Sara’s abroad in Paris, France, until Dec. 13.

The past week was either an invasion of parents or an exodus from France for kids studying abroad in Paris. For me, my mom and aunt came in from the States to spend Thanksgiving in the City of Lights.

While they were here, I felt a strange combination of appreciation for both this city that I’ve begun to call my home and for my real home, that place that has seemed so far away in these past three months.

While living the starving college student life definitely has its endearing moments, I think I really fell truly madly deeply in love with Paris this week because I finally did it right. I now know why they say the French invented cooking. I ate at both Les Deux Magot and Café de Flore, the two famous establishments on Boulevard Saint Germain. I sipped on a martini at the Hemingway Bar and marveled at the Christmas decorations that have taken over every district, from the Place Vendome to the Champs des Mars. I finally checked out the Impressionist art I’d been waiting to see at the Musee d’Orsay, ate cheese and crepes for lunch and midday snacks, and watered it all down with café crème after café crème. Between all the delicious seafood, crème brulee and Beaujolais, it’s amazing that we found the time to see quite literally every major tourist attraction in Paris – not to mention the two day jaunt down to the south of France for some relaxation. If I had any doubts about the fantasy world of study abroad before this week, well, I’m definitely convinced now.

It wasn’t only great to really live Paris up right, but I’ll admit, while the November blues never really hit me, I was definitely ready for a little taste of home. One thing that having my mom and aunt around made me really realize was how much I have missed home while being abroad. But when I say home, I guess I mean more of the sense of home.

I consider myself pretty lucky. I remain very close to friends from high school. Despite being spread out over the country now that we’re all in college, we’ve been as inseparable as a geographically displaced group of twenty-somethings can be. I can say without exaggeration that I talk to friends from home nearly every day when I’m away at school. I never felt homesick in Evanston and I think a huge reason for that is because home was never more than a phone call, Facebook message or IM away. But that all changed here. Going from being able to talk to my best friend since first grade every day to … well… just about never really made the distance tangible. There has always been something bitter sweet about being here alone. I have always been able to share my life with those closest to me. My best friend, Pearl, and I have pretty much the same group of friends. We go on our family vacations together. She’s been to Evanston multiple times and has become friends with my NU friends. There’s really no part of our lives that we don’t in some way share. And as trivial as it sounds, French itself has been something we’ve shared. When most kids took Spanish in eighth grade, we took French. Speaking in “franglais” and referencing French culture has just become part of our lexicon. So, while being here and living France by myself has been extraordinary, at the same time, there is a piece of me that knows the mille feuille would taste a little sweeter if I could share it with people from home.

That being said, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, albeit a little late, I have to confess that overall, I do feel truly grateful. Grateful to have lived Paris with glorious decadence and beautiful bohemian modesty, grateful to dread leaving this breathtaking city, but at the same time grateful to have so much waiting for me at home…and to have so much to miss there.

In fitting French fashion, I think I’ve learned that I can have my cake and eat it too.

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Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

Four turkeys, 28 pounds of mashed potatoes, eight pies, two pots of gravy, three bowls of stuffing and more beer and wine than I could count.  Despite the total lack of European recognition of Thanksgiving, my program celebrated the American holiday together in style.

We started organizing our large feast at the beginning of this month, when our program director posted a list of around 30 dishes on the board, and, adhering to the potluck code, we each scribbled our name next to something to bring.  I got stuck making brownies, since I was sick when the list went up, but things could have been worse:  I could have had to make a turkey.  Finding all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods proved more challenging than any of us had anticipated:  Turkeys had to be ordered in advance, sweet potatoes were obscenely expensive, there was no summer squash to be found, and cranberries don’t come in cans.  Despite some minor setbacks we all made adjustments, converted our family recipes into the metric system, and managed to make some delicious dishes.

Then there was the issue of where to keep all of our American delights.  Each of us lives in a small dorm and is confined to a drawer, or at best a shelf in the communal fridge.  As is common with shared fridge space, food tends to mysteriously disappear, with no regard for ownership.  (In one extreme incident an entire half of a birthday cake was eaten in the span of two hours, but usually it’s just an egg, or cup of yogurt here and there.) Since advance cooking was not a possibility we all spent the better half of Thursday scrambling around for ingredients, and cooking together in various kitchens across the student city.  In the end though, this made Thanksgiving feel even more like home because we cooked with one another, and the meal was fresh down to the very last pie that one girl carried in with oven mitts.

We were told that our program directors were taking care of the setup and cleanup, but I never anticipated that they would do so well.  I walked into the second floor of a small campus building into a medium-sized warm room, with a wall of windows and a small kitchenette at the back.  Three large tables were set up in a u-shape, covered with long white table clothes, candles, flowers, bottles of wine, and beautiful place settings.  Our director was sporting a suit jacket with his standard jeans-and-T-shirt get up, and all of our program teachers mingled around in semi-formal attire as well.  As we sat down to eat our director stood up and made a sort of cheesy (would it really be Thanksgiving without some sort of lame toast?) but still well intentioned and much appreciated toast.  He explained that no one in Germany has any idea what Thanksgiving is, but that it has become something that he looks forward to each year.  Since, he said, Thanksgiving is a holiday about two cultures coming together to share in a yearly meal, then maybe our little German-American celebration was in true keeping with the spirit of the holiday.  My friend turned to me and asked me what I was thankful for, to which I responded “friends and family, and friends that are family.” He thought it was trite, but I meant it.

The night was a feast of great proportions, and just like every year we all ate until we wanted to explode.  After four hours of eating, drinking, laughing, and talking we decided to call it a night for a few reasons, the first of which was that we all needed a couch to lie down on in order to digest the ridiculous amount of food.  The second of which was that we knew if we ducked out first we wouldn’t have to do dishes.  We grabbed some leftovers, and a few flowers and headed home through the chilly and barren student city.  We capped off the night with a few movies, and a lot of stretching out on beds and floors.

Even though I couldn’t be with my family or friends back in the states for the holiday, I don’t feel like I missed a thing, because my Thanksgiving was wonderful.  I must say though, on Friday morning I was a little disappointed that no stores chose to recognize the follow-up to Thanksgiving, Black Friday.  But I guess there’s always next year.

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Megan’s abroad in London, England, until Dec. 13.

It’s really hard to find a turkey in London. You wouldn’t think so, and neither did I until I looked around Sainsbury’s, our local grocery store. Turkey’s not a big thing to eat here — as one of my British friends said, nobody eats turkey here except for on Christmas, and even then most people don’t like it. Hence my flat’s makeshift bird: a small turkey breast accompanied by two massive drumsticks. It was a mutant turkey, but it was a delicious mutant, so it all worked out.

Small adjustments were a recurring theme this past Thanksgiving. First of all, I had to cook two servings of my mom’s famed sweet potato casserole, since not only did my flat have a Thanksgiving dinner, but so did a big group of my American friends. Half of my night was spent bouncing around between Thanksgivings, making sure I didn’t spend too much time in one place while neglecting my other friends. The other half was spent in the kitchen with my two American flatmates, converting recipes to the metric system and feeling like a grown-up with my own cooking responsibilities.

Thanksgiving dinner in London. Photo by the author.

One of my favorite parts of the day was showing my British friends and flatmates their first Thanksgiving. At one party we made old-school hand turkeys and proudly displayed them on the wall, and in the other I had to defend the tradition of Thanksgiving (even though it’s now kind of associated with killing Native Americans). The Brits came to the decision that Thanksgiving is essentially a preview of Christmas dinner, and that it’s quintessentially American to require two Christmas dinners in the span of one month. I can’t say I disagree.

Though I did have fun, Thanksgiving Day was the first day where I really started to feel homesick. And all you guys with your Facebook statuses saying “Steve is home for Thanksgiving” didn’t help much either. Thanksgiving is nothing if not about family, and long phone calls and Skype conversations with my parents didn’t really cut it. It was my first Turkey Day away from home, and it was tough being in a place that didn’t even acknowledge the holiday’s existence. Luckily, my friends were there to make our London dorms feel like home.

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Laura’s abroad in Amman, Jordan, until Dec. 19.

Sometimes when I reflect on my study abroad experience here in Jordan, I just laugh at all the bizarre situations I get myself into. For example, somehow I ended up practically alone on the dance floor trying to do my best imitation of Arabic dancing at a Palestinian wedding here in Amman.

My neighbor took me to the wedding and she warned me that it would be very conservative. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant but, upon arrival at the wedding hall, I realized that all the women were being ushered to a room upstairs while the men were sent to a separate banquet hall. In the women’s room, the bride, bedecked in a billowing white dress, sat upon her throne in the front of the room beside the groom, who sported a beard about a foot long. She looked a bit bored, to be honest, as she surveyed the dozen or so dancing women below her.

More than 100 women were seated at large tables around the dance floor, chatting, sipping juice and pointing to the younger women on the dance floor. Most wore hijabs and dishdashes (the long cloaks), but the women in the bridal party were all in satiny dresses that would have looked right at home at a 90s prom. Some of the women wore dresses revealing more skin than I’ve seen on an Arab woman since I arrived in Jordan. About a dozen women danced with their arms outstretched, gracefully twisting their wrists and swiveling their hips. Soon the bride came down and joined her sisters and friends while the groom looked on. The three camerawomen followed the bride everywhere, and their live video feed was shown on a floor-to-ceiling screen next to the bridal platform.

The sister of the bride is a friend of my neighbor, so when she saw us seated at a table, she came over to chat and then pulled me up to the dance floor, despite my protests. I must admit that I was quite terrified because I knew I couldn’t bust the same moves I do at the Keg. I have some knowledge of ballroom dancing, salsa and swing, but there wasn’t a guy (besides the groom) in sight. So, I tried my best to imitate the women’s graceful dancing. But as soon as I got to the dance floor, it cleared out, and I ended up doing an almost solo performance while the hundreds of women looked on, many of them pointing and probably wondering why there was an awkward American on the dance floor. The bride’s sister did her best to assure me that I wasn’t completely embarrassing myself, but I was flushed red for the rest of the night.

Thankfully, my dancing was interrupted by the cutting of the cake. A giant, three-tiered cake was carried up to the bride and groom and together they cut it — with a sword. Next was time for the presentation of the gold, which is when the groom bestows gold jewelry upon his bride. The groom, with the help of his mother and sisters, placed each item of gold on the bride and then the bride’s sisters each presented her with a small gift of jewelry. Then the whole family posed for pictures with the groom and glittering bride. My neighbor explained to me that this tradition started because the gold was the bride’s financial security in case she ever got divorced or her husband died. When I was in the northern Badia with the Bedouin tribes, the new brides I met were eager to bring out the boxes with the gold necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings that their husbands gave them.

At the end of the night, after the women had danced for hours, the knock came on the door that the men were coming back in. The women put back on their hijabs and covered up their revealing dresses. Then the doors were opened and then men filed in, shaking hands with the groom. My neighbor and I excused ourselves and left. I had a lot of fun, but I really hope that the camerawomen edit out my little performance from the final wedding video.

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Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, the ground is covered in snow and I had to fork over some Euros for a pair of gloves. The official transition into winter marks the end of fall, and the end of fall concert tours. Somehow quite a few of my favorite bands were playing Munich in the last two weeks, and I finally got some European concert-going experience to add to my boat load of other European firsts.

For some reason I thought before coming to Germany that I would be going a long time without an opportunity to see smaller U.S. bands, assuming that the only bands that played Europe were huge acts (Madonna, Britney, etc.) and indie bands that originated in Europe. A few weeks ago, though, I found myself in front of one of the many pamphlet display walls, and I picked up a booklet from the Munich equivalent of Ticket Master. As I scoured the pages for familiar band names, I was blown away by just how many small American acts were going to turn up in Europe. I headed to the ticket box (conveniently located in the cultural center where I have my French class) and bought tickets to see two bands that week.

Buying tickets in advance was a new step in the concert-going process for me. In Chicago you can always count on a variety of people to be selling tickets outside of even the most popular shows. I rely on these people to sell me tickets at face value so that I don’t have to pay the outrageously jacked up Ticket Master prices, and so that I don’t have to commit to the show four weeks in advance. It was a good move, this time, to purchase them beforehand, though, because when I walked along the outside of the venue of my first show, it was completely barren of scalpers of any kind.

Concerts function largely the same way in Europe as they do in the States, so I won’t bore you with the details of ticket-taking and crowd-standing. What was the most interesting about both of the concerts I saw, though, was the way that language influenced the shows. Both bands were English speaking, one from Ireland and one from Seattle, so I knew I was bound to run into some English speakers there. What I didn’t anticipate was just how many Germans, who didn’t speak a word of English, would be at both shows, or how distinctly the Americans would stand out.

The first show was the smaller of the two, and considerably less crowded. I stood comfortably next to a group of German girls from Stuttgart, who, although they spoke no English, had seen this particular band four to five times already. It was nice to be able to purchase a beer, and talk comfortably with my German neighbors before and after the concert, comparing life stories. I noticed some guys speaking English with an Irish accent when I was at the bar, but overall most people were speaking in German. It was a great show and when the opener dedicated a song to the new American president, Obama, I couldn’t help but cheer with all the Germans around me.

The second concert, on Friday of that same week, was when I really noticed the English speakers. This band was considerably bigger, so I headed to the venue a little earlier, and ended up waiting at the front end of a fairly long line. I was bordered by a group of six guys and three girls speaking loudly in English, and a German couple standing behind me. For the first time since I have been in Europe, I actually identified more with the Germans standing behind me than the Americans in front of me. I started chatting with the couple in German and never did talk to those Americans. It wasn’t because I was ashamed or embarrassed that they were American, or being loud (that tends to happen in big groups anyway), I just finally felt more of a connection with the people who share my new home city, and that was very refreshing.

Once inside, I went to the bar to get a beer, and was surprised to find all of the bar tenders speaking in English, even to those that spoke German to them. I’m not sure if that is a trend at English speaking shows, but they definitely kept it up the whole night. While standing in the small crowd gathered at the front of the concert hall, I ended up standing next to another, smaller group of guys speaking English. One turned to me and asked if I spoke English, and when I responded, “Of course,” he laughed and started talking to me.

It turned out he and his group of friends were American soldiers, who just got back from Iraq and had a long weekend off from the base, located a few hours north of here. I felt sort of silly asking him questions, but I had never really gotten the chance to talk to someone who had served in Iraq and I was curious about what daily life was like. He told me that while they are there, he and his fellow soldiers function essentially as police, talk to the citizens and try to find “the bad guys.” He recalled one day, when they were coming back from a mission in the desert, blasting Santana in their jeep, when one of the vehicles behind them got hit by a missile, and “just like out of a movie, man” they dismounted, pulled out the others and cared for them until the medic helicopter arrived. As he told the end of that story, one of his friends standing in front of him turned around and said, “Man, don’t tell that story, it’s bad memories, I ended up in the hospital because of that,” to which my new friend responded, “Yeah, but you saved a ton of people that day too, so it’s not so bad.”

We ended up changing the topic anyway, and ended the conversation with my asking if he would re-deploy. He told me that a few of them would probably get stop-loss, and he might re-deploy because it is good money. Once the band started playing, I got separated from the group, but I won’t soon forget that story. I never expected to run into American soldiers at a concert in Munich, but I am glad that I did.

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Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

It wasn’t until recently when I was comparing stories from classes at LMU, the German university that I attend, with my program friends, that I realized just how awkward university classes can be for us here.  Let’s take one of my classes as an example: Marketing Communication is a course that I chose for a few reasons, the first of which is I have never had formal marketing training, despite working as a marketing intern this past summer. Since NU doesn’t have a wide selection of business communication classes, I thought this would be a great way to try to snag some School of Communications credit for a foreign course.

Things first went awry in the process of registration.  I previously wrote about my city-wide witch hunt for places to register. This class was one of those that slipped through the cracks and my program director had to take over registering for me.  That translated to him sending an email off to the professor explaining that I desperately needed this course to graduate and that I would have to go home if I didn’t take it.  Okay so a program director that stretches the truth isn’t too bad, but unfortunately included in that email was “she is an American.”  Strike one.

It is not bad to be identified as an American because the Germans are very interested in American culture and will at least want to congratulate us on the results of the election.  But I usually try to fly under the radar and pass as a European in class, because then the German students don’t alter the way they talk to me. (For example, my neighbor is still convinced I am half-deaf and speak no German because he speaks obscenely loudly and mind-blowingly slowly to me).  I walked into the small, over-crowded classroom full of older students, and took a seat in the corner on my first day of Marketing Communication.  The professor began the class on time (Shocker! Classes are usually expected to start 15 minutes late, officially), and started rattling off his credentials, one of which was travel.  While discussing the difference in customer service in different countries, he naturally brought up the U.S. and proudly announced, “We have an American who can help us with that information though,” then turned and looked directly at me, “that is you correct?”  This moment was like in high school when the teacher announced test grades, and revealed who broke the curve and ruined everyone’s grade.  I nodded, blushed, and he motioned and said, “well she will surely be helping us along this semester.”  My cover was officially blown.

As the class progressed I spent a great deal of time observing the other people in the class.  Everyday I have to get there early in order to get a seat, and as I watched people enter in small groups I saw that there were Russians, Ukrainians, and Argentineans.  The realization that I was not the only international student was in this situation not reassuring, though, because the rest of the students were never called out by the professor for their nationality and also seemed to be about 100% more proficient in German than I am.  That feeling was only exacerbated by my old, spacey professor who every time an English term came up in discussion (they frequently do, because in America is fairly progressive in marketing), would turn to me and question, “that is spelled correctly, right?” then swivel around to the class and announce, for the nth time, “we have a native speaker with us.”  In any other circumstance it would be fun to have people asking me about English, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone was sighing and rolling their eyes.  That is until this past class.

I finally got to sit next to one of the younger guys in the class and talk to him a little.  In this class when the professor asked me about an English term, the guy would look over at me with an understanding chuckle and make fun of the old professor under his breath.  Finally, someone to commiserate with! Unfortunately, this professor assumes that I am a full-blown marketing expert, and in this class he said a ridiculously long word in German, looked at me and asked, “in English that is…?” Oh boy, heart racing, I just gave an innocent shrug, and after a horrendously long awkward pause he wrote “data mining,” on the board. Data mining? Seriously? How in the world was I supposed to know that ridiculous term?  Just as I was about to slump as far into my seat as possible, the guy to my right looked at me and said sarcastically, “Oh data mining! How could you have not gotten that one?”  The feeling of relief that comes with being in a foreign classroom and finally having someone want to relate and talk to you is indescribably great.

In German classrooms it is very common for students to collectively and blatantly tease the professors.  Though I risk giving the professors a bad impression of me, I usually laugh along with the other students, because having an understanding with my fellow classmates is more valuable to me than making a fantastic academic impression.  When I can become a part of that social community, I finally feel like I belong in the class and that I am just another one of the students.  My American isolation falls to the wayside and my German improves because I am not nervous or alone.

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Laura’s abroad in Amman, Jordan until Dec. 19.

My family has been talking for weeks about the annual trip to the small, “forested” village of Ajloun to get their year’s supply of fresh-pressed olive oil. After all, ‘tis the season for olive harvesting. At my school building, we picked all our olives weeks ago to donate to a poor family in Mufraq. My family, however, has been delaying the trip until the price of olive oil drops. Thanks to help from the King, the price was practically halved and we finally made the trip. We all piled in the car and drove out of the city and through the large Palestinian refugee camp just north of Amman. The beige, crumbling buildings gave way to tree-dotted hillsides. We saw people picking olives from their trees and others selling their harvest on the side of the road. We wound our way down the valley into Ajloun as the afternoon sunlight hit the castle just right.

Eventually we pulled up to what I originally thought was a car garage. But as soon as we climbed out of the car, we could smell the olives. The cement floors felt slick under my feet, and everything seemed to be covered with a film of oil. Huge bags of olives were stacked against the wall and men buzzed around the machines, flipping switches and sifting through the olives. My host mother explained the process to me, and I did my best to hear her above the whirring of the machines. The olives are first dumped into a big pit and then sucked up onto a conveyor belt. They are washed and sent down a sifter to get rid of the leaves and branches. Then the olives are smashed and then churned inside a giant vat. The oil is separated from the rest of the pulp and funneled into containers. The olive pulp, however, is dried and used as fuel for stoves.

As the oil came out of the machine, my host mother stuck her finger in the stream of yellow oil to taste it. After her nod of approval, I did the same. My host brother said his father used to drink a glass of olive oil every morning because it is considered good for the body. As delicious as it was, I don’t think I’d be able to do the same. Another man waiting for his oil collected a cupful from the press and drank it, but shook his head and scowled. Apparently the oil wasn’t up to his standards. After paying several hundred Jordanian dinars for our tubs of oil, we loaded up the trunk and wound our way down the mountain again just in time for sunset.

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Sara’s abroad in Paris, France, until Dec. 13.

At the beginning of the program in Paris our director Bruno told us that we’d experience a mood curve during our stay in France. We’d be really really excited at the beginning (true), and then in November our moods would slowly start to dip when everything started to get dark, dreary and wet as Paris winter crept up on us. Added with all the excess work we’d have, because it’s inevitable that we’d procrastinate, he warned us to be prepared for November to be a little less glamorous than the rest of our time here. He finally ended by reassuring us that in our last days our mood would spike up again as we started realizing that study abroad was about to be over.

I can honestly say, though, that while the work has been piling up –- at ridiculous speeds since we haven’t had much of anything to do for about two months –- the downturn has yet to hit, at least for me. While I’m supposed to be burying my head in my work, this has been what I’ve been doing to avoid the November blues…

For starters, my boyfriend visited from London last weekend. I know I shouldn’t complain because most of the people on our program haven’t seen their significant others in going on three months now, but long distance can be difficult and seeing each other for weekends once a month or once every two months can be a little trying over a seven month period. It was a great weekend though. For someone as American as my boyfriend, I’ll admit I was a little worried about showing him around Paris. But we found a compromise –- sight-seeing was made up of part Eiffel Tower, part mini-Statue of Liberty. And I must have made at least a decent tour guide, because he actually enjoyed Paris. I will say, the November blues did start to seep in when he left. But I think the prospect of not having to deal with the distance will make returning stateside a little bit easier.

And this past Thursday, while I should have been working on writing some sort of thesis or outline for my final research paper, I got distracted once again. By the Glow in the Dark tour. For anyone, seeing Kanye West should be an amazing experience. But for someone from Chicago but far away from home, there really is nothing quite like singing (screaming) along to “And if you don’t know by now, I’m talking about Chi-town”. Seeing a rap concert in Paris is an experience in itself, actually. It’s not exactly a group you would expect to be so obsessed with “hip-hop” culture, but they definitely are. The highlight of the night was definitely when Kanye finished the show and then came back for an encore with “American Boy”. There was no Estelle (we were hoping she’d make a guest appearance), but I’ve never seen people go so crazy at a concert … except maybe for the Spice Girls. And tomorrow morning my mom and my aunt are invading Paris. I don’t really know what expect, but I know I’m in for an interesting week and lots of good, good food.

So, the moral of the story is: there really are no blues in Paris. It can rain for days at a time, which it often does. The asshole bartender can refuse to serve you and give you French attitude every day, which often happens if you live where I do. But no matter what, it’s still Paris, and the only thing that is a little depressing is that there are only three weeks left.

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Laura’s abroad in Amman, Jordan until Dec. 19.

After listening to the call to prayer five times a day for the past three months, I decided to get back in touch with my own religion. Two weeks ago I went with an American friend and my host family’s Sri Lankan maid to St. George’s Cathedral, which is a relatively new church here in Amman. Since the Mass was only in Arabic, I didn’t recognize any of the songs and I couldn’t follow along with any of the prayers. It felt more like Arabic class than a church service to me, so last Sunday I leapt at the chance to go to an English-speaking Mass in Abdali.

I went with my host family’s 19-year-old maid and three of my American friends. The priest’s thick Boston accent and all the familiar songs and prayers made me feel like I was back in America. The churchgoers, however, were nearly all Southeast Asian girls and women. With varying degrees of fluency, the women played guitar, sang and led prayers in English. My host family’s maid smiled with delight as she looked around the church and pointed out other girls whom she recognized as Sri Lankan. As we lined up for communion, she exchanged a shy wave and hello with a Sri Lankan nun.
After the Mass, the nun approached us and explained that she worked in a non-profit agency that helped maids who have been abused or need any sort of help. Coincidentally, one of my friends who came to Mass was planning on visiting that agency the next day. For her research project, my friend has been studying the maids in Amman. It’s been heartbreaking to hear some of her stories. Last week she visited an embassy that had nearly two hundred girls and young women living in the basement and parking garage. Some of the maids had come to the embassy because of abuse or because their employers had refused to pay their salaries or renew their visas. They are living in the embassy in limbo, unable to work in Jordan or return back to their country. They wait for the intercom to call their name, the signal that they can finally go home. Some have been living in the bowels of the embassy for almost two years.

Many of my American friends here also have maids in their homestays and we’ve talked about the experience at length. My friends and I often feel uncomfortable because none of us grew up with maids in the U.S. and we don’t really know how to deal with the family dynamics here in Amman. The maids are usually around our own age or younger, but have such a different role than us in the house. We get beds and eat at the table with our families, and the maids often sleep on the floor and eat separately. The maids do our laundry and clean the house while we travel and relax at cafes. My friends and I often talk about the guilt we feel that we can go out and explore while our maids stay in the house all day, every day. Yet, many of my friends and I have friendly, often conspiratorial, relationships with the maids. My host family’s maid is a sort of ally and friend. During Ramadan while the rest of the family was fasting, we ate our daytime meals together and talked together in a mix of English and Arabic. I showed her pictures of my family and we browsed through pictures of Sri Lanka on the Internet. Since we’re both outsiders in the family, we often roll our eyes or share a giggle when the family is being especially loud or obnoxious.

I’m going home in just a few weeks, but my host family’s maid is staying until August 2010. I can’t imagine being so disconnected from my home like she is. I have the luxuries of Skype, Facebook and a cell phone to keep in touch, but my host family’s maid just waits for her weekly phone call from home. Employers generally discourage the maids from making friends and prefer to keep them isolated, but I certainly hope that my host family’s maid is able to make friends at church. After all, if I didn’t have my American friends to talk to, I don’t know how I could have survived the past few months here in Jordan with my sanity intact.

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Marisa’s abroad in Madrid, Spain, until Dec. 19.

After spending my free time this summer watching the Euro Cup on ESPN every day, I was pumped to finally have the chance to see some “football” in person at a Real Madrid game. Last night, I finally made it to Santiago Bernabeu stadium to see Real Madrid beat Recreativo Huelva 1-0 in a Spanish League game. And it was a blast, definitely just as fun as I had imagined from my couch this summer.

Of course, I almost didn’t make it there. My friend Shoshi and I went up to the stadium a few weeks ago to see what the deal was with buying tickets, and we were told to come back the Monday before the game. Then, when we went up there again Monday, the guy told us to come back the day before the game. So we finally made it to the ticket desk on Saturday morning, after having stood in the wrong (poorly marked) line for about twenty minutes, and got tickets in the nosebleed section for Sunday night’s game. After all, the official program and every single ticket-selling website said the game was Sunday, November 23 at 8:00 pm. It would be a safe bet to assume that’s when the game would be, right?

But this is Spain, where things like schedules are just so passé. In Spain, you wander up to the stadium sometime on the day of a game, buy your tickets (which don’t say a date or time), and then show up whenever you think or heard the game might be. Which, as we found out at 6:45 Saturday night, was at 8 pm SATURDAY night instead of Sunday. After laughing it off and breathing a sigh of relief that we had realized in time, Shosh and I grabbed a quick bottle of wine, ran to the subway, and took turns chugging it on the Metro packed with the Real Madrid faithful. When we got to the stadium, I couldn’t resist buying one of those scarves everyone has for their respective team, and Shoshi couldn’t resist buying a ridiculously loud horn. We had to fit in, right?

After scanning ourselves into the stadium and facing practically no security, which really surprised me, we made our way to the top of Santiago Bernabeu and took in the scene: the game was just starting, and the massive stadium was packed. And I mean massive; the stadium is larger than any football or baseball stadium I’ve been in at home, by far. About half of the people had the horn Shoshi had bought, and she made sure to join in the honking chorus at every appropriate (and inappropriate) juncture. Sergio Ramos and Iker Casillas (who is the man) held a weak Recreativo offense scoreless, and Wesley Sneijder scored in the first half to give Real Madrid the 1-0 win. And I loved every minute of it. Next stop, World Cup 2010? But seriously. This was hopefully just my first little taste of experiencing the world’s favorite sport in person.

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Megan’s abroad in London, England, until Dec. 13.

During one of the first days of my program’s orientation, one of the staff leaders brought out several bags of candy. Being students, we all immediately stopped making small talk and stared straight at the processed sugar. “Who wants a Milky Way?” the staff member called out. He threw several fun-sized Milky Ways into the audience, and told the lucky catchers that they must eat the bars at that moment.

“Wait a minute,” one participant called out. “This is definitely not a Milky Way. It’s a Three Musketeers!” Similar sentiments echoed around the room — the caramel was missing, yet the wrapper clearly stated it was a Milky Way. “Okay, now let’s try some Mars bars,” our instructor called out. It turns out that in the United Kingdom, Mars bars are what we know as Milky Ways, and Milky Ways are our Three Musketeers. “Take this as an example,” the staff member said, “that things here are not better, and they’re not worse. They’re just different.”

After the candy bar incident, I walked around assuming everything was going to be different. I found that most things in England are only slightly different - but food here is really different. At first I was simply amused by the food differences, but I’ve grown to strangely like British food — and I know I’ll miss it when I head back to the States in a few weeks.

The first thing that scared me was breakfast. A traditional English breakfast is about the heaviest thing one can possibly eat. It includes fried eggs, hash browns, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes and baked beans. A smaller version of this could be baked beans on toast. Either way, your breakfast will probably contain baked beans and make you feel like you gained ten pounds before leaving the house. I’m typically used to grabbing a granola bar for breakfast before I run to class, so this was definitely a shock.

I have yet to have a formal high tea in England, and that’s because the fancy ones cost about 40 pounds (about 60 dollars) per person. But I do love typical teatime foods. The answer is yes, I have tried crumpets, and they are delicious. They’re essentially squishy pieces of bread with lots of nooks and crannies to absorb your butter. English muffins here are just called muffins, and they’re thicker and denser than our English muffins. Scones here are ridiculously cheap (I got a pack of ten for 38 pence, or about 56 cents), and just as delicious. I’ve also noticed pre-cooked waffles and pancakes in the “teatime” section of the grocery store. I’ve yet to unravel that mystery.

And then there’s dinner. I have come to adore fish and chips, and have learned that they always come with peas, whether regular or “mushy.” My favorite food in England, however, is the Cornish pasty, which is a flaky pastry filled with meat, vegetables and sauce. It’s kind of like a portable chicken pot pie, and they serve them at most train stations for cheap. Needless to say, every time I get on a train it’s with pasty in hand.

Although the things I’ve noted are delicious, there are some things that just continue to weird me out. Lemonade here is essentially Sprite. You have to ask for “clouded lemonade” to get real lemonade. The Brits are also big fans of spreads like Marmite or “pickle,” which are essentially bitter, brownish-black vegetable-based spreads you put on sandwiches. I have no idea who could find that appetizing.

Cultural differences are certainly obvious here, but England is a whole different world when it comes to traditional food. And my orientation leader was right — it’s not better or worse, it’s just different, and that’s what I’ve come to love about British life.

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Marisa’s abroad in Madrid, Spain, until Dec. 19.

Phew! Finally a moment to myself. Although, I must say, I’m only feigning exasperation. My parents have been in Spain since Friday, and I’ve been playing tour guide basically 24/7 since then, which has been a bit time-consuming and exhausting. As my mom always says, quoting her dad: “Being a tourist is hard work.” But it really has been great having them in town, not just because I get to show off my Spanish and show them the city I’ve been living in for the past few months, but because I realized I really did miss them. Before they came, I didn’t really feel homesick and wasn’t too worried about having not seen my parents in a while. But having them here reminded me of all the comforts of home and I really have started to feel a bit homesick lately; not too much, but just enough so that I’m getting ready to go home and will definitely be ready by December 19.

I flew to Barcelona to meet them on Friday, and we visited all of the requisite Gaudi sites, as well as the historic center. Probably the coolest thing was in the Museum of the History of the City, which doesn’t sound like it holds much potential but was surprisingly awesome: The basement level was a maze of Roman ruins from ancient Barcino, as Barcelona was called in Roman days, buried underneath the building site. We literally strolled through part of the ancient Roman town, taking in sites like the wine-making facility, the bathhouse, and the place where they made a sort of fish relish out of rotten fish guts. Mmmmm.

We also found out about the Montecito, CA fire on CNN in our hotel room after a day of sightseeing: Over 200 homes burned, including those of two high school friends, and countless families I know were evacuated as the fire approached their homes. Then we heard about the LA fire, which was in The Valley, near where many of my relatives live. Scary. It’s so surreal to be across the world as things like that happen. Life goes on at home, but I feel so detached in my little foreign bubble.

Back in Madrid, we’ve been hitting the main tourist sites; it has been a really great excuse for me to do some more touring, which I sort of stopped doing after the first few weeks once I had been to most of the obvious places and wanted to stop feeling like a tourist. We took a walking tour of the old city, something I probably never would have thought to do (it’s less obvious than it is in some other European cities… much of the “old city” now houses modern businesses and homes, with historic sites interspersed throughout). We also took a day trip to nearby El Escorial and will be going to Salamanca on Friday. I also have yet to go to the Prado –let’s just say art museums aren’t my thing– so this is the perfect time to knock that off my list, and I have my dad there to commiserate with if I get bored.

But I wasn’t the only one excited about my parents’ arrival. Dorita, my senora, has been cleaning the house for weeks and insisted on having them over for dinner last night. She was so cute and cooked all sorts of tapas, which were actually decent and much better than most of what we are normally fed. My mom speaks a little Spanish so she was able to hold a conversation with a little help from me translating some of the rapid-fire Spanish coming out of Dorita’s mouth. My dad, on the other hand, had no idea what was going on.

Overall, the last few days have been full of delicious meals out, plenty of sightseeing, catching up with my parents, and lots of See’s Candy and Trader Joe’s Vanilla-Almond granola (goodies from home…I have been NEEDING my “Just the Clusters” for my yogurt). What they haven’t been filled with is studying and I had a midterm today. Fortunately, BU in Madrid is not actually anything like Northwestern. Or middle school, for that matter. So for now I will enjoy the last few days with my parents, and then I will be making the most of my last four weeks here. I can’t believe it’s almost over, but the beginning also seemed so long ago. Suddenly winters in Evanston are looking even less appealing than they were before I knew about this magical thing called study abroad in Madrid…

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Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

On the night of November 4th, a group of Americans from my program, a few of our German friends and neighbors and I stayed up watching the election results come in one state at a time.  We gathered in the common room of one of the small co-op style dorms and closed all the doors, so as not to wake up the rest of the hall. Though we had an abundant supply of beer, the drink of choice was tea and coffee, and everyone was on the edge of their seats, hoping that our fellow citizens back in the states would make the decision we were hoping for: Obama.

The results didn’t start coming in until about 1 a.m., thanks to the time change.  Two German TV stations were reporting the election in a similar fashion to that of American news stations: a giant map in the background with a man in the foreground who would announce results and then turn individual states red or blue.  The entertaining part of watching it from Germany, though, was that sometimes they would get a shot of the announcer’s laptop and CNN.com was running or when the camera went back stage, there was a group of Germans huddled around a TV screen flashing CNN.   The running joke for the evening was that every time “Ergebnisse,” or results, came in the announcer had just refreshed CNN.com, which while funny, was also somewhat truthful.

Obama began taking state after state, and each time there was an enthusiastic cheer from our small American audience.  In between the announcements they showed coverage of the Grant Park rally in Chicago, and the two other NU kids and I would scan the screen for brief glimpses of the many people we knew would be there.  At that moment I got a little homesick: the whole world was watching Chicago, and half of my closest friends were there.  I wanted more than anything to be standing in that crowd watching the results.  As the night progressed, our group numbers waned to about seven very sleepy students, who would give an enthusiastic cheer when Obama won a battleground state.  I think it was the cheer for Ohio that startled me awake, and I decided that it was time for me to go to bed.  I had tried to ride it out, but I had a fever and was about ready to collapse.  When I left our German friends, who affectionately referred to Obama as “Obi,” were completely convinced that he was going to win.  In all reality it was looking pretty good for Obama, but I couldn’t help being a little nervous.  My entire political life has been full of too-close-to-call elections and recounts, so I feel like nervousness is justified.

I stumbled back to my room and flipped open my computer to check CNN one last time before bed.  After hitting refresh for the second time, Virginia and the West Coast turned blue on the map and there was a check mark next to Obama’s name at the top of the screen.  My roommate, who is studying abroad in Italy, was online and we exchanged a few all-capital-letter lines of exclamation on Google chat, and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

The next morning, Germany awoke to a beautiful sunny day, and when I opened my computer and saw all of the Obama excitement flying at me from Facebook, headlines, emails and blogs, I couldn’t help getting excited all over again.  As I watched Obama giving his speech in Grant Park, I actually started crying.  He talked directly to my generation: “It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.”  The fact that a politician has finally recognized and inspired my generation is absolutely beautiful.  I got on Skype to talk to my American friends here in Germany, and every single one, although they were touched by different lines, also cried out of happiness while watching Obama that morning.  It was a great day to be an American in Europe.

As I walked through Munich that day and passed the newspaper stands and machines, the headlines were different than I had expected.  A few that I saw said, “Good Morning, Mr. President, it’s time to fix the world,” and “Yes We Can, be friends,” or just “Obama!”  Germany was buzzing with the news of Obama, but for the Germans, the US electing Obama was something they thought was bound to happen so many publications were not focusing on the hype of our new president-elect, but on what he was actually going to do now.  It was down to business for Germany, immediately.  Der Spiegel, a popular German magazine, has been particularly US centric for the last few issues: first they had a scathing issue about the failures of the Bush administration, with a harsh depiction of the major leaders of our government on the front cover.  Then they released a special edition about the history of the US, in which they also claim the US is responsible for most of the problems in the world, good and bad.  Finally their latest issue (along with the latest issues of just about every magazine) has Obama on the cover under the headline “The World President: What he wants, what he can (not) do.”

Being abroad has probably made me more patriotic than anything else in my life.  Living in another country, you usually feel a little more pride about where you come from.  Just like when you go to college you magically have an immense amount of hometown pride, even though before you may have hated it there.  In my experience, Europeans do not hate Americans, like everyone likes to think.  They do not like our politics, and in a place where politics is a more popular subject, that tends to get misconstrued as general disdain.  Politics aside, the Europeans I have met enjoy many of our cultural highlights just as much as we do: radios play half American music, MTV is one of the most popular stations here and every party is loaded with our 80’s classics.

I was discussing the Der Spiegel article that blames the US for the world’s problems with my German friend, and he had an interesting take on it.  He said, “You know it’s easy for everyone to turn to America and blame them, because you are more involved in many issues than other countries, but I think it’s better than what we are doing, which is sitting around pointing out faults.”  Now that was a pretty extreme opinion, but he did have a point about America being easy to blame.  My program director gave another good insight: Austria, Germany’s smaller neighbor is always obsessed with what is happening in the German news, in the same way that Germany is obsessed with what’s going on in the much larger US.  In his opinion, smaller countries will always be interested in what’s going on in the larger, more active ones.

For me, I have had a little shift in opinion.  Back in the states, I was the first one to say “yeah the US is really messing up the world right now,” and there is some truth to that statement politically and diplomatically.  But what I think you don’t see if you stay in the states is that we export and influence much more than I ever realized. Our culture influences the world scene just as much as our politics do.  And while I was never in support of the Bush administration, I think that the worst thing that happened in the last eight years is that we got a little reckless and forgot that every move we make influences other countries which was reflected in Bush’s policies.  More than anything else, I hope that Obama can just be conscious of this effect.  If we had a president with an attitude like that, his/her politics would fall into place and be naturally more internationally caring and empathetic.

For now, though, I will continue to enjoy saying I’m an American, because I couldn’t be more proud of the decision we made.

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Megan’s abroad in London, England, until Dec. 13.

You know how in Evanston, Reading Week either means constant cramming or constant partying right before finals? Prepare to be jealous.

At Goldsmiths, Reading Week is right in the middle of the term. You’re supposed to “catch up on your reading,” but most full-time students go home or just get drunk. For me, Reading Week meant a whirlwind trip through Rome and Paris and a realization that I picked the right place to study abroad.

Before I set off, my friend Sarah, who’s currently studying in Prague, came to visit me in London. I showed her the requisite tourist spots, took her for a full English breakfast (which is massive and includes baked beans) and stopped at museums I’d yet to visit myself. It was nice for once to openly look at London A-Z in the middle of the street and not pretend to be a local.

After three days, it was time for Rome — and the first of two mornings where I woke up before 4 a.m. to catch a plane. The early wake-up was truly worth it once I was enveloped by the 75-degree weather. I’m originally from Florida, so the sun and heat in November felt like home. While in Rome, we ate gelato and pizza every day, visited the Colosseum, the Forum and the Vatican, where we ran into the Pope giving a blessing to a gigantic crowd in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.

If it weren’t for the language barrier, I’d move to Rome immediately. It’s just the perfect mix of nice weather, amazing food and friendly people scattered among ancient ruins. I’m glad, though, that I was just visiting for a few days — the entire city is jam-packed with tourists and people seeking to take advantage of tourists, and I’m sure that gets old pretty quickly.

Speaking of people trying to rip off tourists, our next stop was Paris. I was so excited to see Paris, since taking French during middle school and high school made France seem like paradise. Maybe it was my high expectations, or maybe it was the dreary cold, but I kept wishing we would have stayed in Rome. Not that Paris wasn’t beautiful or interesting — I loved visiting the Louvre and Versailles and climbing the steps of the Eiffel Tower — but it just didn’t sweep me off my feet like I expected. I won’t go on and on about Paris, since you should read Sara’s posts to learn more. Maybe if I had eaten a few more Nutella and banana crepes I would have liked it more. Those always do the trick.

By the last day of our trip, I was exhausted. Late nights and early mornings, combined with constant walking, really wore me down, and I was ready to read signs in English again. I had been to so many art museums that marble statues of naked people began to frustrate me. Overall, I was glad I had the opportunity to visit places I’ve only read about, but it’s also reassuring to know London is the right place for me. When you combine the lack of language barrier with a more laid-back attitude towards tourists, it was refreshing to get on the train from the airport and hear a reassuring “mind the gap.”

Now, on to actually catching up on my reading.

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Laura’s abroad in Amman, Jordan until Dec. 19.

Still smelling the salt of the Dead Sea on my skin, I’ve returned from a trip through the south of Jordan. This is the Jordan of legends: the awe-inspiring Petra, sunrises over Wadi Rum, sunsets over Aqaba’s sparkling aqua water, quiet valleys in Dana, and the salty depths of the Dead Sea. I fell in love with Jordan during this trip and I don’t know how I’ll ever leave in just two more months.
Here are the top 5 best adventures from this week:

1. Exploring Petra:

I can’t believe I’ve lived in Jordan for two months and only just now visited its most famous attraction, the rose-red city of Petra, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. My friends and I hit the Siq just an hour after sunrise and blearily made our way through the long, narrow passage that serves as the entrance to the city. The rock’s marbled colors shone in the early morning sun and I don’t think my photos do it proper justice. After a while we came to the most-photographed place in Jordan, the Treasury, which is an ancient temple carved straight into a rock face that was featured in an old Indiana Jones movie. Inside we saw the carved bowl where they collect the blood from sacrifices. As we made our way through the valley, we were flanked by hundreds of massive tombs carved into the rock face. We passed the massive amphitheatre and walked along the colonnaded Roman street. Finally we crossed a creek and started the steep climb up to Petra’s second most-famous monument, the Monastery (which is another misnomer because it was also a pagan temple). Along the way, we passed Bedouins who had set up camp in caves and were hawking their wares to exhausted tourists fighting off the morning heat. Out of breath and out of water, we finally reached the Monastery, only to be tempted to continue on to the edge of the mountaintop just beyond it. There we clambered over the rocks to see the sweeping, desolate valley below, with some of the most jagged and dramatic rock faces I’ve ever seen. There I sensed the captivating mystery of Petra and I left the mountaintop very humbled.

2. Sunset and sunrise in Wadi Rum:

Just before sunset in the vast desert of Wadi Rum, all my classmates and I climbed in the back of Jeeps and held on for dear life as our Bedouin drivers tried to out-run each other across the sand dunes. The drivers took great delight in pitching the Jeeps over steep sand dunes and listening to us scream as if we were on roller coasters. We stopped to watch the sun drop between the rock formations and cast the entire desert in a golden, reddish glow. The next morning, my friends and I got up at 5 a.m. to summit the mountain behind our Bedouin camp. I’m glad it was pitch black because I don’t think I would have had the courage to rock climb if I had been able to see what I was doing. I blindly followed my goat-footed friends as they shimmied up the rock face. From the top, we shivered in our fleece jackets and watched as the distant horizon began to glow yellow. The black and blue desert turned rosy orange, and we saw a herd of camels silhouetted against the rising sun as they were being driven across the valley floor. When the sun finally crested and our stomachs began to growl, we decided to head back down the rock face. Going down, however, was much more terrifying than the scramble up. If it hadn’t been for the bravery and patience of my friends, I think I’d still be at the top of that rock praying for the tour bus to magically appear and take me down.

3. Snorkeling in Aqaba:

After worrying about modesty for months, you can imagine how excited the other students and I were about slipping into our swimsuits to enjoy the aqua waters of Aqaba. As Jordan’s only sea port, it’s a bustling commercial zone, but also a major tourist destination. After leaving the deserts of Wadi Rum we piled into glass-bottom boats and scooted around the beautiful waters of the Red Sea. We saw amazing coral reefs and even a sunken Lebanese ship. My attempt at snorkeling, however, was a bit of a failure. I gashed my foot on the boat as I jumped off, and then proceeded to swallow copious amounts of salty water. Nevertheless, it felt amazing to wash the desert sand off in such wonderfully warm water. I felt like I was in Hawaii! I did feel awkward, however, when we returned to the beach because all the local women were floating around fully clothed and wearing hijabs. I tried to wrap my towel around me as best I could, but I could still feel the stares.
4. A night at the eco-lodge in Dana:

After leaving Aqaba, we bused over to the Dana Nature Preserve south of the Dead Sea. Upon reaching a tiny village, we left the tour bus behind and piled ourselves and our luggage into truck beds. We bounced for 10 kilometers until we reached the Feynan Eco Lodge, which looked out of place among the simple Bedouin tents that dotted the hillsides. With it’s creamy adobe walls and graceful archways, the lodge would have been right at home in the glossy pages of Sunset Magazine. The lodge is a relatively new experiment in sustainable tourism. I enjoyed the delicious buffet of gourmet vegetarian food. There is no electricity in the lodge (except in the bathrooms), so at night we lit our rooms and the back deck with candles. We sat and played cards, enjoying the darkness. Around 9 p.m. our program director led a group of us on a night hike up the Wadi. After hearing howling in the canyon, he advised us to carry a large rock with us in case we are attacked by coyotes. I thought he was kidding at first, but when he started searching on the ground for a sharp one, I quickly did the same. Despite the scare, we made it back alive to the lodge several hours later. I felt bad though because on our way back we lost the trail and ended up trudging through a Bedouin camp. We saw men curled up in sleeping bags guarding their flock of sheep. That night I fell asleep to the lovely smell of candle smoke.

5. Floating in the Dead Sea:

As a California girl, I’ve been to dozens and dozens of beaches. But the Dead Sea is nothing like I’ve experienced ever before. When I took my first step into the water, I instantly became aware of its high salinity because the gash on my foot (courtesy of the boat in Aqaba) started stinging immensely. My friend splashed water into her eyes was blinded (and cursing) for the next five minutes. But, the amazing thing was that as I walked further out, my feet just floated upwards. It was impossible to stand in the Dead Sea. We just floated on our backs like we were swinging in hammocks. It took absolutely no effort at all to just bob around, but it was extremely difficult to make any headway swimming mainly because I couldn’t keep my body submerged deep enough to fully swim. After enjoying the novelty of such a salty sea, we all headed to the beach to slather ourselves with mud. The Dead Sea mud is famous for its therapeutic properties, but mainly I just felt dirty and itchy as the black mud dried on me. I will admit that we all looked rather ridiculous as we stood around awkwardly on the beach for 20 minutes waiting for the mud to harden. I’m not sure if the mud worked any miracles on me, but I think my skin may have been a tad softer when I returned home that night to Amman. The only change my host family noticed was that I was a bit tanner and smelled like salt.

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