CAPA WORLD

In this week's vlog, Amaia Rioseco visits her roommate from back home at her program in Paris, France. The two students chat over breakfast and compare their semesters abroad, discussing some common differences they've noticed between their life at Emerson College in Boston and their programs in Paris and Barcelona.

In this post, Nicole talks about her experience visiting Guilin, a city in central China, and how this trip led her to connect with nature.

It wasn’t until the trip to Guilin that I realized my love for nature and how happy I was to be in China. Known for its unique landscape of limestone karst hills, Guilin is a city of world renown natural beauty. 

The Guilin trip, organized by East China Normal University, invited all international students to explore the beautiful scenery of the Guangxi Zhuang region. After a nine-hour ride in the bullet train, we started our adventure. We visited the Elephant Trunk, the Longji Terrace, Xingping Town, the Lijiang River, but my favorite place was the Gudong Waterfall.

In this week's post, Genevieve breaks away from her routine in the city and celebrates with locals at a traditional UK event: Guys Fawkes Day. Learn about the significance of Guy Fawkes Day and what happens at the local events annually!

Eventually in a big city, the buildings start to crowd out the sky, trapping pedestrians in a bubble of industry. Everything looks manmade and nature feels distant. The cold wind rushes down streets, like a river in a well-worn channel. It makes coats flap and faces turn red. The city begins to feel harsh and cold. Its character is lost in the interminable rotation of the same days, the same patterns. Even abroad, routine makes what was exciting long and dull. But in those moments, when home feels far away and the excitement of the coming holidays makes it feel even farther, I have made some of the most enchanting discoveries of my experience abroad.

CAPA Alumni Claire Shrader shares 3 areas in which she's noticed a lasting benefit from studying abroad in Buenos Aires. 

Everyone has a different purpose in spending a semester abroad. For me, there were many, but one of the biggest reasons was to greatly improve my Spanish ability in a way I knew I could only do by being immersed in it 24/7. Man, did Buenos Aires totally surpass all of my hopes in that regard. It was amazing to me to watch my language ability develop from the first day, where I shyly rode the whole way back from the airport without saying a word, to two days later, where I was laughing and chatting with my host family, to two weeks after that, where I was so comfortable speaking, and could understand them most of the time, too, to two months later, when I understood almost 100% of what was said to me, and was able to articulate my thoughts and ideas in a way that made sense, and was actually, dare I say it, almost eloquent.

The UN estimates that, by the end of this century, 84% of people will live in cities. Barcelona is a welcoming one, a community that embraces and encourages diversity, ambition and creativity. It’s a city that is thinking ahead, that is actively preparing itself for the future and for growth.

In this week's post, Jessica shares 5 practical travel tips for you to add to your list—from booking flights to trying new food—so that you can make the most of your adventures abroad! 

This past week was assignment week, which means we do not have classes so we can work on our major semester assignments. Luckily, I got most of my work done ahead of time so I’m headed out to Paris, Amsterdam, and London.

Traveling throughout Europe from Dublin can be cheap, if you do it right. There are a few things I’ve learned and found helpful in order to plan trips.

What we remember

The ending of the First World War (1914- 1918) will be widely commemorated on November 11^th  2018. It was a global conflict that began and ended in Africa; thirty per cent of the British troops served on the Eastern Front. The conflict reshaped the international environment.  Old monarchies failed. The Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires collapsed. New countries in Europe and the Middle East emerged from the ruins including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Trans-Jordan. The consequences of that war are still part of our global political landscape.

CAPA Alumni Claire Shrader reflects on some of the most important things she learned about herself while studying abroad in Buenos Aires, and the different outlook on life she gained from her time abroad.

I think those of our friends who have not studied abroad could definitely tell those of us who have that the line, “I miss _________ about studying abroad!” has become a staple in our conversations. Living in another country for 3-4 months is no small endeavor, and processing it once you’re home often hits at strange moments. For me, the smell of exhaust as I wait at the stop light to get to my dorm can take me right back to my 12-minute walk to the subway station in Buenos Aires, where I took subway D to my internship in Belgrano. It’s a small thing—just a stop light and a smell—but that experience is so fresh to me, that’s all it takes to instantly transport me back to that moment. There are a million things I miss about being in Argentina, and most of them revolve around food, ha.

But along with all of the things I miss, every time the word “Buenos Aires” comes to mind, I can’t help but think of the things I learned while there, too.

In this week's post, Lorenzo discusses three excursions he's taken with CAPA to experience the wildlife of Australia, from petting wallaby at the Featherdale Wildlife park and hiking in the Blue Mountain National Park, to spending the night at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. 

In this week's post, Christopher recounts his whirlwind Fall break where he traveled to and experienced the cultures of not one, not two, but FIVE different cities in TEN Days!

As my schedule requires me to be busy roughly five days a week, I have found that it has been rather challenging to take off from work to go about and travel for the whole weekend in Europe. Having to average twenty hours a week over the course of the semester has made me focus on honing my time management and planning skills to be able to juggle work, school, and traveling. However, this past week we were off from classes for a mid-semester break and I took full advantage of the opportunity to travel abroad throughout Europe.