Swatties abroad

In print | January 31, 2008

India

Although India is one of the many countries that students can choose from when deciding to go study abroad, there are already several international students from India who are, in a sense, studying abroad just by coming to the United States. Miranda Weinberg ’09 traveled from Swarthmore to the Darjeeling district just northeast of the Himalayas while Maithili Parikh ’11 traveled from Bombay, the capital of India, all the way to Swarthmore. Darjeeling is located in the far eastern part of India while Bombay is on the western coast. Although when compared to the distance from India to the United States, the difference between Bombay and Darjeeling seems small, India enjoys great cultural diversity.

U.S. to India

For Weinberg, one of the biggest adjustments she had to make was to the food. “The only meal you ate was dal — lentils, rice and vegetables,” Weinberg said. “The exact same thing everyday, twice a day. By the end, I really loved it, though.”

Weinberg turned on the television to watch American shows such as “Top Chef” because of the difficulty inherent in being around non-English speakers and spending the last three weeks of her independent study with no English at all.

Returning home and readjusting was an experience in itself. “I didn’t have running water over there” Weinberg said, adding that “having a hot shower when I wanted” back in the States took some getting used to.

Weinberg also said that in the States, “Everyone wanted to know if it was really dirty and in some ways, it was dirty. People throw their trash in the street or burn their trash, but they just create more waste here [in the United States],” Weinberg said. In class, students and teachers discussed the perception of Americans being “selfish, always on time, liking pets. We’re all giant, tall, white, Christians and extremely rich,” which Weinberg noted was ironic since the richest man in the world, Mukesh Ambani, is Indian.

India to the U.S.

Parikh was born and raised in Bombay with her family roots in the Gujarat state. Her main difficulty with adjusting to life in the States was with the food at Sharples because she is vegetarian. Other than that, there were no huge shocks when adjusting to life away from India since “Bombay is a pretty modern city,” Parikh said, although she admits “the cold is something I need to get used to. It’s 30 degrees Celsius [86 degrees Farenheit] in Bombay in the winter.”

Parikh has also adjusted to living away from home by keeping in close contact with friends and family. “I speak to my mom everyday and a lot of my friends are studying in the United States and I try to call them once a week,” Parikh said. Since Parikh visited the United States before coming to Swarthmore and has family and friends here, Parikh did not have many misconceptions of Americans although she noted that some people from smaller areas in India may perceive America as just being “McDonalds, Disney World, malls and New York City, but there is more to it.”

BY JOAN KIM

China

U.S. to China

The first impression that Laura Post ’09 had when she arrived in Beijing last fall was: “China is just so big.” While the Asian Studies major had closely studied Chinese culture and the language throughout college, nothing prepared her for the sheer scale of the large city.

“At first, it’s very overwhelming,” said Post, who hails from a quiet suburb. “[Beijing] is so big, so crowded, so loud. But you get used to it and you get used to just hopping on the subway and traveling around the city.”

Although Post has studied Chinese since freshman year, she believes that it was necessary to go abroad and “get the language with the culture.” The program in which Post participated was solely an intensive language program. Students were not allowed to speak English, both during their daily four hours of class and outside of it.

“China is so modern and people don’t think of it that way. They have very well adapted subway systems and huge skyscrapers everywhere — what we think of as modern,” Post said, “I think a lot of people before they go just think China is…backwards.”

While Post missed the “normal kinds of home things,” she found it fairly easy to adjust to the Chinese pace of life, helped by the fact that “Chinese food is amazing and of course, nothing like American Chinese food. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat it at a restaurant here again.”

Post also cites the generous nature of Chinese people for her “very enjoyable experience.”

“Chinese people are extremely welcoming, especially if you’re trying to speak their language and interact with them. I’ve had a lot of experiences where people would just invite me to their house,” Post said.

Having returned to the States, Post is readjusting to the quiet of the Swarthmore suburbs and lingering jetlag. She is looking into returning next summer and after college perhaps working in the booming Chinese art market.

“[China] has kind of become part of me,” Post said, “I really like the study of Chinese and China and I want to go back and make it part of my post-Swarthmore life.”

China to the U.S.

For Wenxin Du ’08, adapting to American life was not difficult since she grew up in the modernized coastal city of Nanjing.

“[Nanjing] has been developing very rapidly in this age of globalization so we watched Hollywood movies and ordered pizza from Papa John’s,” Du said, “It wasn’t that much of a culture shock for me.”

Du first decided to come to Swarthmore because she was interested in studying social science but “China is still a socialist country so it’s hard to study things related to ideology.” The more rigid Chinese higher education system also left little room for academic exploration.

The biggest surprise for Du when she arrived was the trademark Swarthmore work ethic. “I was pretty surprised that American students were studying really hard,” Du said, “Compared to Chinese students, the stereotype is that the Chinese students work harder than their American counterparts but it turned out to be not exactly right, especially here.”

The initial language barrier for Du was “not substantial.”

“I just went to a normal public high school but we had a lot of exposure to American culture so English wasn’t very difficult for Chinese students these days,” Du said.

While Du misses authentic Chinese food, living away from home hasn’t been difficult “because I can talk to my parents online using the web camera and I go back home twice a year.” Coming from a large city, Du has also had to adjust to the “drastically different population densities.”

Du’s favorite memory of Swarthmore remains the Thanksgiving break when she was invited to a roommate’s home.

“We had a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner,” Du recalls, “It was very special and a really good memory because everybody was very friendly.”

One thing Du misses when she returns to China is the attitude toward academics prevalent here.

“Here, students are so passionate about what they’re studying and a lot of people do all the work because they like the material so much. But back in China, especially in the coastal cities, a lot of people are just concentrating on how to become rich and find a good job and go abroad to pursue the best degrees,” Du said, “People are more pragmatic in China.”

BY TIFFANY LIAO

Ghana

U.S. to Ghana

Before journeying abroad to Ghana in late summer of 2006, Nora Taplin ‘08 had learned of Ghanaian culture through stories from international Swarthmore students. After studying African dance at Swarthmore, Taplin chose to participate in the dance department’s study abroad program, which took her to the University of Ghana in Legon, the University’s largest campus located outside of the capital city of Accra.

At the University of Ghana, Taplin took academic and dance courses in addition to learning Twi, one of the major ethnic languages in Ghana. Taplin was surprised by the teaching style used to conduct classes in Ghana. While many Swarthmore courses are taught using the round-table discussion method, Taplin found that Ghanaian professors relied heavily upon lectures and “rote learning.” Furthermore, “resources were limited,” said Taplin, and not all students had access to the required textbooks.

Taplin appreciated how welcome she felt while in Ghana. This outgoing candor of Ghanaians, however, did take some getting used to. “People come up and talk to you on the street,” Taplin said.

After acclimatizing to the easy-going lifestyle in Ghana, Taplin realized that she had to “step up the pace” in order to get used to being back at Swarthmore. Yet, Taplin found it most difficult to meaningfully describe her experiences in Ghana. For Taplin, there is no true way to “package the experience” of being abroad.

Ghana to the U.S.

Omari Faakye ‘10 lives in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, yet he truly hails from an indefinable region in “the east,” the land of his ancestors. While his high school classmates were scrambling to apply to Ivy League universities, Faakye would “sleep and dream about Swarthmore.” Using the Admissions viewbook as his “Swarthmore bible,” Faakye was drawn to “the sense of community and intimacy” evident in its photos of “gardens and happy faces.”

Because he never looked up Swarthmore’s location on a map before journeying to the college, Faakye was surprised to find that Parrish Beach was not an actual beach. On a more serious note, he also perceived a change in the pace of life in the United States. “Things in Ghana go slowly” while “Americans are very serious,” Faakye said.

Despite American seriousness, Faakye said that he, like 60% of his peers at his pan-African high school who applied to colleges outside of Africa, was eager to go abroad. While Faakye knew exactly where he wanted to go, many had “lost hope in their own country” and would have gone anywhere simply for the sake of leaving.

Although Faakye is happy at Swarthmore, he still believes in the old cliche that there is no place like home. “You can never fully be comfortable when you are not in your own home,” Faakye said. Whether or not he will return to Ghana after graduation is still up in the air. For Faakye, this is a decision he cannot currently make. He wants to “do the best” he can here while letting “the future hold what it wants to for [him].”

BY LIANA KATZ