Global Colgate

European Adventures

November felt like a giant game of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Every weekend we were off in a different part of Spain or Europe, and now we have so little time remaining we can almost count the days left on two hands!

 Amidst the final papers for Art, the theatrical events we attended for Theater, and our obsession with finding places that sell Palomitas for under 0,30 euros, we had too much fun. The first weekend of November was exhausting. My cousin invited a few of us to his concert in the Sala Caracol and we made posters to cheer him on in a Battle-of-the-Bands competition. The next morning we boarded a bus to Toledo to see the original capital city of Spain, complete with the union of the three major cultures of the country over time: Arab, Jewish, and Christian. Going with our Art and Cinema professors, we were given a short tour of the town, including a preserved mezquita, the cathedral, and a converted synagogue. We also finally saw the Tajo river we read about in Poetry as well! After eating our fill of mazapán we wandered around the city a little bit. The stores catered to tourism, but specialized in impressive swords, demasking, and chocolate con churros. While it was a very, very windy day, we enjoyed our visit immensely.

L'acqua alta e come possiamo salvare Venezia

As if by Professor Ammerman’s bidding, the siren woke me up at 5:15 Monday morning to announce the coming acqua alta – more than 130 centimeters above mean sea level, an event occurring on average only once every two years.  After slowly wading through the streets and on more than one occasion climbing on buildings to avoid inundating my rubber boots, I walked into Italian class twenty minutes late, along with many of the Istituto’s students.  Professor Ammerman arrived later with a grin.  Only now can we conceptualize acqua alta and fully understand the semester’s studies.

All of the semester’s work started coming to crescendo last week as we prepared to break for Thanksgiving.  Each of our four classes played a roll in last Tuesday’s panel discussion with Ortalli and Donello, two friends of Professor Ammerman who are major players in the debate surrounding saving Venice.  The discussion covered topics from the beginnings of Venice and its archeology through the art and architecture of the city and the current state of Italian and specifically Venetian affairs.  And the whole discussion was in Italian.

settling in

    I was talking to my mom today and she asked me: "are you settling in?" I immediately responded that I sure hope I've settled in because I have been here 3 months and if there is any hope that I'll "settle in " before I leave, I better achieve that soon. But, after we were done talking, I got to thinking- am I really settling in here in Ghana??

    I guess i knew that everything would pretty much be completely different in Ghana and that I would have a hard time adjusting to the cultural differences, the foods, etc. But, to be honest I was more worried about classes and making friends. I have since realized that those have probably been the easiest part of the semester. The beginning of last week reminded me of a typical week at Colgate. I had a test on Monday, and a paper due the same day for a different class. Wednesday I had two papers due for my psychology class, so I spent most of Tuesday working on those papers. However, after Wednesday I found myself with nothing to do and completely finished with assignments for the week. If I were faced with this situation at Colgate, I would know exactly what to do: spend an afternoon at the COOP talking with friends, spend an extra long time at the gym and then maybe venture out after dinner, anything to avoid Case. Maybe a bit boring and typical, but it satisfies me. Here, though, my free afternoons usually turn into some type of adventure and cultural experience-- never typical or boring.

    On Thursday, after class, a few friends and I  decided to go to the Accra Art and Culture Center. The art  center is the epitome of a typical tourist spot. The place abounds with low-priced jewelry, t-shirts and cheaply made dresses. An unknowing passer-through could easily be conned into spending $10 on a factory made necklace and all of the vendors are very good at convincing people that their product is worth the extra money. Fortunately, I have been in Ghana long enough to know that bargaining is absolutely necessary because vendors will quote ridiculous prices that are usually 2-3 times higher than what they will sell it for. In order to save money, we took a tro-tro, which is not my ideal form of transportation and is not for anyone who desires comfort or quick arrival. The tro-tro is usually an incredibly old van of some sort that goes from designated spots around the city. People hop on and off at random times and every person is expected to pay (usually about 20 cents). It sounds great in theory, but these vans are always packed with more people than were ever meant to fit in one van or minibus and the door is most likely held shut by a leather strap. People have their heads sticking out of windows trying to get fresh air and the constant movement of passengers in and out can get confusing. At the beginning of the semester, I was terrified of tro-tros, mostly because I thought i would get lost. The drivers have hand signals and abbreviations for the stations and if you don't know them, you could end up on the wrong side of the city.

    Anyway, so we got to the art center later in the afternoon than we had originally planned and the vendors were beginning to close up their shops, but this ended up being an advantage because they all were really eager to sell. I walked away only spending about 15$ and had a necklace, 2 t-shirts, a soccer jersey and a painting. I was pretty proud of myself and my new found bargaining skills. It will be a little bit upsetting when I get home and can't argue for a lower price. As usual, I was completely exhausted when we got home (it took over an hour to get back because of the TERRIBLE Accra traffic), and we enjoyed an evening of movie watching!

    Friday I have no class at all, so about 6 of us went to the pool for the morning, which is something I have never enjoyed in mid-November before.  After tanning for an unhealthily long time, we went to lunch at one of the best restaurants in the neighborhood. And, even though the place looks like it could be in New York, the service was true to Ghanaian standards. Our food took about an hour and half, but it was delicious and reminded me of home. It was a pretty good end to the week, but I can't expect it to happen again as finals are approaching! -Kalin

Doing Rome

In class this week, Professor Ammerman summed up our recent trip to Rome and Pompeii quite well.  “So we just spent about 30 hours of class time in the past week.  That is time in front of the particular sites, without counting the walking to and from.  That is what you would have at Colgate in 10 weeks of a 3 hours a week class.   So this was good.  Now you can say you did Rome; you did Pompeii.  We like this.”

 

Of course we hit the expected sites of the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the houses and brothels of Pompeii, and the Pantheon, and even visited some more obscure sites like the Villa Oplontis, Theater of Marcellus, and the Crypt of Balbi.  Each student prepared a presentation for a different site in Rome for which we focused on the archeological and historical significance of a monument, each surviving to varying degree.

 

Community Service

    One of the aspects of the NYU in Ghana program that I like the most is that community service and volunteer work are really encouraged by the staff, and they will go to great lengths to get us involved in working with the community in a way that interests us. I had been volunteering at GHANET, which is the Ghana HIV/Aids network because I have an interest in going into public health. However, this project did not end up working out so I found myself more than halfway through the semester with no community work to do. Thankfully, all of the people that I am studying here with are really excited about bringing along other people to their volunteer sites, so I am planning on joining my friends at different sites around Accra for my remaining weeks here.

         I have Fridays completely free so I decided to join my roommate in going to the State School for the Deaf, Accra. She is able to communicate pretty well in American Sign Language so she found one of the only schools that are catered towards deaf children in the country. We woke up at 6:30am and walked about 20 minutes to the Labone Station where the school bus picked us up. Children travel from all over the greater Accra region to go to this school so the bus was packed. Although it was probably meant to accommodate 20 children, there were easily 40. There were kids standing in the aisles and sitting on each others laps, but it was amazing that there was no fighting over seats and there seemed to be an air of excitement about going to school. The children range from pre-K to high school and I had the chance to have a conversation with a 17-year old girl on the hour bus ride (we communicated through writing). We finally arrived at the school after about an hour and Miranda and I were greeted warmly from all of the children there. About 15 of them immediately ran over looking for hugs from Miranda and introductions from me.

Differences

This week was full of interesting conversations with friends and "family" comparing our lifestyles to those of people our age in Madrid and Spain at large. On Wednesday Kayleigh's mother was in town and invited us to dinner. Sitting across from Kayleigh's host mother we developed a conversation about politics, economics, and working. Unfortunately in Spain the current rate of unemployment is only climbing and hovers near 20% (which they often point out to us when we say we have it bad).

Searching for work here is an adventure I've seen my host sister and Nicoletta go through. Marcela's boyfriend, Alfonso, sent out 75 separate applications to jobs, and only heard back from one. Just coming away with his degree, his 9-5 job only offers him a 300-euro compensation per month; he's practically an intern. Shrugging his shoulders at the situation he told us he had to do something in the meantime. Marcela and Nicoletta are also searching for anything they can get their hands on, and Nicoletta wakes up every morning to do four hours of job-hunting before taking her house keeping post for the rest of the day.

Venetian Halloween

We have been bashed over the head all semester about how traditions halt human development.  Art serves to perpetuate the status quo.  Holidays cause us to celebrate the past rather than advance.  Human development has greatly accelerated as education spread so that individuals can more readily see the flaws in tradition.  As students, we should be dismissing such outdated institutions as Halloween, All Saint’s Day Eve.  How ridiculous it is that spirits will rise up and haunt the living.  How warped it is that we hoard candy and brutalize innocent gourds.  But goshdarnit, we wanted Halloween.

 

Italian pumpkins are green, squat and big, although the supermarket also had “zucce halloween” for carving.  Early Friday morning, I sliced our pumpkin through the middle and put a half into the oven.  I beat together my last two eggs, dumped them into the flour and kneaded a batch of pasta dough.  I finished the dough and pulled the pumpkin from the oven right before leaving for Professor Carroll’s class in the Academia Gallery. 

 

After several hours of absorbing Venetian painting, I returned to the kitchen to (eat lunch and) continue preparing supper.  I borrowed eggs for the second batch of pasta dough and I mashed the pumpkin, sautéed a minced shallot, and mixed in ricotta for the stuffing.  As dinnertime approached, I enlisted Caroline and Howard to help stuff and fork the ravioli while Hiep and Preston labored over the apple strudel.

 

When the girls from the other apartment arrived, Liz joined the ravioli assembly line while Alayna, Kathyrne and Melissa brainstormed ideas for the jack-o-lantern.  When the cloth we had failed to roll the strudel, we abandoned the form and instead lined a baking dish with dough and loaded in the apples, topped it with another layer of dough and set it aside to wait for dessert.  Howard dropped the first round of finished ravioli into the water just as I tended to the leaks and butter for the sauce.  I added the mascarpone when the burner was a bit too hot, so the sauce took on an oily look, but the cooked ravioli were starting to stick, so it was time to eat.  We served the pumpkin ravioli slightly after the planned 7:30 seating, and even with a sub-par sauce, the meal was very tasty. 

 

After the ravioli, Preston and the girls carved the pumpkin and set aside the seeds for baking.  The apple confection disappeared quickly when it came out of the oven, and distracted us enough for the pumpkin seeds to overcook.  Nonetheless, the evening was a successful attempt at the season.

 

A piu tardi!

 

Ciao.

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

Up North

    This past weekend we went on the last and longest trip of the semester. Early on Thursday morning (4:30 am) we left Accra on a 12 hour bus-ride across the country and to the capitol of the Northern region, Tamale. The northern regions of Ghana are known as being the poorer, less developed areas and are also home to different cultures and languages than those found in the south. When I told people in Accra that I was traveling to the north, most asked why and told me that there was nothing there and that it was too hot and dry. So, I went into the trip thinking that I would not really enjoy the weekend, but I will venture to say that my trip to Tamale and other areas of the northern region was the best trip I have done here in Ghana

         Although the bus ride was long and hot, it was really amazing to see the landscape change as we moved north. I had never been north of Kumasi, which is in the south central part of Ghana, so it was interesting to see the terrain change. We went through mountainous regions and then could clearly see that we were moving into the sahel, which is the southern part of the Sahara. The trees and more dense forest turned into savannah, and it looked like scenes from the “Lion King”, or the typical mental picture most people have of Africa.

         We arrived in Tamale at about 5:30 pm on Thursday evening; we were staying at the Tamale Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies (TICCS), which is a very basic hostel in town. About ten minutes after we arrived it started down pouring, which is not typical for the region, especially since it is the dry season. It rained through the night, which kept our rooms cool, but made travel the next day difficult due to the mud and giant puddles.