. I confess I also wished that the standard language and the local dialect were “mutually intelligible”. But as a person, I grew to appreciate the space between understanding and not understanding, the history that silhouettes China’s linguistic complexity, the laughter and smiles that needed no translation, and of course the food devoured too quickly to ask its name.

Julia Bouzaher was born and raised in Northeast Ohio. She enjoys being outdoors, watching Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and other television shows, tea, and bread. She has been happily studying languages since the sixth grade. She is a 2020 expected graduate who is looking to major in Environmental Science & Policy and is interested in languages, literature, economics, dark chocolate, government, cultural and landscape studies, and all things in between. Shout out to her big sib, Khulood!

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Notes from a Warm Spanish Night

October 27, 2016 cdavis66

Going to bed was not an option. The noise from the streets was too alluring, too exciting, and much too loud to even consider staying inside and sleeping. While that was oftentimes the case here in Córdoba, it was especially true on this particular weekend. Finally, Las Cruces De Mayo had begun. A yearly tradition celebrated with particular fervor in southern Spain, this weekend-long party marks the beginning of the summer season and is rooted in the story of Saint Helen and her quest to find Jesus’s cross. For the natives of Córdoba, it is yet another worthy reason to bring everything to a halt and throw a city-wide party.

The preparations had begun weeks before, with the city slowly being shrouded in a blanket of elaborate floral installations. Every plaza had been graced with the presence of an enormous wooden cross, coated completely in flowers, as well as the addition of a tent under which was to be served bottomless vino, cervezas, and traditional tapas. Once everything was set in place, the entire city waited in anticipation for Friday night, the first of May, when Las Cruces would officially begin.

As soon as night fell, I was in the streets. The city had come alive. Meandering our way through the crowds from plaza to plaza, my friends and I took part in the celebration. The night was an intoxicating blur of music, dance, and drinks that had us light on our feet and bursting with joy. Having spent nearly a semester learning sevillanas, we proudly danced in the street to the music filling the air, coming toe to toe with the native Cordobeses who had been dancing this way since they first learned to stand. It was a liberating moment to leave behind our years of learning to speak Spanish, and simply let our hips and feet do the talking.

Our ambitious quest to visit every plaza in one evening was impossible from the get-go, but we insisted on trying anyway. Córdoba is filled with more plazas than I can count, many tucked away on side streets and around unexpected corners. Using the music as our guide, we blindly followed the sounds and let them lead us to new places. Around each corner we were greeted by an explosion of color, a higher volume of music, and an extended arm, bronzed by the warm Spanish sun, pointing us in the direction of the bar.

Men and women, some dressed casually, others more traditionally in flamenco skirts and floral hair accessories, danced and swapped partners with ease and grace. A band of jolly, drunken misfits kept the crowd alive with their renditions of classic Spanish songs, and all hands in the air were either twisting with the music or clutching a cup of red wine.

I paused a minute in one of the more crowded plazas, absorbing the joyful scene around me. Every morning since February I had walked these streets on the way to class and they were always quiet, nearly uninhabited at times. And yet, with the advent of nightfall after a beautiful early-summer day, these winding, cobblestone streets had suddenly become vibrant with life. That is the classic Andalucían way. Days spent with family, without haste, and nights spent in the streets, with energy, and with passion.

I took a sip of my tinto de verano under the shadow of a cross and the watchful eyes of a giant poster of Jesus, hung beside a sculpture of a weeping Mary. I tilted my head back to breathe in the night’s sweet air. In any other context, this mix of sensual dance and drink with overt, traditional Catholicism might not have made much sense. In Córdoba, however, that perhaps contradictory combination becomes a powerful duality, and it determines how things get done. All of it, from faith to fun, is rooted in devotion and love for one another. This is the way of life for these Spaniards, and what a wonderful life it is.

Caroline Davis is a Spanish major and Government minor with a love of writing and travel. She is a senior class representative in King House, a contributor to The Sophian and the SmithBySmithies blog, and a student worker with the Office of College Relations. A Connecticut native, she has a strong fondness for political satire and English breakfast tea.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

My Trip to Turkey: An Illuminating Experience

October 27, 2016 nhonca

We live in a time when the first thing that follows “I’m going to Turkey this summer!” is, “But is it even safe?” A time where news of traveling to the Middle East is followed by fading smiles and worry lines. Despite the common sentiment that the Middle East is unsafe and especially hostile to foreigners, my family and I traveled there anyway.

Among the highlights of my trip were going to outdoor markets with my aunt and watching her bargain, as is custom to do; being served a 5 course meal and treated like royalty at a beautiful hotel owned by my dad’s childhood friend; and traveling to Harran, a quaint town approximately a 15-minute drive from the Syrian border. I was reading a book in the car on our drive down from southeastern Turkey, but occasionally I would glance out the window to look at the rolling hills and pistachio trees. About halfway into the drive I looked up to see rows of small white houses on my right, which my mom explained was a Syrian refugee camp.

13507014_1343680395645522_556330706986064147_n After arriving in Harran, my parents told me I should only speak Turkish, not use my iPhone, and remove my jewelry. I asked my mom why I needed to take all these precautions. She told me the people there didn’t necessarily have a lot, and we were fairly near a war zone. She was worried about who might overhear us speaking English, and spread news of our presence to the “wrong people.” After having only heard Turkish for over a week, stepping out of the car and suddenly being surrounded by Arabic mixed with Turkish, I felt as though I had entered another country. The purpose of our little trip was to visit a city rich with history, go to a mosque where a famous pious Muslim was buried, and pray there. Next, we drove to the ruins of Harran Castle. We stepped out of the car to what we thought were the ruins and several guards from the village came over to us, welcomed us, and asked us where we were from. My dad told them he was from Şanlıurfa, carefully leaving out that he hadn’t lived there in over 25 years. The guards then directed us to the site of the real ruins, and one of them followed us on his motorcycle. We got out on dry desert soil and looked ahead of us to crumbled tan brick buildings surrounded by metal fencing. We wanted to go inside the fenced area to get a closer look at the archeological site. Out of the goodness of his heart, the guard let us inside to explore. As he followed us around, he heard that my mom and I were speaking English and asked where we were from. There was a long pause. I could tell my dad was deciding how to skirt around the truth. Finally my dad said, “I’m from Urfa… But my family and I live in America.” The man’s eyes widened, he smiled gently and said, “America? Wow…” and then he and my dad walked off chatting like old friends. In that moment especially, but for most of my time in Turkey, I didn’t feel I was in any sort of immanent danger; rather I felt safe, well cared for by strangers and friends.

Traveling to Turkey this summer only reaffirmed my belief that the country and the people in it are more than popular media coverage of bombings and the United States travel warning suggest. I believe Turkey is ultimately a peaceful country, along with most countries in the region, but it has been stigmatized because of its location and because the majority of people there identify as Muslim. Without dismissing serious concerns about the destruction that happens for a variety of reasons in Turkey, I don’t believe labeling an entire country or region as “dangerous” is ever an accurate depiction. The United States is riddled with police shootings, gun violence, and terror on a weekly basis, but travel to this country isn’t hindered. Just as Americans would think labeling the U.S. unsafe based on gun violence, for example, is an unfair depiction of the American experience, fostering similar ideas about far-away countries despite having limited information about real circumstances is biased. I know firsthand from the hospitality I experienced and the immense beauty I witnessed that Turkey is so much more than rhetoric suggests.

Najiye Honca grew up in Newton, MA. Her father is Turkish, from Southeastern Turkey, and her mother is American. She has one brother.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Knowing and Understanding

October 27, 2016 nalsharki

When I spend a long time in one environment, my ego starts inflating until it reaches an unsustainable level and suddenly bursts. It then inflates again and bursts again, each time taking longer to complete a cycle. I’ve come to believe that this is my comfort-challenge cycle. I think better and better of myself as I get more and more comfortable, then I realize that something is not as I understand it and that forces me to become more humble. As my perception of what’s around me complicates, the process slows down.

I love the two poles of the cycle: the ignorant satisfaction of complacency and the sobering wisdom of humility. I feel like I need them both to grow and mature and flower. And I’ve noticed that putting myself out there allows me to experience the cycle (which I can only affect unpredictably by choosing my environment) more often.

Favela not far from Copacabana. Leon Petrosyan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0

Studying theory makes me feel like I know stuff. I knew statistics that show most favelas in Rio de Janeiro did not have drug trafficking; I knew that residents of occupied buildings in Sao Paulo’s city center were not criminals; I knew that the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Yemen is the most charitable group in the country. Look at me, so knowledgeable and well traveled. I must be an asset to any community or organization. If only they knew how special I was… maybe not.

I do believe that I’m an asset, I have a lot to offer and I’m sure the places I worked at have benefited from my presence. Nonetheless, I can’t think of any environment to which I gave more than what was given to me. I knew the statistics about favelas, but I didn’t understand them. Interacting with people from favelas, loving a few of them, seeing them celebrate helped me understand. Residents of occupations did the same for me, and the Muslim Brotherhood folks too. It is harder and more rewarding to understand something than it is to know it. Understanding expands horizons, and it humbles.

It humbles me when I understand something because I feeeel it. Being away from Yemen for many months in the past, and presently for years, has allowed me to distance myself from the country

enough to forget realities I was once intimate with. It could be a coping mechanism because I can’t feel good about myself if I understand (and thus feel) the unjust difference between my reality and that of my countrymen. I am certainly not special enough to deserve what I have, but it doesn’t matter. Beating myself up over it will not change anything, I have to cope, to convince myself of something else. I understand how unjust this is. And I hate it. It makes me feel like a brat, and it doesn’t matter. Understanding takes time and reinforcement: it’s a moving experience, sometimes too moving and scary, but I believe it’s good and necessary for progress.

I find that the internet is great for knowing and so is theory, but for understanding, human interactions, literature, and experiences are necessary. College, even Smith College, has flaws, but it allowed me to experience both acquiring knowledge through classes and acquiring understanding through praxis, other humans connected to Smith, and study abroad. I am so grateful, and I only wish that more Smithies would seek to understand others and let the world move them (hopefully to action but a change of perception is real too) like it sometimes moves me… pat on the back.

Born and raised in Yemen, Nashua Alsharki left the country to attend a boarding school in Hong Kong (UWC) when she was seventeen. Two years later, she came to Smith, then left for a year to study abroad in Brazil. She is now back at Smith as a senior carrying baggage from everywhere she’s lived and with no place to call home. But the odds are in her favor.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

On the Tip of My Tongue

October 27, 2016 sbsmith

In order to illustrate my relationship with Portuguese as a Spanish speaker, I have developed a metaphor. Imagine Spanish and Portuguese were identical twins. You have been best friends with Spanish for many years, without ever having met their twin. You can anticipate Spanish’s every word; you recognize the rhythm of their voice, the lines of their palms, and the shape of their teeth. One day you are introduced to Portuguese. As they stand side-by-side with Spanish, you are able to decipher small differences between the two. Portuguese might have more moles on their left cheek, their laughter is huskier, and their hair shorter. But, from a distance, they are near identical. It is then that Spanish departs hastily, and you are left alone with Portuguese. You make the wrongful assumption that those physical similarities will and should be reflected in the contours of their personality, such as tastes in music or political leanings. But alas, you are mistaken and left with nothing to talk about. Silence permeates the room, while across the table from you perches the appearance of intense familiarity, an intimate outline. Upon opening your mouth, everything rapidly becomes foreign and stilted, each question and response lingering on the tip of the tongue.

The weight of the nuanced differences between these two, between these “twins,” fully occurred to me when I read the yellow table above in my Portuguese textbook, which illustrates how prepositions and definite articles in Portuguese are often orthographically combined. I was forced to reconsider my earlier inclinations, wherein I chalked Portuguese up to be nothing more than a bizarre-sounding, formalized dialect of Spanish, the gawkier twin (perhaps it is, but that’s aside the point). I was confronted with the wholeness of Portuguese’s individual identity, its structural identity. As such, I want to propose the perhaps unpopular notion that there exists no real “comfort zone” in language. Within the context of the metaphor, many friendships are deceptive in their intimacy. I am naïve to assume Spanish has never kept secrets from me, or that their existence is contingent upon my own. Regardless of your perceived familiarity with a language, Language as a larger theoretical entity is fluid and reluctant. They, languages, do not reveal themselves to you in their entirety, nor could they if they wanted to, because much like people, they are constantly in a state of evolution.

I have been forced to abandon the notion that I can simply speak Spanish with an altered “Portuguese-y” accent and get by. I mean, yes, most of the Portuguese professors also have in-depth knowledge of Spanish and can certainly understand me when I falter or rely on one to compensate for the other. What I mean to say is that I have been forced to abandon the notion that language is a simply a tool of convenience, that it yields itself to you, that it is a means. My stumbling in Portuguese has taught me that despite the academic and necessary practice of outlining linguistic similarities between languages, to classify linguistic families wherein perhaps some of its members are rendered “twins,” languages have a tendency of asserting their distinctiveness, an assertion that is uncomfortable for the learner. But, to deprive a language of this distinctiveness for simplicity’s sake is akin to depriving the twin at the other end of the table of their personhood.

Sawnie Smith is currently a senior at Smith College. She originally hails from Dallas, Texas and is pursuing a major in Spanish, a minor in Philosophy, and a certificate in the Translation Studies Concentration. It is her eventual professional aspiration to become a linguist.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Welcome. To. My. Space.

October 27, 2016 rwu

“你爲什麽每天早上喝流程果汁？ Why do you drink orange juice every day in the morning?” Xuan Han asked me. I stared back at her with a perplexed face.

“什麽？What?” I replied. She explained how in all the Hollywood films she’s watched, Americans always drank a glass of orange juice in the morning while reading the newspaper in the kitchen. I laughed and shed light on this question that had boggled her mind for years. I told her that not all Americans drink a glass of orange juice in the morning while reading the newspaper. To convince her, I asked the seven other American students in my program if they drank orange juice every day in the morning. They all shook their heads.

It was a typical Monday afternoon where we met up with our Taiwanese language partners for our weekly two hour language and cultural exchange meeting. Questions like these were fired back and forth between us, the American exchange students, and them, the local Taiwanese college students who applied to be our language partners.

While my Mandarin skills improved in the classroom, it was cultural exchanges, such as meetings with my language partner and interactions with local Taiwanese people outside of the classroom, that transformed my lens in approaching the world. As I explored the intersectionality of my Chinese-American, low-income, first-generation, and queer identities, I found myself falling in love with Taiwan because my immersion in that environment challenged me to deconstruct and reconstruct what it means to be human and to love. For the first time in a long time, I found my place in the world.

"Sunshine & Smiles at 白沙灣 | 墾丁, 臺灣 (White Sandy Bay | Kenting, Taiwan)"" — Sunshine & Smiles at 白沙灣 | 墾丁, 臺灣 (White Sandy Bay | Kenting, Taiwan)

As a Chinese-American, I contemplated how I grew up in an individualistic American society in contrast to my home, where my Chinese immigrant parents raised me to value the collective whole. As a low-income, first-generation college student, I reflected on how blessed I felt to be able to not only be the first person in my family to go to college, but also be the first to study abroad. As a Smithie outside of the Smith bubble, I learned how to engage in dialogue with people who didn’t have the same radical, liberal views as me. As an international student for the first time, I empathized with international students back at Smith who constantly have to represent their entire countries and do conversion math, like converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit every day.

Studying abroad in Taiwan through a summer language intensive program for Mandarin was hands-down the best decision I made while at Smith. From the moment I stepped off the airplane, I felt at home. The pleasant rays of sunlight, cotton-shaped clouds, and the perfect blue sky of Taiwan welcomed me like a warm embrace from a close friend you haven’t seen in years.

Although I am no longer physically there, I bring Taiwan with me into every new space that I now enter. If we ever cross paths, I invite you and welcome you into my space.

Regina Wu /伍嘉嫣 is a human bean who likes to connect with other human beans. While they are waiting for the day they have a stable adult life to comfortably take care of their future pug, they often contemplate the meaning of life at Paradise Pond. They hope to continue following life wherever it takes them (hopefully back to Taiwan soon).

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Bridging the Gap: Discussing Race in Chinese

October 26, 2016 kgaskin

How do you explain race and the weight it carries in a language that lacks racial terminology? How do you communicate your racial experience when your level of fluency isn’t high enough?

My first conversation in Chinese about race took place sitting on my friend’s bed while we peeled and ate pomegranates with her Chinese roommate. At that point, we had been in Hangzhou for about three weeks and were still struggling to articulate coherent statements in Chinese on a regular basis. I was telling my friend about how my roommate had only recently discovered that I am Black. Her roommate overheard us and exclaimed: “You’re a black person?! But you’re so white!”

Photo taken while I was on a hunt for a bookstore near the campus of Zhejiang University of Technology in Hangzhou, China.

In Chinese, there is no word for “tan,” “beige,” or “light-skinned.” You are either “白 (white)” which means very fair in color, or you are “黑 (black)” which can be even the slightest shade of tan. During my spring semester in Hangzhou, one of the Chinese roommates was nicknamed “Little Black” because he was tanner than all of them. Yet oddly enough, to be considered an actual Black person you have to be very, very dark-skinned.

In my very fragmented language, I tried to explain that Black people come in all sorts of shades and have a wide range of different physical characteristics. The disbelief on her face prompted me to show her a family portrait. Upon seeing my parents, she still insisted I was the palest among them. She seemed to be trying to comfort me. Her behavior indicated she did not want me to call myself “dark,”most likely because in the eyes of China’s beauty standards, it would be similar to calling myself “ugly.”

She then asked me: in African-American culture, is it better to be lighter or darker? The question made a gross discomfort rise within me. During times of slavery, lighter-skinned slaves were “treated better” and allowed in the master’s house. This elevation of lighter-skinned Blacks and superficial level of acceptance created tensions within the community that still exist today, particularly among Black women. For example, Kanye West made a casting call for only “multiracial-looking women.” Another example is the stereotype that all light-skinned girls are stuck-up. It is because of issues of colorism that growing up I always felt unaccepted and detached from other Black girls my age. But in the eyes of my friend’s roommate, color is only a “beauty choice.” I felt myself struggling to answer. Is there a word for “colorism” in Chinese? How do I explain that Eurocentric beauty standards are a part of Black women’s oppression, both in the United States and globally?

Although my language didn’t help the situation at the time, I later discovered that racial language is almost nonexistent in China. Why wouldn’t it be? Most people in China do not see a foreigner, or even someone who looks racially different from them, their entire lives. In comparison, America is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world, and therefore our language developed the ability to describe, explain and define racial experience.

I also came to understand that race is perceived differently in China. Without a doubt, racism exists in China, but it is different from America’s particular brand of it. In Chinese culture, for example, the nickname “Little Black,” although highly problematic in American culture, is just a term of endearment and a lighthearted way to describe someone’s appearance. Another Chinese roommate was nicknamed “Little Fat” because he was slightly more overweight than everyone else. In China, if your skin looks dry or you’ve lost weight, people will comment on it. There is not as much sensitivity towards discussion of appearance in their culture. That said, in China, there is a hierarchy of how foreigners are treated and White people are clearly at the top.

Towards the end of my study abroad in China, I had to give a presentation to a class of forty students at another Chinese university. Since I was the only student who had been in the program for a year, my teacher thought it would be a good idea for me to share my experiences with the class. Although I felt a bit scared, I decided I would discuss how I experienced life as a light-skinned Black person in China. I wanted to try again to explain race and microaggressions in Chinese, but I didn’t want to make it seem as if I were attacking China or Chinese culture. So I made this section of my speech humorous. I didn’t use any complicated language or try to look up any special terms. Using only the fluency I had, I tried my best to simply poke fun at the absurdity of some of the situations I’d been in.

The students ended up really enjoying my presentation and laughed at all of my jokes! I was so worried it would be awkward, or that I wouldn’t be able to explain things correctly. However, the audience welcomed the casualness of my speech and my use of popular slang. I’m not sure if any of the students took away anything more than a couple of laughs from my presentation, but regardless, I definitely felt better finally being able to put everything I’d experienced out in the open. I also learned humor is a language everyone can understand.

Kayla Gaskin is a creative-writing, music loving, big boots wearing multiethnic black Aquarius with an addiction to sweets and Buzzfeed videos. She has traipsed all over Southern China & Taiwan, and since become a travel and adventure enthusiast. Her major is East Asian Languages & Literatures with a translation studies concentration – and although she is not quite sure yet what path she wants to walk…her hope is to continue spreading cultural awareness and helping others in whatever way she can.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

Trash Talk

October 26, 2016 agupta

Trash isn’t sexy. No one wants to hear about it, look at it, smell it, and certainly not touch it. Well, this summer I did all of those things, and it changed the way I look at the world. As an Environmental Science and Psychology double major, I have always had a keen interest in behavioral psychology, specifically the challenging relationship humans have with the environment.

That was why this summer, I was excited to be accepted as a research analyst at Thinkphi, a sustainable design company aiming to create a smart waste management system. I was to conduct research on behavioral changes within existing systems of segregation in Mumbai, India. I manually audited wet and dry trash all over Mumbai by creating surveys and interviewing home owners about their knowledge and methods of disposing waste.

Mumbai, known as “the city of dreams,” is largely represented as the epicenter of India’s modern economic boom. However, it is also home to Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum. In this respect, I personally like to refer to Mumbai as “my beautiful city of paradoxes.”

Having experienced exponential growth, Mumbai is currently in a dire struggle to manage its waste effectively. That waste is collected but left unsorted and is now overflowing, causing severe repercussions for both the environment and human health. It was important during my internship to carefully examine the management of waste, but more importantly, our relationship with waste.

I decided to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty.

I ventured out to the regional dumping ground to interview the people who really know trash: the rag-pickers and waste segregators, the unsung heroes of my city. On visiting their dumping ground I saw heaps of unsegregated waste, the stench of which reached me before I had even arrived at the site. Stray animals roamed around in search of edible bits; birds of prey circled the area in search of the same. The pile of trash was too high to be covered and sealed by the soil. I was appalled by the lack of infrastructure and equipment; by seeing workers sort trash with their bare hands. Nonetheless, they sorted the mountains of unsegregated waste to perfection. I was amazed by their dedication, efficiency and speed.

I couldn’t help but ask them whether they found their job difficult, especially because finding recyclable materials requires them to scavenge through all sorts of contaminated foul matter. The rag-pickers admitted that although they’ve explained the importance of waste segregation, most people complain about how they don’t have the time or space to do it. In my position of privilege, I felt uncomfortable snooping around and observing them as they worked, but I wanted to know whether they were being adequately compensated for the nature of their work. To my disbelief, they revealed that the Municipal Corporation does not pay them an official salary, and that their livelihood depends on whatever dry material they are able to scavenge and sell from the waste site. Upon inquiring what the most problematic part of their work was, they explained:

“We have no problem doing our job. The most frustrating part is that in some rich communities, we have spent months telling them to separate their waste. They still don’t separate it. They tell us to fine them however much money, but they will not separate it.”

This resistance reflects the social inequality Mumbai is plagued with. Regulations don’t apply to the upper classes, whose privilege affords them apathy. Witnessing this disparity was eye opening.

Pushing myself out of my comfort zone gave me the opportunity to become more attuned to and critically engage with my surroundings. I was humbled by the rag-pickers’ commitment to their profession despite the adversity they face. Trash isn’t something anyone wants to attend to; neither is the wellbeing of the workers in the industry. I hope to change that. We must value the laborers behind the scenes, as without them my beautiful city of paradoxes just wouldn’t be as beautiful.

Akansha Gupta is a Psychology and Environmental Science and Policy student and a proud second generation Smithie. She grew up in Mumbai for the most part, but spent a few years in London and New York; living in these cities has given her a broad and diverse range of experiences that has shaped her unique identity. She considers herself a global citizen (even though she has a soft spot for Mumbai because it is the most special place). She is a people’s person and is always intrigued by the psychology behind different cultures. She loves to travel. She enjoys theatre, dance and Justin Trudeau. She feels passionately about saving our environment, and caring for it, just as it cares for us. Spicy is how she likes her food, and the ocean is her happy place.