.

All of us international students bought blue overalls since it’s tradition at Swedish universities to wear overalls. The first time you are supposed to wear your overalls is at what they call your Overall Premiere. I talked to my Swedish friend about his Premiere and he muttered something about wine and buckets and not remembering anything so I was pretty excited for this day.

We bike into the forest to get to these soccer fields around 5pm and I am less than thrilled to be there because it looked like it was going to rain and it took forever to sort us all into teams. They did a very nice job of separating everyone as I did not know one or recognize one person on my team of about twelve. So you get a leader that is an ESN person and they carry around these cups and a bucket of wine. After everyone was assigned a team and we all said where we were from and what our name is they usher us all onto the field and yell at us to get on the ground and do pushups. I’m not sure what kind of qualifications you need to have to be an ESN leader but I think it includes child care training, being CPR/first aid certified, having a background in therapy and experience as an army officer.

So after we are done with our push ups we are instructed to act like a seal and then to roll to our left and to our right. We get a cup of wine after each “warm up”. By the time the games begin we are all feeling pretty good. Everyone keeps complaining about how there won’t be enough wine and I just want to be like JUST YOU WAIT. I swear, the name of these games is to stay alive. Of course we have a photographer in the group who insists on taking pictures of everything and everyone.

There’s this muddy center of the field where guys think its really funny to pick up people and carry them over to dip/roll them in this mud and I am sorry to say that about twenty minutes after we started drinking I was one of the victims. So before we even start these games I am covered in mud. We drink more wine and our ESN leader starts yelling at the top of his lungs this Swedish war song and we all try and repeat what he says but I’m not sure every word was pronounced correctly and we had no idea what we were saying. So we all have our arms around each other and start singing that song from the Titans that’s like “People wanna knowwww, whooo we areee, soo we tell them, we are group sevennn,” a much easier tune.

The first game starts and we have to stand in this line and spread our legs so that the person in the front can crawl through all of us. When it’s your turn, you chug your cup of wine, throw it down and scramble through everyone’s legs until the last person goes through. Your team wins if your last person goes through before the other team’s. We lost.

The second game starts and we each have to chug a cup of wine, run over to this bat, spin around with our head to the bat about ten times, and run back. People from both teams were running every direction and into each other and into the ground. We lost.

We take a quick drinking/chanting break before going over to the next game. For this game We all have to lay down on the ground and the first person in the line has to stand up, chug their wine and roll over everyone’s bodies to get to the end. I think we win this one.

For the next game we are told to put these tights over our face and there’s this tennis ball at the end in the foot so you have to swing the tennis ball with only your face and neck into this full bottle of water to knock it over. You drink before and after this one. I have no idea which team won.

I see a couple of my friends on other teams and we run over to each other and hug and are so out of breath from running and laughing that we can’t even speak. Pretty soon everyone is really drunk and really excited about finding their friends so that they can carry them over the mud. It’s like everyone is five years old again except they’re wasted. I was carried/dragged a total of four times and was covered in mud from head to toe. The ESN people are trying to make sure nobody is dying while trying to comfort the people who got knocked too hard in the head. You can barely recognize anyone. The games are supposed to go till 9pm but we only made it till like 8.

Half of my friends are blacked out and can barely stand and we are all taking pictures and throwing mud. There’s maybe 250 people and they are all getting tackled left and right and sliding around and stealing wine. I have never had so many bruises in my life. Now I understand why laundry is free here – my overalls had to go through the wash several times to return to their original color.

Only in Sweden. Only me

While studying abroad in Prague our program took a weekend trip to Krakow, Poland. While there we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. This was one of the most harrowing experiences on the trip and this photo I took of the piles of  shoes from the more than a million victims who were murdered there was one of my most haunting memories.

Last Sunday, I had a class field trip for rural sociology. We spent the day in the community of Tingo Pucara, which is located in Guangaje parrish, Pujili county, Cotopaxi province in the Ecuadorian highlands. Tingo Pucara is an indigenous community of 25 kichwa-speaking families in Guangaje parish, Cotopaxi Province, Ecuador. The community is located at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. The families are farmers of potatoes, fava beans, onion, barley, and small animals, especially sheep. The community receives visitors, who can observe the Pucara, a hill fortified by the Incas as a defensive and communication position.

A wonderful thing about running: there is no grammar, pronunciation, or inflection involved! A double tall American female with a bro tank and topknot hair, jogging in silver shiny running shoes demands no need for translation or monetary exchange! While my nationality is still definite, I can exchange glances with fellow runners, assuming a mutual appreciation for sweat, callases, and blood blisters (cute, right?).

So, this evening, as I frolic along Rome’s potentially fatal cobblestone, I come to a halt at a cross walk, the little lighted man flashing RED. I begin to jog in place, thinking that I should maintain a moderate heart rate in order to allow for a heightened respiratory performance. (Of course, after 4 seconds of looking like a soiled kangaroo, I say fuck it and simply stand, feeling the sweat start to drip at my brow) More importantly, as I wait for the city’s impossibly long light changes, a pint-sized rust colored smart car pulls up along side me. (Most vehicles in Rome would fit quite nicely in the bed of a Ford F150). I should first point out that I have a hard time taking these cars seriously simply based on the fact that they have no trunk space and their cup holders would not suffice for a Starbucks grande soy latte.

But, what made me pay extra attention to this putt-putt-mobile was the fact that the polo wearing Italian man in the driver seat was blaring the Notorious B.I.G., Hypnotize. The ultra metro-sexual man with a tailored hair-do and a car for elves was nodding his head to the lyrics:

I put hoes in NY onto DKNY (uh-huh)

Miami, D.C. prefer Versace (that’s right)

The whole scene didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. As the little walk man turned green and I hopped back into my run, I was left thinking about the hodgepodge of culture clash I had just witnessed. In fact, numerous things in Italy don’t seem to fit, per say. For instance, a lot of women here have fake boobs. Many boobs fail to fit into shirts. The streets here are often only 10 feet wide; ill equipped for a mass of American tourism. The appliances here are fit for a child’s playhouse, making it impossible to broil a Thanksgiving bird.

Ultimately, my emersion into Italian culture leaves me feeling immensely awkward; cocking my head a bit to the left and uttering a faint “huh….”. The union of American commercial life and Roman ruins sometimes appear more clumsy than suave. (Then again, I am certain that I come off more gawky than international). For the time being, I think I’ll leave my contemplation of Amero-Roman absurdity to my time spent in tennis shoes and ear buds. For whatever reason, everything feels a little bit simpler when I can look a passerby Italian with a smile and a nod, recognizing that running brings us no barrier.

This photo I took is of the stairs leading up to Sugimotodera temple (杉本寺) in Kamakura, Japan.  The temple itself is part of the Tendai sect of Buddhism and was founded in 734 BCE.  Although it is a little bit of the beaten track, it is considered one of the oldest temples.  The moss covered steps particularly interested me.

While I was studying in Wales for spring semester last year, Great Britain was gearing up to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. Ongoing preparations were everywhere, even back when I was studying in London, England in the fall. In the months preceding the ceremonies, the Olympic torch was to complete a circuit through the British Isles, on its way to bring the flame to London and open the games. One of the places it stopped on its journey happened to be the tiny university/tourist town of Aberystwyth, Wales where I was studying. It was a huge event for Aberystwyth and the town put on a concert and festivities beforehand to celebrate. It was amazing to watch something as globally significant as the Olympic flame pass through a place so remote and cause such a huge stir.