Tag Archives: Study Abroad

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

House of the Righteous

April 26, 2018 Kaia Heimer-Bumstead

One of the first things I told my host mother in Ecuador was a lie. A small one, at the time—there was no way I could possibly have known then that over the next few months, it would completely take on a life of its own. But even now, if I could go back in time, I think I might choose to tell it over again.

My host mother was nothing if not welcoming, and treated me like family from the very beginning. She taught me to make empanadas, made me breakfast every morning, and laughed gently when my host sisters teased me at the dinner table. She loved flowers, her family, music, and God.

The lie I told her that first day was a simple one, and one that my program directors had actually encouraged. Assuming that she would be Catholic, like most Ecuadorians, I told her that my family was Protestant—technically the truth, although the last one of us to actually go to church was my late grandmother. Unfortunately, my host family was not only not Catholic, but in fact part of a small but deeply conservative evangelical Protestant church. From that moment on, they assumed that my religious views would be fundamentally the same as theirs, and as the weeks and months passed, my small white lie grew out of control.

I arrived in Ecuador only a few months after coming out as a lesbian to my friends and family, and I knew from the beginning that it would be different. I grew up in a liberal east coast city and then ended up at Smith College—of course I was aware that I was coming out in one of the safest and most accepting environments possible. I never assumed that Quito would be the same as Northampton. But I was entirely unprepared for the amount of homophobia I’d be exposed to in the safety of my own (temporary) home.

“It’s not my place to tell others what to do with their lives, but I would never let any of those people into my home,” my host mother said to me—not just once, but repeatedly, as casually as if she were discussing the weather. “Homosexuals, lesbians, the transgenders…out there in the street they can do what they want, but this is a house of God.”

Once, in front of a friend from my program who I had invited over for lunch, she continued: “Those nice people from the program, who pick the host families, they know that I would not take in a gay or a lesbian. And if they sent me one, I’d send them right back.”

My friend glanced at me across the table, and I fought back the hysterical urge to laugh, or maybe cry. Not for the first time and not for the last, I said nothing.

During my two months with my host family, I thought a lot about how easy it would be to leave—my program would help me switch homestays without question, if I asked. And I thought about how lucky I was to have that option, and about the millions of people across the world who don’t. I thought about taking a stand, about coming out to her right before I was scheduled to leave—maybe having known me for two months, having taken me in and treated me like family, would help to challenge her prejudices. Maybe I could make a difference.

I never did any of those things. Even knowing as I left the country that I might never be back, even knowing that I would likely never see her again, I kept quiet. I don’t know how to explain how much I felt like an imposter in my host family, and how much I loved them anyway. I loved our dinners together and our Saturday night movie marathons, our little house by the park and the sound of my host sister practicing violin late at night. As happy as I am to be back home, I miss them every day.

I don’t know if this story has a resolution, or if it ever will, and maybe that’s as it should be. After my semester in Ecuador, I’m more certain than ever before that I’m not certain about anything—where my comfort zones are, what it means to be safe, what it means to be open, and what it means to be home.

Kaia Heimer-Bumstead is a junior majoring in Comparative Literature and planning on adding a second major in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She spent the Fall 2017 semester studying the politics of language and researching indigenous literature in Ecuador.

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Reaching “Ah-hah!” Moments as a Graduating Senior

April 26, 2018 Teddy Schneider

I began the summer of 2017 fresh out of my Junior year at Smith and terrified of flying abroad, alone. I didn’t want to get lost in a country where everyone spoke Hebrew (even though I was assured frequently that everyone also knew English. It turned out to be true, but I’m a worry-wart). I didn’t want to miss a flight or get ripped off by a cab driver. Most importantly, I wanted to do well in my first class overseas. I wanted to make connections with Yiddish professors from all over the globe, something that I hadn’t been exposed to at the National Yiddish Book Center (as much as I would have liked, anyway). The program was huge, so I also wanted to make connections with people older than me, different than me, from other countries, with other ideas. In the end I was successful in doing these things. I completed my coursework and enjoyed it, I explored Israel with my Yiddish speaking friends, I met people from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Frankfurt, Berlin, New York City, and St. Petersburg, all of whom were also looking to make new friends from exciting places. I learned that I could travel alone with ease, and with my newfound self-confidence I applied myself, learning from those ahead of me and teaching to those behind me. To my surprise (after what I was taught about historical views of Yiddish in Israel) I wasn’t ridiculed for my choice of study by locals. Young folks found it cool and interesting, and related it to their liberal politics, and older folks seemed more surprised than condescending.

One of the most interesting things about my month in Israel was the fact that I was learning a Jewish language surrounded by yet another Jewish language, a very rare situation in the life of a young, secular academic. One of the joys of my experience was puzzling that out emotionally and intellectually. It was also very, very tiring to be surrounded constantly by a language that I didn’t understand.

My second “ah-ha!” moment came in Tel Aviv, as well. I’ve been a listener of Sosye Fox’s podcast “Vaybertaytsh,” a feminist podcast produced entirely in Yiddish, for as long as I’ve been a Yiddish student. To my surprise, Sosye was also in Tel Aviv, and quickly organized an opportunity for people to participate in her work. She created the “Far vos?” [“Why?”] series of episodes, in which those of us whom she interviewed could explain why we came to Yiddish, why we love Yiddish, or why we struggle with Yiddish. We split into small groups based on interests, and I was happy to find people with a shared interest: What does it mean to be queer in Yiddish? What about being trans in Yiddish? We each brought to the table different views, and some of us even came up with a queer Yiddish vocabulary. This was the first time I created in Yiddish, and that was the true “ah-ha!”, but listening to myself on the air was pretty cool, too.

Once I got back to Smith College, I became enveloped entirely within the world of my Honors Thesis, a translation of several short stories from Rikudah Potash’s collection In geslekh fun Yerushalayim [In the Alleyways of Jerusalem]. I went into it looking for an under-appreciated, under-studied woman Yiddish writer. I am now writing my critical introduction to the text, which begins with a short introduction to the study of Yiddish women writers and how Potash expresses womanhood and femininity in her work as central to her sense of self. It then goes on to what I consider to be the much more interesting layers of her work, which are the racial and cultural components, as well as her writing about disability. It’s very rare to discuss disability studies within the framework of Yiddish literature, but I’ve found many older pieces of Yiddish literature (for example, Rebbe Nachman’s story “The Seven Beggars,”) that show that there is a great need for attention to disability studies in our little field. I’ve also been able to learn about orientalism in Israel, something that I’ve never bumped into in my Eastern European-leaning studies. It complicates the things that I was initially taught about Yiddish from my language teachers. Yiddish as the “under dog” is a good narrative for young Yiddish learners, but gets much more complicated as you move historically out of America or Europe. It’s exciting to know that I will be among the very short list of people who have written so extensively about Rikudah Potash’s work, and especially one of the only translators to have worked with her prose.

Teddy Schneider is a senior at Smith College. Their focus on Yiddish literature allows them to explore themes of disability, womanhood, history, genre, geography, borders, and marginality. After they graduate, they would like to go to graduate school for library and information sciences, or further their studies of disability in Yiddish literature. Their senior thesis is a translation of Rikudah Potash’s collection of short stories, “In geslekh fun Yerusholayim [In the Alleyways of Jerusalem]” complete with a critical literary analysis.

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Words at the Tip of My Tongue

April 19, 2018 Tianhua Zhu

Four years ago, when I was at home in China, getting ready to study abroad in the United States, my family and friends repeatedly advised me to befriend all kinds of people. “Step out of your comfort zone!” They urged. “Don’t get caught up in the Chinese students’ inner circle!” But then, there we were— occupying a table in the dining hall, forming study groups, eating out on weekends, and traveling together over the break. There was almost a natural affinity among us and I wondered why. I gradually noticed that this inner circle comprised of those who were using English as a functional language.

By “functional” I mean the fundamental use of the language to achieve a goal, such as buying a toothbrush, ordering a meal, or understanding the questions in an exam. In my first year, I struggled with even the functional use of English. I could only decline when my friends asked me out for a movie. “Why?” They asked. “Because I wouldn’t be able to understand!” I replied. They laughed so hard that I was bewildered. Isn’t that strange — A college student still relying on subtitles to understand most vernacular English? Language is an interactive tool, but at the same time, a subjective experience. How well was I supposed to understand a speaker? How much did they understand me? Would they judge my intelligence based on my flawed expressions? I had no way to know. As I talked, so many words were at the tip of my tongue. So I paused; I even saw what I intended to say written out in Chinese in front of eyes, but I was silent. My world was muffled, so I strived extra hard to sharpen my senses.

I used to be afraid of overhearing people speaking English due to the fear that it would confirm my inability to understand them. Gradually, I learned to open my ears to the outside world and acquire as much information as possible. I put down my earphones and tuned in to the people around me. Still, I would describe my experience of going outside of my dorm room in my first year as stepping onto a battlefield, since I was easily submerged in frustrations and embarrassments.

I also realized that a more severe obstacle to making friends in another linguistic environment is the expression of emotions. Words don’t just mean what they mean; they also carry loads of emotions. There are words to make jokes and puns, to form swear words and release anger, to trigger laughter and tears, to hurt, and to heal. I felt those words at the tip of my tongue but not in my heart. The distance between my tongue and my heart was the distance between me and others, whose emotions were revealed whenever they spoke.

Deciding to learn German is what saved me. In that classroom, I found something familiar—the deliberateness of sticking to grammatical rules due to an absence of intuition, the hardship of coming up with the right words, and the decoupling of thoughts and the medium that carries them. If I talked about struggling with words at the tip of the tongue, my German study pals were the ones who fully comprehended and empathized with me.

When studying abroad in Hamburg, the American students formed an inner circle, and I was part of it. This is why I smiled when one member of the Hamburg group asked, “why do Chinese students only hang out with each other?” It doesn’t have much to do with the nature of a particular culture or national character, as some may suggest. The familiarity and security within a group is what defines a comfort zone, where people naturally fall back.

This was the time when not only my German but also my English progressed considerably. Every word was a trial and every sentence that I uttered carried the risk of embarrassing myself. But at the same time, each attempt at communication was an endeavor beyond my comfort zone. It was this type of everyday struggle that humbled my friends and me, as well as empowered us. In Hamburg, we faced, fought, and embraced this linguistic challenge together.

Admittedly, language barriers don’t account for all the hardships of making friends in a foreign environment, but language is certainly one of the most significant factors, as it carries the signature of one’s culture, living environment, and family character. It defines insiders and outsiders, and it delineates everyone’s most basic comfort zone. In this context, stepping out of our comfort zone is not the end but the beginning. Just like weight training, knowing how many sets of a routine there are (i.e. when the discomfort will end) is essential, as no one can sustain in an uncomfortable environment forever. But the ultimate goal should be to expand our comfort zone through repetitive and continuous attempts.

What I gained in both English and German environments was not just the languages themselves but also confidence, persistence, resilience, and courage. I now have a greater appreciation for the struggles of living in a foreign environment and more understanding of the tendency for people to cluster together with their peers from the same cultural background. We are not simply wasting an opportunity to improve but seeking a temporary shelter between battles.

Now I know that time will bring the words at the tip of my tongue, one by one, down to the depth of my heart.

Tianhua Zhu ’18 is currently a Senior, majoring in both Government and Linguistics. Looking at the intersection between the two majors, she is interested in the politics of language and seeks to understand the language of politics. She participated in the Smith Program in Hamburg in Spring 2017 and took advantage of the great opportunity to travel around several countries in Europe. Originally coming from Shanghai, China, she would like to accumulate more international experiences and bring together distinct perspectives echoing through the East and the West.

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Pushing Past Regret: Learning to Live Abroad in Uganda and China

May 3, 2018 Delphine Zhu

I spent two months last summer in Iganga, Uganda working on a public health research project with a medical anthropologist. We wanted to understand how female sex workers’ experiences influenced their access to HIV care and prevention. This experience taught me invaluable lessons in cross-cultural communication, in addition to skills needed to conduct ethnographic field work.

Those two months were the first time I had spent more than a couple of weeks in a foreign country away from my family. I thought the trips to Hawaii and China to visit relatives would have prepared me for my trip to Uganda, but when we finally drove up to our home for the next two months after a hot, dusty car ride from the airport, I was ready to break down in tears.

I eventually found my footing in the following days and weeks. As the streets in Iganga Town slowly became familiar to me, I learned to barter for pineapples in the market and felt completely at ease squeezing onto the backseat of a motorcycle with two other people. The research itself was fascinating — I visited health care centers and clinics, discussed HIV prevention policy with government officials, and had the opportunity to hear the life stories of incredible women.

All the while, my inability to truly “fit in” (I am a Chinese-American) and the more negative experiences of the other students I lived with began to affect my own. The other research student, who is a few years older than me and whom I respected, started to express dissatisfaction with our research mentor, our situation, and Ugandan culture. Unwilling to disagree and cause any sort of conflict, I followed along with her negative sentiments. These seeds of negativity accumulated and soon I started to believe these sentiments myself. I found myself expressing my own discontent more and more often. It was addicting: the dust was so annoying; everyone always stared; the food was so bland. I looked forward to the first hot shower in Dubai (a layover on our way back to St. Louis) as if my life depended on it.

When I finally stepped into the steaming hotel bathroom in Dubai, I relished the hot water and incredible water pressure. But as the brownish water colored by Iganga’s infamous red dust trickled down the drain, I realized I already missed Uganda: I missed the boda-boda rides, the ridiculous unstructured research meetings that would last hours, the food, the people, and even the red dust between my toes. The thought saddened me and I was immediately swept into a wave of regret. I continued reflecting on this experience during the few weeks I spent at home – asking myself what I could have done better and imagining how the two months would have gone if I had just spoken up.

Before I knew it, it was time to head to China for a semester abroad in Kunming. I was excited, but also scared that I would end up making the same mistakes and come home clouded by regret. I would again be forced to face my classmates’ and my own negative sentiments, and I was afraid I would handle it poorly.

Long story short, I learned from my mistakes in Uganda, but I also learned to show myself some self-compassion. Even though I did allow my negativity to affect me towards the end of my time in Uganda, I learned and accomplished a lot in my two months there. Among other things, I played a significant role in the research team and developed many other skills through interacting with others and facing my own biases. I expanded upon these skills in China, where I continued my research on HIV and sex work in a cross-cultural comparison of China and Uganda, and found a community outside of my American peers. In both places, I formed friendships that will last a lifetime with locals and fellow Americans. All of the accomplishments and failures from my experiences living abroad in China and Uganda are marks of success, and I am now realizing the slow process of growth and the need to push past feelings of regret in order to fully appreciate an experience and make the best of future ones as well.

Delphine is a junior at Smith College from California and Washington. She loves to dance and lay in the sun. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in health and medicine, and incorporate radical listening and community-building into her work.

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Discovering Solitude

April 19, 2018 Kaity O'Neil

Despite being an only child, I’ve never felt comfortable being alone in public. If I had to guess, this discomfort is learned, not innate: my parents, protective to a fault, often policed where I went when I was younger. I was rarely allowed to go to Boston and was never allowed to go alone, despite living only an hour away from the city. I couldn’t go to certain areas in the towns surrounding my hometown; even if it was safe now, it hadn’t been a safe place in the 1970s.

When I left for my junior year abroad, it was the first time I had ever navigated an airport by myself. Saying goodbye to my parents at security, not knowing when I’d see them again, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I spent a solid hour before my flight crying in the bathroom, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

During my first few months in Florence, I’d rarely leave the house on weekends without establishing a set plan to meet someone. My lifelong stigma against eating alone in public meant that if my housemate ate lunch without me, I’d skip the meal entirely. I wasted so much time trapped in my own head that could have been spent exploring my temporary home.

On one Saturday night, after saying goodbye to my friends and getting off the bus, I found myself in my neighborhood alone after dark for the first time. Unfortunately, a nearby man noticed this, and spent the next two minutes asking me to hold his hand as I walked to my apartment. Thankfully, he ended his pursuit once he got to his own place, leaving me to run two more blocks home, terrified in a way I’d never felt before.

Despite this, as the year continued, I felt myself becoming more comfortable with the concept of being alone. While my friends were in class during my free time, I’d treat myself to a few hours alone in the local movie theatre or a nearby museum. On weekends, I’d find myself at my local pizzeria, or walking to get some gelato while waiting for my laundry to dry. I was finally learning to enjoy as many aspects of Florence as I could, even if it meant a few hours alone.

I had spent my month-long winter break off from school with my close friend as we traveled across Europe. As spring break drew closer, however, I started to realize that all of my friends had made their plans already, and I was left to either piggyback on what they had planned, or to travel alone. I knew I’d be meeting one of my friends in Spain for the first few days of break, yet I couldn’t help but feel unwelcome imposing myself on someone else’s plans for the last week. I eventually worked up the nerve to book my first-ever solo sojourn to London and Athens.

My parents were horrified at my choice, berating me from 4,000 miles away. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is for a woman to travel alone?” Of course I did. However, I knew I’d regret it if I sat back and let someone else plan my spring break instead of checking places off of my own bucket list. I’d chosen to start with London — an English-speaking city that I’d already visited once before — before working my way up to Athens.

I couldn’t help but be proud of myself when I returned to Florence after my two weeks off, over half of which I’d spent alone. The girl that cried when saying goodbye to her parents at Logan Airport seven months prior would never have imagined that she’d have such an amazing adventure, especially not by herself. I can’t say that everything in those two weeks went perfectly, but the experiences that felt like the end of the world at the time quickly became merely another set of anecdotes for my friends and family at home. I’m infinitely proud that I let myself step out of my comfort zone to have such a wonderful time abroad.

Kaity is a senior living in Lawrence House and studying psychology. She studied abroad last year with Smith’s JYA Florence Program.

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Are We There Yet?

April 26, 2018 Jennifer Aguirre

“Are we there yet?”

We woke up at 4am after a night out and hopped in the van that would take us to Mount Cameroon. “It’ll just be a quick two-hour hike there and back,” said Arianne, trying to encourage us. I have very little experience hiking, so I mentally prepared myself for shortness of breath and throbbing thighs. We watched the beautiful sunrise as we were on our way up a small hill, thinking that the 2-hour journey began when we got out of the van. About thirty minutes into the walk, we read a sign that indicated that the trail was only then officially beginning. Already out of breath, we looked at each other wondering what we had gotten ourselves into.

At some unknown point, we lost half of the group. Arianne, Kizzy, and I were in the front, seemingly conquering the trek while also stopping every five minutes to catch our breath. Every one of our steps was imprinted in the muddy trail, and all I could see were trees and leaves blocking the sky, the top of the mountain nowhere in sight. It was fun at first. The fresh smell of nature, the adrenaline of doing something I’ve never done before in a foreign country, my increasing heartbeat from exercising… And then we reached the two-hour mark. We read a sign that said we were entering the steepest part of the mountain. Arianne, surprised at how long it took us to reach this point that she’s reached previously in half of the time, looked at us and laughed. From that point, she told us we had about 30 more minutes left.

I began to believe that Cameroonians either have a very poor sense of time or that the universe suddenly extended the length of seconds and minutes. During our pre-departure orientation, we were warned that Cameroon is a very laid back country and that sticking to schedules isn’t something we should expect. I didn’t have a problem with this because I couldn’t imagine any circumstances where this would be troublesome; at least not until I was 3 hours deep into Africa’s second tallest mountain with no way to back out.

My legs started cramping, shaking, and giving out on me. My sweatshirt was sticking to my arms from the sweat dripping all over my body. Right before I felt myself giving up, we began to see sun rays peeking through the trees. “We must be close.” I thought. Arianne, who was hardly fazed by this trajectory, adopted a new time estimate: “Five more minutes!” The stops to catch my breath were closer to 30 second intervals at this point and I knew all I had to do was push myself for ‘five more minutes’ to reach the top. Every time I stopped I began to ask, “Are we there yet?” or “Is this it?!”, hoping that I could speak the top of the mountain into existence. From the first time that Arianne told us we had 5 minutes left until we actually got to the mountain top, another hour had passed.

It took us a total of not 2, not 3, but 4 hours to reach the summit. My group got there half an hour before everyone else, giving me enough time to reflect on what exactly had happened. How did I just hike for 4 hours? How many times did Arianne significantly underestimate how much longer we had left? How were we supposed to get down? We couldn’t even see anything because we were so high up that the clouds were blocking the view! I didn’t know if I should feel angry, accomplished, or simply tired. And if this wasn’t bad enough, the impending hike down was almost worse. This time, though, I had no expectation of how long it would take to reach the van that was waiting to take us home. On the way down, amidst trying to see through the obnoxious mist and not slip on the muddy rocks, I began to reflect on what I had done to get myself into this situation. Instead of continuing to feel sorry for all of us who had suffered through this arduous trek, I started to think about how lucky I was to simply be able to say I hiked (partially) up Mount Cameroon. It doesn’t matter that it took us twice as long as we thought or that it was way harder than expected. In the end, we didn’t quit and experienced firsthand the importance of patience and perseverance–the hard way.

Jennifer Aguirre ’18 is studying Psychology and completing a 5-College Certificate in Culture, Health and Science. Although she is not currently on the pre-med track, she hopes to go to medical school in the future and work with underserved communities. She loves traveling and was fortunate to spend 3 weeks in Cameroon with members from the Bold Women’s Leadership Network, where she had the amusing and memorable experience described above.

Spring 2018 Issue XI: Every Picture Tells a Story

Embracing Imperfection

February 20, 2018 Tianhua Zhu

When I first arrived in Germany, I immediately noticed the overwhelming number of flower shops. Around the corner, on a quiet sideway, or even in a train station, I always could find stores full of colorful and vibrant blossoms. And locals loved to decorate their homes with various flowers — especially on their balconies, which greatly beautified the street view. Those little terrace gardens seemed integrated into the traditional style of homes not only in Germany but also in other European countries, such as France and Switzerland. Tourists love to take pictures of themselves standing in front of those traditional houses with little flower boxes by the windows.

Once I had lived there longer and observed my host mother spend a great amount of time working in her mini garden on the balcony, I realized that flowers are not just decorations but an integral part of the life of local residents. After all, gardening takes a lot of time and energy: those fragile plants cannot survive without constant attention. But there is another difficulty that I considered to be more troubling: No matter how much effort you put into prolonging the life of flowers, they still die pretty quickly. The sorrow of this inevitable loss, this sense of powerlessness when watching their transient lives end, had prevented me from using any flower to decorate my own home back in Shanghai. I used only greenery to fill the open spaces of my apartment, which, although still perishable, can at least last longer than evanescent flowers.

But then, while I was in Germany, I constantly came across florists on the street, and I found it hard to move my eyes away from the pure beauty and liveliness of these blooming flowers. I finally conceded and decided to buy a few to put in my dorm room. I chose some pink roses and white daisies at first, and I felt my room immediately brighten. Every time I opened the door, the sight of my flowers brought me joy. This was the beginning of a transition in my attitude toward not only flower decoration but also something beyond that.

Later on, I added some yellow carnations, and when tulips were in season, I brought in their various colors once in a while, and even decorated the Smith Center at the university with colorful tulips. Still, I did feel sad when the flowers began to fade and finally wither away, and I pondered the meaning of blooming—“If only they knew their tragic ending from the very beginning!” I said to myself. How can they embrace their destiny and still express joy so wholly and genuinely?

I couldn’t help but reflect about myself. I realized I had the tendency to not even start something if I thought I could not do it perfectly well. This may be an extreme version of my motto as a “pessimistic optimist,” but I did adopt this perfectionist-leaning belief, which often held me back from unpredictable novel attempts. When applied to language learning, my perfectionist mindset disturbs me, as I have to admit the fact that I may never reach the same fluency as the native speakers. No matter how hard I have tried, I will always speak with a certain deficiency. I will never reach “perfection.”

Studying in Germany and using a third language was yet another endeavor to force myself to step further out of my comfort zone and “destabilize” my life. I have always believed in the meaning of destabilizing one’s regular life, and this time, it proved worthwhile as I learned to embrace the eternal imperfection of life. That is, I was forced to express myself even in a broken way. Before being in Germany, I had always faltered when it came to speaking German, since I had less time to prepare and I feared making mistakes. “I’m not ready.” I always told myself, and failed to realize that I could never be ready unless I took the first step and started speaking more freely. In Germany I began to communicate with all kinds of people and to learn how to bear the embarrassment of making mistakes and the fear of exposing my weaknesses. I thought about the courage of my fragile yet stubborn flowers and entered the uncharted wilderness of a language that is foreign to me. Once, I was afraid that when I spoke up, people would think me rather dull if I could not convey my ideas clearly or made stupid grammatical mistakes. But if I waited until I got every gender and adjective ending in German perfectly correct before starting to speak, I would never be able to voice even one single sentence. Desire to communicate won out: I learned to cast aside my worries about others’ opinions of me and clumsily began to build my German one phrase after another.

I used to ask myself, why should I start something if I could never reach perfection? By the end of my stay in Germany, I finally realized that the premise of this introspective question was wrong — and my wilted flowers knew better than I did. The purpose was never to be perfect but to start, to bloom, to step into the turbulence of life, and to give the best that one can with the gift of life.

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

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.