Writing from Melbourne

This past weekend I went with some of the other guys in my study abroad program to the Great Ocean Road, which runs for about 150 miles along the coast of Australia south of Melbourne. We saw a ton of cool stuff, including the beach where they filmed Point Break, a Eucalyptus forest full of wild koalas, a rainforest walk, and some incredible cliff views. The highlight of the trip was the Twelve Apostles, a series of huge rocks that stand in the ocean just off of the shore. Between the cliffs and the waves, they're a pretty awesome sight.



This picture is of the "London Bridge", another natural rock formation just off the coast. It might be hard to tell from the picture, but it's at least a couple hundred feet long and over a hundred feet outof the water. It used to have another natural arch that connected it to the coast, but that collapsed a few years ago, and it left people stranded on top of the remaining rock until they could be rescued by helicopter.

Recounting a semester in Geneva

The Broken Chair, symbolizing the victims of anti-personnel landmines, was placed at the entrance to the United Nations in Geneva to commemorate the work that has been done with the Mine Ban Treaty.

Would it be wrong to choose to study abroad somewhere entirely because of their chocolate? Okay, okay, so maybe that wasn’t the only reason. This spring I spent a semester abroad in Geneva, Switzerland. It was an incredibly intense but incredibly fulfilling five months, where I experienced Geneva and Europe to its fullest through courses, an internship, and a lot of travel.



My main reason for choosing Geneva was because of its important role in international relations. I was able to not only study this work but to personally contribute to it through an internship with the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD). GICHD serves as the effective secretariat for the Ottawa Convention or Mine Ban Treaty, an international arms control instrument that has led 153 states to completely ban anti-personnel landmines and end the humanitarian harms that they cause. Working with GICHD was easily the coolest thing that I have gotten to do as an undergraduate. My main work was researched based, where I compiled reports on universalization of the treaty to Middle Eastern states, standards for landmine victim assistance, and the implications of newly discovered stockpiles of AP mines. I also got the opportunity to serve as the head of my own major research project. The focus of this project was to counter claims made by states not party to the treaty that landmines were needed for border security. My job was to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of landmines in the first place, how other states employ successful border security systems without landmines, and how new states could access these alternative technologies and accede to the treaty. The best part of the internship was seeing my research actually used. My boss was great about including me in all of his work, and I was able to participate in meetings with the treaty’s president, the Co-Chairs of the Standing Committees established by the treaty (diplomats from the various state parties), the Landmine Survivors Network, and the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Another important part of my job was helping the Center prepare and host two major sets of meetings: the 10th annual meeting of the United Nations Mine Action Programme Directors and Advisors and the 2007 Standing Committee Meetings of States Parties. This was sort of the culmination of my internship experience, where I was able to actually take part in the work of more than a hundred states, NGOs, and individuals coming together from throughout the world to implement plans of disarmament, development and humanitarian assistance.



Courses were also great. They focused on Geneva’s important work in the fields of disarmament and human rights, incorporating meetings and briefings at interesting organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council, UNCTAD, the World Health Organization, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. As interesting as classes and work were, the real adventures of my semester came on the weekends. The program that I studied with included a two month Eurail Pass, so every Thursday night myself and all of the other students in my program set out to explore Europe by train and see all that we could before Monday morning. All in all, I was able to visit Bern, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Vienna, Zermatt, Milan, Athens, the Greek Isles, Rome, Luxembourg, Brussels, Nice, Monte Carlo, Paris, Prague, Torino, Berlin, Dresden, Venice, Dublin, Budapest, Florence, and Bratislava. I would start telling you about all of these adventures, but I am afraid that if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. Suffice to say that it was absolutely amazing, and I wouldn‘t trade it for anything. I collected tons of great photos, friends, and random bits of foreign language vocabulary that I will never forget.



Really interesting classes in international relations, working with the secretariat for an international arms control instrument and doing my own small part to eliminate the humanitarian threat of anti-personnel landmines, and traveling to many of the major cities in Europe. Not bad for a semester abroad. Not bad at all. Especially when you factor in the chocolate.

Working in Argentinian radio

For the last month or so I've been working at Radio Revés (88.7 FM) in Córdoba. The station is run by students in the communication school at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, and does its best to give a voice to workers, women, students, and other groups underrepresented in the media.

My work there is usually doing production and editing. Most mornings we'll interview a couple of people on-air, and my job will be to take the 10-15 minute live, on-air interview and cut it into a 30-45 second clip for rebroadcast later in the program. It's really helping me with my Spanish because I have to be able to completely understand the whole interview in order to be able to pick out the salient parts for the soundbite. Plus, it's a fun game--cutting and pasting phrases together to help the interviewee say what they were trying to say more effectively than they actually did. Oh, and cutting out muletillas, throw-away words like digamos, equivalent to like or you see? in English.

On Tuesday, following the Virginia Tech incident, they had me on the air for a short segment during the morning show to talk about the difference in breaking media coverage of the event between U.S. and international media outlets. We were recording the live stream onto the second computer in the studio but it crashed while I was on the air, so I don't have a copy. If I go back on the air this week, I'll try again.

Because it's a university station, the operation is somewhat low-budget. The weak link in the whole process (as I found out Thursday) is not the rat's nest of wires that feeds into the mixer, nor the Windows 98 computer running two instances of Winamp and five of Firefox, nor even the poor little circuit breaker that supports this load for 16 hours a day.

No, the slow step is the baby-boomer air conditioner running full-blast that's stuffed into a 4-foot by 4-foot closet with the radio transmitter. Without the help of the little window unit, the transmitter generates enough heat to fry itself completely (they told me this was determined empirically). On Thursday the studio felt a little warmer than normal, we discovered that the air conditioner had quit. So about two minutes later, after a hasty on-air explanation of the circumstances, we went off the air for the morning.

>> View slideshows of Zac's trip

A visit to Barcelona

After completing a gruelling course of final exams here at the University of St. Andrews in January, I got a two week break before the next semester started. I, like most of my fellow students, chose to go travelling. By throwing darts at a map, err, consulting with maps, Lonely Planet, and friends, I selected Barcelona as my destination! With a couple clicks of the mouse, I was all set!



I was in Barcelona for just over five days, and I could have stayed longer. I had heard nothing but good things about Barcelona, so much so that I was thinking that I was in for a bit of a let-down. Once arriving, though, I saw that Barcelona really was as nice as I had heard.

This was my first time travelling alone, and it was fun and exciting to try and muddle through in a language I’m only marginally familiar with in a country I hadn’t been to in six or seven years. I did have, however, a very long itinerary created from the recommendations of the numerous friends who were anxious to share their enthusiasm for Barcelona.

Perhaps the most prominent items on this itinerary were those designed by a Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi worked in the 1880s through around 1910. His work, though, looks later, as is the case with many great innovators. His style is reminiscent of art nouveau, but is less complicated and “fiddly.” His emphasis is on curving shapes reminiscent of those found in nature. While he doesn’t cram his works with loads of detailed ornamentation, every detail is considered. Everything I’m saying here, though, is just my opinion and what I learned from the many exhibitions I went to about him. I’ve never taken an art class, or anything, so I guess if you want reality, you’ll just have to go yourself! Be sure to take LOTS of film, though, because his buildings make great pictures!



As I said, Gaudi got a lot of his inspiration from nature, and natural shapes. Perhaps my favourite of Gaudi’s creations was Park Guell, a park on what used to be the outskirts of Barcelona that Gaudi salted with goodies such as winding paths, serpentine benches, columned marketplaces, and colourful, tiled sculptures. Around every turn in the path, there was an interesting feature. Really, it was quite a nice place to spend a couple hours.



Outside of Barcelona there were also some lovely things to do. I walked along the beach and spent some time by the harbour eyeing the sailing ships, but the main tourist attraction outside of Barcelona’s city limits is Montserrat, a monastery on a mountain about an hour from Barcelona. The monastery is located high on a steep mountain, and the only way up is by cable car. The views were stunning! Not only were there wonderful views out over the surrounding (fairly flat) countryside, glimpses of a shady river winding around the foot of the mountain, and a view out to the sea in the far distance, but the mountain itself was lovely as well! From the foot of the mountain, the buildings of the monastery and the more recent museums seem to be perched on the very top of the mountain. Once reaching these buildings, though, it’s surprising to learn that there’s still another half of the mountain above you! I satisfied a bit of my desire to hike by walking around the mountain for several hours which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Despite the lovely scenery and the interesting architecture, perhaps the most interesting thing about Barcelona was the people I met. The last time I had travelled in Europe was this summer when I had come straight off the plane from the states and had spent two weeks in Italy. While there, I met lots of people who seemed to me veterans of travel, young people who had spent weeks, even months in foreign countries learning about different cultures and languages. I respected these long-term travellers, and wondered what experiences they had had that differentiated them from other travellers, because they were noticeably different from newer travellers. In Barcelona, however, I was suddenly the veteran traveller, having been in Europe for nearly five months. This difference was really made clear to me one night when I went out to dinner with a group of three American law students just starting a semester abroad in Ireland. Although I was three or more years younger than they were, I was able to teach them things about travelling. It was interesting!

I must say that although January probably isn’t an ideal time for a visit (brrrr) it’s still a very nice city! The tapas are great, and the Spanish seem to take their hot chocolate very seriously, and there’s nothing better to warm you up!

A Mexico photo essay

I. Hotel Tuna. This is the hotel I stayed at for the first two nights while I searched for an apartment. I still haven’t figured out why they paint the tree trunks white in Mexico. I’ve been told everything from “the paint protects the trees from tree-eating ants” to “it keeps dogs from peeing on them.”



II. ¡Arriba, Abajo, al Centro, por Dentro! The first day we arrived also happened to be Giovanna’s birthday, so an ad hoc party was thrown in Benito’s apartment accordingly. Giovanna’s the one with red curly hair just to my left. This turned out to be the first of an endless string of partying. At some point I got tired of going to so many parties, so I stopped going. I got in trouble when one of my teachers found out though. “Mexico = fiesta,” I was told. She then made it homework for me to party myself silly and ... something else that won’t be repeated here. All of my teachers check homework on a regular basis. Attendance is mandatory and automatically taken, as we have to pass our ID cards in front of scanners by the doors before we enter for class.



III. Ludivina y los Gallos. I was informed that I had to take the route-20 bus to get from my apartment to Tecnológico de Monterrey, but there was actually more to taking the bus than just knowing the route. The first time I tried taking the bus, none of them stopped for me, and I had to take a taxi to Tec instead. The next day, Ludivina showed me how to hurl myself into the street in front of an approaching bus to force it to stop. I didn’t have any more trouble after that.



IV. La Parada de Autobús. This is me with my roommate, Maxim, waiting for the bus. Even though Maxim will tell you that it was incredibly cold that morning, you shouldn’t believe him. Just because you can see your breath every time you exhale doesn’t mean it’s cold.



V. Nuestro Apartamento. This is our apartment in all of its glory. As I mentioned before the students here like to party hard, and sometimes the festivities are held in our apartment. I’m glad I took this picture when I did because our apartment would never look this good again. Our apartment has three bedrooms: two small and one large. Since we naturally all wanted the large room, we decided to draw rooms from a hat. Bruno got the large-room, I got the middle small-room, and Maxim got the end small-room. This picture shows the kitchen on the left and the window (why in the world is there a window?) between the main room and Maxim’s room, on the right.



VI. Nuevas Llaves. We were only given one set of keys for the three of us, so our first task was to make copies. Fortunately we were able to achieve this at the plaza located within walking distance from our apartment. Our friend here actually copied our keys so quickly that I didn’t have time to get my camera out; he’s only pretending to be working in this picture. It looks like he’s doing a good job nonetheless.



VII. Perrito. Pets are really well trained here in San Luis Potosí. Sometimes when their owners are tired of driving, they let their dogs drive for awhile. Here, we see a crafty Schnauzer parking his owner’s vehicle at the Soriana supermarket.



VIII. Una Calle. This is one of the streets we walk along to get to the Tangamanga Park from our apartment. All of the street signs here are affixed to buildings instead of being on a pole, so they’re often hard to find amidst all of the city clutter. This, in addition to the names all sounding the same to me, makes it difficult to learn the street names. Most of the people here seem to have trouble as well. Every time I get lost and ask someone where Tatanacho (my street) is, they say they’ve never heard of it. As long as you’re not lost though, not knowing the street names isn’t a big deal since you can easily navigate by utilizing the many landmarks.



IX. Escultura. As I mentioned previously, there are many landmarks in San Luis Potosí which decorate the city. Here I am in the middle of a roundabout standing in front of a sculpture of four Charros who appear to be at war with the oncoming traffic.



X. Entrada del Parque Tangamanga I. This is the entrance to the Tangamanga Park; it’s actually Tangamanga Park I, of two. I’ve been told that this one is bigger and better than Tangamanga II. In fact, this park is so big that you would need a car to traverse all of it within a single day. Though I’ve visited it on several occasions, most of the park remains undiscovered to me.



XI. Jugo de Naranja. This woman is making fresh orange juice for Bruno. Her shop is located at what I believe to be the center of Tangamanga.



XII. Bicicletas. When you feel like your puny little legs can’t stand any more walking through the park, the opportunity exists for you to be free of your primitive-walking-self in the form of hourly-rated bicycle rentals.



XIII. Bruno y el Nopal. Bruno, apparently having never seen a cactus before, ponders this one deeply. Bruno’s from Belgium. Make of these two statements what you will (syllogism not intended). As a side note, there are seven international students this semester at Tec: Bruno and Max (my roommates) from Belgium; Suvi, Markus, Juha, and Ahmed from Finland; and, me from Dallas. The “Finnish Guys,” as they are known—Suvi is the only female among the seven of us, live in a house on the opposite side of the city. Busses don’t pass by that area so they have to take a taxi everywhere they go.



XIV. Carro con las Plantas. One of many decorations in Tangamanga Park.



XV. Estatua. One of countless statues in Tangamanga.



XVI. ¿Dónde está el fuego? We tried to have a barbeque one of the times we were at the park. Unfortunately we remembered to bring everything except for the lighter fluid. Here, Ahmed and Edna work together to prepare a mushroom, while Arturo and Maxim try to ignite the fire by staring intensely at the charcoal and thinking only happy thoughts. The rest of us, being so hungry that we were looking yearningly at the trash cans, were ready to give up and go out for dinner instead. However, Ahmed said his only goal was to be able to eat his mushroom at an acceptably warm temperature, and then we could go. After two and a half hours, Arturo and Maxim’s efforts paid off, and we had Fire. Just as the fire began to create a detectable amount of heat, a park policeman came by to tell us the park was closing. Geraldo pleaded for fifteen minutes more (along with cunningly bribing him with a taste of our uncooked food), which the officer sympathetically granted, and the face-stuffing of lukewarm foods commenced. By the way, there’s a huge rock on the grill because it was holding down the small piece of foil we had placed there. The foil is no longer visible in this picture because the wind still got the best of us.

Just so you know, kind reader, it’s not all just party-and-park here. We go to school and do school things, too. I will upload pictures of Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus San Luis Potosí with the next posting. Right now though, the weather’s been uncharacteristically gloomy, so I haven’t been able to take a decent picture of Tec yet.