Gastronomical extravaganza

Although Mexico is about learning the language and learning about the culture, it is also about the food. Everyday we would gather around the lunch table to taste the next delicacy that our Senora would lay down in front of us. Everything from mole (a type of spicy sauce made with chocolate, pronounced mole-eh) con pollo to flautas, milanesa to chile relleno luch time was truly a sampling of Mexican culture. Not only was food amazing but during these lunches was when we would learn about our Senora's take on Mexican culture and how it has changed throughout her 81 (now 82) years. Lunch time was a combination of our conversation, grammar, and history class all rolled into one. She really was a wealth of information, and a damn good cook too.

A Mexico adventure

Mexico is a colorful country. Summers in Mexico are festive, filled with the sights, sounds and smells of a culture that loves life and all it entails. Walking down the streets during the day, the smells of delectable foods greet your nostrils as the sounds of mariachis (traditional bands) and people yelling, whistling, and laughing envelop the scene. What is the scene, you might ask? The scene changes from day to day, and street to street. The main streets are lined by cafes, restaurants, and shops where the social life of Guanajuato thrives. The restaurants have colorful umbrellas, delicious aromas, and live mariachi bands to take in for any person strolling down the colonial-era cobblestone streets of El Centro, or downtown Guanajuato. Geometrically shaped trees accentuate a triangular central plaza called El Jardín which boasts marble tiles, gazebos, live music, pricey restaurants, a huge Gothic-style church, the Teatro Juarez (a beautiful building of Grecian architecture), and finally my favorite Italian restaurant with the famous $12.00 out-of-this-world filet mignion -- Frascattis. El Jardin is the gathering place of the city of Guanajuato at night, with streets so crowded and boisterous it is reminiscent of Disney World.



Taking a walk down any of the winding streets or callejones (alleyways) that lead away from the center leads to a million different discoveries. The Plaza de San Fernando is lined with shops and cafes, and hosts an adorable dance night once a week in the evenings, in which older couples dance a specific Mexican number (which I have been told is very difficult, but they make it look easy). Avenida Juarez, one of two main streets of the city, leads from El Jardín to a main bus stop, winding along sometimes narrow sidewalks that force pedestrians into doorways as buses zoom haphazardly along. Avenida Juarez also leads to El Mercado, a warehouse-like building with numerous shops, and the Plaza de la Paz, where the landmark gargantuan yellow Basilica gathers wedding parties and quinceñeras, spouting organ music at all times of the day. Speaking of church bells, beware! They chime the hour, half hour, and sometimes even the quarter hour at all times of the day and night, and when there is mass, they emit such an alarming peal that the city seems to be under attack! Nevertheless, I learned to rely on them for the time, and was actually at a loss when I returned to the U.S. and actually had to look at a watch.

The other main street, Positos, leads from the Alhóndiga (a granary where a significant battle of the Mexican revolution against Spain was won) to the University (a huge gothic-style building with a million stairs and a castle quality). Along the way, speeding taxis are a danger as sidewalks occasionally disappear around corners, and numerous steep hills must be traversed—helping to keep food-happy students in shape in the high altitude.

More about the people: they are energetic, friendly, affectionate (especially the young couples!), and delightfully patient and helpful when confronted with broken Spanish. The males are expressive, and any female that has been to Mexico will be familiar with the chh-chh, whistles, and even dog barks that she encounters numerous times daily. As my roommates and I took fifteen-minute bus rides to and from the city every day, we were in direct contact with wonderful people who helped us find our stops on the frantic first few days (¿Bajamos aquí por El Centro? -- No, no el próximo parrada -- ¿Aquí? Todavía no.). On the way back home at night, the taxi drivers showed interest and patience as we told them about America and studying Spanish and they shared information about their families and lives. Our teachers were funny and engaging, making the Spanish learning process much easier, and the students in class with us became great friends over the course of a month.

During my month in Mexico, several wonderful things happened. First, my Spanish improved enough to communicate with the people of another culture (although I did occasionally have to ask them to Habla más despacio, por favor! -- speak more slowly). Second, I learned to dance salsa, meringue, and cumbia in some great dance classes offered by the university, as well as learning the valuable skill of cooking real Mexican food -- which I have already utilized, I have to admit. Most importantly though, through my struggles with navigating a foreign land, my exposure to a people and a culture so different from my own, and the act of taking this journey with friends, I have changed in the best way possible. I have gained closer friends as we discovered, individually and collectively, a different way of life. This discovery has enlightened our view of our lives, our country, and indeed the world.

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