I was wearing shorts last week, if I recall correctly. Ithaca was still basking in the seemingly endless sunshine that, in a normal year, would have ceased to exist after orientation week (or so it always seems…).
Then came this week. The mercury plummeted and the skies turned grey; we won’t be making it out of the 40s today, and the wind chill is in the mid 30s. Maybe not so coincidentally, this week marked the unofficial start of prelim season. Every professor on campus feels the need to get at least one major test or assignment in during the couple of weeks leading up to our long Columbus Day weekend. Seats will become harder to come by in the library, partially because nobody wants to play frisbee on the arts quad when it’s 37 and drizzling. Soon enough, though, we’ll have a long weekend to recharge. Judging from what I’ve heard from my fellow Daily Sun editors, I wouldn’t be surprised to run into friends on the streets of Montréal in a couple of weekends.
Returning to the US last December after a semester in South America, I felt comfortable with my ability to converse in Spanish. I listened to podcasts and read the news in Spanish to retain as much as possible as I went through a semester and summer with little practice and no Spanish classes.
Now, for the 2009 fall semester, enter Portuguese.
I’d been to Brazil for ten days in high school and had found that if I added a funky accent to my Spanish vocabulary, I could get by well enough such that people could kind of understand what I was trying to say. Reading was no problem, but when it came to comprehending the words coming out of a native speaker’s mouth (and actually correctly pronouncing the language), I was lost.
Come the first class of PORT 2090 two Thursdays ago, I had minimally prepared myself by a) occasionally listening to the weekly BBC Brasil news podcast in Portuguese and b) having remembered to bring my Lonely Planet Brazilian Portuguese phrase book up to Ithaca. Our first several 75 minute classes have been devoted entirely to the pronunciation of vowels, diphthongs, and some consonants. Easy enough, I assumed, as someone who’s developed a decent Spanish accent.
But no. The sounds that letters and combinations thereof can make is mind-boggling. Our class of 18 has about half native English speakers and half native Spanish speakers, yet both parties seem to encounter some issues when trying to correctly distinguish between an a, an â, an ã, and an á. Add to that the fact that a simple change in accent mark on one letter can change the entire meaning of a word, and you have a recipe for confusion. That’s why we’ve spent four classes so far covering the basics, without even touching on the most basic of vocabulary. For example, the whole concept of nasalization (or, in Portuguese, nasalização) is new to all of us and requires the use of parts of the nose, mouth, and throat that English and Spanish have never dared to make sounds with.
My goal for the end of the year in this (year-long) course is to be able to return to Brazil one day and encounter many fewer furrowed brows.
On Monday, I returned to resume life on the hill after a summer that included a heartbreaking lacrosse defeat, an engaging internship, a kayak crossing of Long Island Sound, and a cross-country road trip, among other things. Despite all of that excitement, I was ready to return to campus for my senior year. At this point, very little of me wants college to come to an end, but I expect to come to terms with the looming sense of finality as the semester and academic year progress.
Upon my return, I found my apartment and set foot in it for the first time; my two roommates had found it, toured it, and signed the lease while I was abroad in Chile last fall. They, in turn, had studied abroad in Europe this past spring, so their arrival in Ithaca was the first time I had seen either one of them since May 2008 — that’s a long time.
After some much-needed trips to Target and Wegmans (along with the rest of Cornell), we were able to settle into our apartment and get back into the swing of things. Classes started on Thursday, so here’s a quick rundown of my lineup for the semester:
PORT 2090: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers
NS 4450: Food Policy for Developing Nations
PHYS 1201: Why the Sky is Blue: Aspects of the Physical World
PAM 2100: Introduction to Statistics
IARD 4020: Agriculture in Developing Nations
PE 1400: Body-Mind
Both Portuguese and Agriculture in Developing Nations continue through the spring semester; the latter will take me on a two-week tour of southern India over winter break — can’t wait! All of my college-specific requirements will be taken care of by the end of the semester, which will allow me to have a slightly less stressful senior spring.
Before the work piles up, I’ve had the chance to enjoy the beautiful weather we’ve been having recently. Sunday morning Farmers Market brunches can’t be beat.
Cornell, like nearly every institution of higher education, has been forced to make budget cuts across the board during these difficult economic times. Each cut has sparked a response from faculty/staff and students alike, but one that resonates especially powerfully with me is the University’s recent decision to eliminate Dutch, Swedish, and Turkish language courses, in addition to English as a Second Language (ESL) writing courses. While I had never planned on taking any of these courses, they’re vital components for various parts of the Cornell community.
Cornellians looking to pursue research in, say, Sweden, the Netherlands, or Turkey will soon have little or no language resources available to them. Those students (especially graduate students) who come to Cornell from over 120 countries will no longer have access to hands-on writing training. How does this affect undergraduates? Well, even though 99% of classes are taught by professors, graduate students acting as teaching assistants (TAs) are a vital part of the classroom learning experience. What happens when they don’t get the writing training they need and deserve?
In information sessions for prospective undergraduate students, Cornell admissions officers always make sure to highlight the 40+ languages offered on campus. It’s a staggering number, but this slide isn’t promising. It’s reminiscent of the scene in the movie Airplane! in which the plane has just landed and is skidding down the runway. The arrival gate keeps changing as the aircraft continues its controlled crash:
The Monday after spring break is one of the more obnoxious days of the academic year. Nearly everyone on campus has just spent a slightly less stressful week spread out across the globe. The stream of cars on Route 79 entering Ithaca on Sunday evening carries better-rested students whose sunburn still kind of hurts and who are just starting to get back to work on the bus ride in from New York City. The transition from break to school is never an easy one, but this year it was a bit tougher because, when I arrived in Ithaca for what is supposedly spring, it was snowing. Thank you, mother nature, for reminding us that, no, Ithaca doesn’t observe spring like the rest of the world does. Kind of like Arizona not doing the whole Daylight Savings Time thing, but colder.
Group projects pick up where they left off, even though everyone’s brain is still somewhere else for those first few days. Paper topics loom ominously on your computer’s desktop, waiting to be contemplated, researched, and outlined. Prelims sneak up from behind. Perhaps most terrifying: there’s only a little over a month of classes left in the semester. Back to work we go.
7:45AM. The earliest class I’ve ever had. At Mann Library, a good 20 minute uphill walk from my apartment in Collegetown. Why would I put myself through such torture?
Because it isn’t torture. It’s a whole new approach to learning that actually motivated me to get out of bed at 6:30 this morning and make the hike to the Ag Quad through the -12F windchill.
Needless to say, I passed only a few brave souls on my walk to class, but the twenty-ish of us in the sustainable development global seminar were ready to connect with our international counterparts in Australia, Sweden, Honduras, and Costa Rica by the time the clock struck 8:00. We were seated in Mann Library’s distance learning room, which is an average-sized classroom with a huge widescreen TV that has a webcam that’s a bit more advanced than the iSight camera built into my Mac laptop. Also connected is a microphone on a long cord that can be passed around the room. A big sign reading “Comment” sat on the desk and would be raised whenever we at Cornell wanted to respond to a comment/question. On the TV, the four images of our counterparts flashed before us, sometimes with all parties on the screen, other times with only one school taking up the monitor. In Honduras and Costa Rica, it was even earlier in the morning (how do they do it?), while it was the afternoon in Uppsala, Sweden and midnight in Melbourne, Australia.
For an hour and a half, representatives from each participating class introduced their respective countries and institutions and started to discuss some issues regarding sustainability. I was one of four presenters from Cornell; I figured my experience as a Cornell Ambassador might help in synthesizing and communicating what Cornell’s all about. There was so much that could have been said about Cornell, the greater Ithaca area, New York state (not many people outside of the US understand that ‘New York’ is more than the city), and ourselves. We had only seven minutes to communicate this information to our international counterparts, many of whom do not speak English as a native language. You can imagine the challenge we faced of cutting out 90% of what we could be saying. While the picture we painted was incomplete to a degree, I think (in my humble opinion) that we did a decent job explaining where we come from.
At each school except for Zamorano in Honduras, there were US or Canadian exchange students scattered throughout the classroom. The Costa Rican, Honduran, and Australian delegations looked enviably warm in their short-sleeved shirts, while we at Cornell and Uppsala were comparatively bundled up, still recovering from our trek to class. We had a short discussion period at the end, when we started to debate various viewpoints on sustainability in general; those “Comment” cards in each classroom were flying up as students and instructors made some provocative statements on the topic. Soon enough, our one and half hours were up, we debriefed via video and then among ourselves, and we continued to our next classes of the day.
Those two words were written on the chalkboard this morning at the beginning of what could turn out to be one of my favorite classes at Cornell: IARD 4800 / “Global Seminar: Building Sustainable Environments and Secure Food Systems for a Modern World”. After putting down the chalk, one of the two professors broke out a commemorative inauguration t-shirt and draped it over the back of his laptop. Emphasizing the importance of the day, Professor Lassoie expressed his enthusiasm for Obama’s then-upcoming inauguration speech, hoping it would touch on those two key concepts. In order to truly achieve sustainable development, he explained, you need to have accountability and responsibility. It was no surprise later in the day when Obama’s speech focused a good deal on these ideas, and it made for the perfect day on which to start this course.
Why this course? Not only does it mesh with my academic interests almost perfectly, but the way it goes about teaching the subject matter is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Using Mann Library’s distance learning room, our class of twenty students will hold many videoconferences throughout the semester with four other universities participating in this seminar: EARTH University in Costa Rica, the University of Melbourne in Australia, Uppsala University in Sweden, and Zamorano University in Honduras. Each of the participating universities develops a theme relating to the seminar and we students present on those themes and engage in discussion and debate with our counterparts around the world. While the 25 minute uphill walk to get to class at 9AM on Tuesdays and 8AM on Thursdays is a bit challenging, it’s definitely worth the effort, if today’s first session was any indicator of how things will go the rest of the semester.
Back to Inauguration. After meeting up with a fellow Sun senior photographer to hand off some photographic equipment, I joined the crowd in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall to watch the swearing-in of Biden and Obama. While there must have been at least 100 people there (probably more), it was silent enough to hear a pin drop; remarkable considering we were at the heart of campus in the middle of a busy weekday. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Obama’s speech in its entirety, but I plan on watching it soon online.
What a day this was, and what a semester this will be.
Today marks the final day of my academic semester in Chile. We’ve spent the past few days at the beach resort town of Algarrobo, located on the Pacific coast directly west of Santiago. While there, each of us students presented our Independent Research Projects (ISPs) and went through a workshop on cultural re-integration to the United States. For having only ten students rather than the more typical amount of 15 to 20, our group had some extra time and spent Thursday afternoon on the beach. Not only were we in front of the world’s largest pool (part of the San Alfonso del Mar resort / apartment complex), but we had this huge stretch of white sand beach practically to ourselves! (see Google Map below)
It was nice to finally have some free time, since each of us had spent a good chunk of the month of November calling and emailing the Chilean government, various businesses, NGOs, etc, and then carrying out interviews with them and putting together a comprehensive project paper. Now we’re back in Santiago, where we have our final goodbye dinner this evening. Time has FLOWN by, as always seems to be the case with experiences like this.
Fortunately, I’ll be sticking around the continent for the next 12 days to explore parts of Argentina and Uruguay with Gülce, a friend from my program here in Chile. Check back on the blog for updates from our journey that will bring us through Mendoza and Buenos Aires in Argentina, and Montevideo and Punta del Este in Uruguay.
To those of you up at Cornell starting to study for finals, good luck, and hopefully the updates in the upcoming weeks can serve as a much-deserved study break.
Since we’re now in the month of November, those of us doing SIT’s Economic Development & Globalization program here in Chile are now embarking on our Independent Study Projects (ISPs), which last until the end of the month. Four of the ten students in the group have chosen to leave Santiago to conduct field research on their topics of choice, and I just arrived in my destination this morning. The four of us have stretched out from the shipping port of Arica on the Chile-Peru border to Puerto Montt, the capital of Chile’s tenth region of Los Lagos, often referred to as the gateway to Patagonia.
I arrived this morning on a double-decker bus outfitted with some seriously comfy reclining leather seats. Since seats are assigned on long-distance buses in Chile, I made sure to get a seat in the front row of the upper deck. The decision paid off with a great view of the landscapes of southern Chile after the sun rose around 6:30, when the bus first stopped in the city of Osorno. After making a few more stops along the highway and in the town of Frutillar, we made our way into some cloudier weather and arrived in Puerto Montt, which was living up to its nickname of Muerto Montt, mostly because it was 8:30 on a Sunday morning.
After a short cab ride to the hostel I’ll be calling home til the 22nd of the month, I unpacked and made myself at home in my single room.
Weather-wise, it actually feels like November here (the northern hemisphere’s version), rather than July, which is what Santiago had been feeling like. The temperature is hovering in the mid-50’s and it’s overcast, with occasional rain showers (like Ithaca!). Come to think of it, rain isn’t something I’ve experienced since the last time I was in the south of Chile (that time, in the eighth region), which was the later half of September. Wow.
So, what am I doing here? Well, for my ISP, I’m investigating the responses from public and private sources to environmental and sanitary issues in Chile’s salmon aquaculture industry. During my stay in the area, I’m hoping to conduct a range of interviews with representatives from businesses, governmental agencies, and NGOs to get a better idea of what’s happening, what should be done, who should be leading the movement forward, etc. Puerto Montt is known as the salmon capital of Chile, and the salmon industry is all over this region, from the gigantic freshwater Lake Llanquihue (yan-KEE-way) about 20 minutes to the north, to the island of Chiloé (chee-lo-EH) to the southwest.
Below is a map of my semester so far, which is always accessible by clicking ‘Other Pages’ above and then clicking on the ‘Chile’ graphic. The southernmost point on the map is Puerto Montt, to give you an idea of where I am in the world. I’m at the latitude of part of Argentina, this part of Chile, and some of New Zealand. Not much else.
Our final group excursion of the semester took us northbound to Region II, a region known for basically two things: 1) copper, the backbone of Chile’s export-based economy, and 2) the Atacama Desert, the driest desert on the planet. An early morning flight out of Santiago’s airport landed us in the city of Antofagasta at 9:30AM, less than two hours after taking off from Chile’s foggy central valley.
And what a difference a couple of hours can make. While all kinds of landscapes are visible from the air, this was the first time I literally couldn’t believe my eyes. As we entered a controlled dive of sorts for landing in Region II, two things were visible out the window: the ocean and sand. Nothing else. No sign of civilization save for a seemingly miniscule container ship on the Pacific Ocean. Our approach brought us over the coast, where the driest desert in the world meets the biggest ocean in dramatic fashion. After landing, we immediately went to the coast to see La Portada, Antofagasta’s best known landmark (and only landmark, I think), a natural stone arch surrounded by the sea. It was here that we got a better look at the dramatic transition from land to sea.
The rest of our day was spent free roaming around the very industrial city that is Antofagasta. The main purpose the urban center serves is as a port serving the copper mines further inland. Thoroughfares are packed with eighteen wheelers at all hours of the day, coming into town with sheets upon sheets of copper and leaving the port with pretty much everything (except copper) to keep Region II alive and well. No double decker city tour buses here. After heading to one of the city’s hypermarkets (note: a hypermarket is like a supermarket, but bigger) to get lunch, we spent the afternoon on the beach, which was bordered not by a hotel or even apartments, but the loading dock of a hypermarket / mall complex. Apparently beachfront property isn’t valued in Antofagasta.
The next day, we had a couple of lectures about regional development in the north at the Universidad Católica del Norte. Lunch followed in the university’s ONLY dining facility. Good thing we made it into the one lunch line before most classes got out; judging by the line that wrapped around the building, we would have been waiting for our mediocre food for a good hour or so. The food was what I imagine US public schools had in the 1950s; the cafeteria food that is always stereotyped in TV shows and movies. To give you an idea, the only thing to drink was a fluorescent orange drink not good enough to call Tang. There wasn’t even water. That meal reinforced my decision to attend a university that actually takes food seriously (and how can you not, with a Hotel School and an Ag school?).
After lunch, we ten students and our two directors boarded a full size coach bus to head northeast to the city of Calama. Why twelve people on a fifty person bus? The roads in the Atacama Desert can be iffy at times, especially when a truck carrying cargo as wide as the two-lane highway passes by. Therefore, bigger is better. We took full advantage of our private bus with “Semi-Cama” (half-bed) seats and rested up a bit. Personally, I spent most of the ride staring out the window at a landscape unlike any I had ever seen. There was no vegetation anywhere — not even a cactus — and signs of human life were few and far between.
Three and a half hours after leaving Universidad Católica del Norte, we were in Calama, a city that exists solely because copper mines are in the area. As a result, it has some of the highest rates of marital infidelity and alcoholism in Chile (miners and their spouses are separated for long periods of time…), and judging by what we had read, we gathered that prostitution was one the city’s bigger industries. For that reason, none of us left the hotel after sunset; it was a quiet night spent watching Men in Black with Spanish subtitles.
Come morning, we were out of Calama and on the road to the copper mine Radomiro Tomic, a state-owned mine under the CODELCO Norte group. We attended a video/discussion and tour of the mine with a group of Chilean university students from the Universidad del Mar in Viña del Mar. After our experience at the Arauco cellulose plant in the south, none of us was entirely enthusiastic about once again being fed information straight from the horse’s mouth. Our tour by bus took us to the main open-pit mine at Radomiro Tomic, which was absolutely gigantic (apparently its CODELCO Norte neighbor mine Chuquicamata has a bigger one). I’d be lying if I said that I understand the scientific process that is copper mining and refinement, but our visit was definitely a new experience for all of us.
Below is a panorama of the open-pit mine. Click on the image to be taken to its flickr page, where you can view a larger version by clicking “All Sizes” above the image.
San Pedro de Atacama was our last stop during the excursion. Formerly a small town of indigenous Aymara people, it has been transformed into a larger — but still small — town bustling with countless tour operators and restaurants serving food from around the world. We were there to learn about the impact globalization has had on the town, and also to see the sights that so many Chileans and foreigners come to see. It was shocking to see more foreigners than Chileans, especially out in the middle of the desert. That said, if there are sights, tourists will come to see them.
Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) was our destination for sunset on our last evening in the north. It surely lived up to its name; the landscape in this area only minutes outside of San Pedro de Atacama was, well, other-worldly. Words can’t do the place justice, so here are some photos:
The next day, we drove back to Calama and departed for Santiago (video of takeoff from Calama). It was back to class in the morning.
Slideshow
Below is a slideshow of the excursion’s photos. It’s interactive and linked to my photos on flickr, so click around and discover its features.
