Final Blog

Hello to you all,

            This school year has come to a close making this my last blog. To those who have read this, I hope you have been able to relate and feel more confident about getting through this year. My year has been nothing but uphills and downhills. I know I have grown greatly from my sophomore year when it comes to my social and academic life. As I have gotten older, I have also discovered my resilience, and I have plenty of that. I made it to the point where I forgot to touch into my emotions and accept my own vulnerability. I have learned to balance it all this year making me not just more in touch with myself but others, too.

            So, what have I experienced this past month? I have been pledging this whole semester and I finally crossed! I am now in Alpha Phi Gamma which is part of the Multicultural Greek Council. Boy, let me tell you! All I see is diversity. I have always been a minority, but once I stepped into the end of the year barbecue, I found all of the diversity in the whole school. I really enjoy it. I feel more cultured and have so much to learn from everyone! At times it feels cliquey like the sororities are against each other, but I am not about to restrict myself. I want to meet everyone and learn from them as much as I can. It is a very different lifestyle being part of a group full of estrogen. I normally have more guy friends than friends who are girls, so it feels different to have them all to fall back on. It feels great, though. I have never had to work so hard for something.

            In a few weeks I am off to Nicaragua with my fellow Puksta Scholars. We are doing our service trip after having successfully raise $2000 each. After that, my summer will be pretty flexible with commutes back and forth to my hometown. I’ll blink and then I’ll be abroad on a ship for Semester at Sea.

            My point being, time has flown. It felt so slow, but went by so quickly. Do your best to embrace these last moments of school and friends. Things will keep changing and keeping up can be difficult but it is not impossible. You all will do great on your finals and even better in life. Cheers to a great year, great summer, and successful following year.

Love,

Chand 

Time To Say Goodbye

          CSU second-years, great job. The year is now coming to an end and you will soon officially be third-years. I know it sounds clichéd, but your time in college really does come and go in the blink of an eye. I can already feel that happening, and it has been an incredible experience thus far. I never thought I would be pursuing my dream of teaching so seriously, and I especially never thought I would be living in another country to make that dream come true. I have grown so fond of this Porteño spirit here in Buenos Aires that it really is a shame I have to leave in a month and a half. On the bright side, at least I have that time left to savor.

            Now that I am writing my final blog for you, I can only think of one piece of advice to give: please, please study abroad. I know your classes for next semester have already been picked out, but the second semester of third year is the most popular time for students to go. I was lucky enough to go my second year, and I cannot express how much I encourage studying in a foreign country. I have made friends with many native Spanish speakers, gone paragliding, jumped off a high dock into a moving river in pouring rain, gotten lost in a labyrinth of a city, gone horseback riding in the Argentine plains, drunk maté under an enormous, historic tree in the heart of Recoleta, and this coming week I will be visiting one of the seven wonders of the natural world, the Iguazú Falls. This is an experience I wouldn’t miss for the world.

            If you even have the slightest interest in studying abroad, please go to the Education Abroad office in the oval during walk-in hours and talk to one of the alumni. They would be glad to help you and give you all the information you need.

            If you’re interested in a country, odds are CSU has an affiliated program in the best city that country has to offer. If you’re confused, the office will take you through the steps of applying and getting ready. The application process is much easier than it sounds, and once you have your forms in, all you have to do is fly to your destination and your program will help you from there. In the end, studying abroad is actually very simple, and it generally only costs a bit more than regular tuition.

           Earning credits abroad is very easy to manage if you have an International Studies, Mathematics, Psychology, Business, English, or language-related major, and many programs have courses that will apply to other majors as well. Most programs have courses that apply to AUCC requirements, and if a course seems like it can fit a credit it does not automatically transfer as, your home advisor for Education Abroad can help you change those transfer credits as long as you provide proof of the course’s content (books, notes, assignments, etc.)

            See that weirdo on the right? That’s me, commanding a ship ^{(citation needed)} of my peers in one of the most famous rivers of Tigre. This is just one of the amazing activities I did with my program, and if you study abroad, you will no doubt have just as many fantastic adventures.

            Living abroad can be scary and unnerving, but it is worth every ounce of difficulty and challenge you encounter. I do not regret any of it. So please, consider studying abroad, because it will change your life.

            Thank you for letting me be your blogger. Stay strong, Rams, and live your third year to its fullest.

            Love,

                        Josh

Paragliding in Mendoza (Aventuras de un Yanqui)

The best part of studying abroad is the ability to do things you've never experienced before. To be fair, paragliding has nothing to do with Argentina (why people always attempt extreme sports while studying abroad is beyond me), but hey, it was something I hadn't experienced, so I went for it!

In this video I paraglide off one of the smaller mountains in the Andes region. The pilots who accompanied us were all very friendly and funny. My pilot said the job becomes a bit of an addiction, and I can see why. If I had the chance, I would do this every day for the rest of my life.

If I had the choice to either skydive or paraglide, I would definitely choose the latter. You're up in the air for about 15 to 20 minutes and you get a fantastic view of the mountain, so by the time you've landed you feel you've gotten your money's worth.

Rams, if you have time to study abroad--or better yet, if it works out within your major--I can't begin to tell you how much I encourage it. If you don't take that chance, you'll miss out on a lot of great opportunities.

See you next month! -Josh

Hello to you all!

I hope you all had a lovely time during spring break. I am sure each was well spent with relaxation and sleep.

For me, I visited California! I spent it with my dad and relatives. Dad and I visited Catalina Island on St. Patrick’s Day. We listened to intoxicated college students sing karaoke horribly and wandered to the other side of the island, too! My favorite part was tasting the best coffee cake on the boat en route to the island. When I had visited prior, probably ten years ago, I only remember eating the greatest coffee cake of my life from that trip. Having returned, it was just as delicious that I took some home with me! On top of that, I slept through an earthquake (sadly I am proud of that) and attended two different Paleyfest events. It is a two week long event where the cast of a television show do a Q & A with the audience after watching the next episode. Lastly, it is hosted in the Dolby Theater (where the Oscars were held). I saw the cast of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Parks & Recreation”. I also touched Max Greenfield from “New Girl”. I always told myself that I would never be that crazed fun, but I was. He was too busy to get a photo but I was extremely content to have seen him!

Now, back to school stuff. We are in the home stretch! I do not know if that will help out, but optimism is somewhat my strong suit. I will say, my grades could be better than they currently are right now. They definitely could be worse, too. I have simply vowed to finish as strong as possible. As usual, I spread myself too thin which is somewhat biting me in the bottom, but I know that just means I really have to manage my time. The mutual consensus is that not many fellow sophomores have been enjoying this semester. It varies from disliking classes to the teachers to the schedules. I can sympathize in a sense, it has been difficult. I find myself utterly exhausted and watching reruns of “Gossip Girl” or other shows that have no moral values. The desire to detach from reality has increased this semester, but luckily summer is around the corner. I have doing a service trip to Nicaragua to look forward to along with cutting my hair for Locks of Love for the second time. After that, I will be traveling next fall around the world for a Semester at Sea. Woohoo! More traveling, personal and destination exploration! My type of education. Good luck to you all! You will all rock your finals and finish strong!

Sending love and lucky wishes,

Chand

Airports have always held a special place in my heart. Nowhere else in the world can you experience the unsettling shakiness and lethal velocities of a rollercoaster while seated in the midst of completely vacant, apathetic passengers. It’s all the fun of a theme park except nobody wants to be there.

All joking aside, I am one of the few people I know who loves turbulence, and the sensations of taking off and landing excite me to no end. I could fall asleep while nestled in that soft rumbling seat, let me tell you. Of course, I don’t fall asleep, because then I couldn’t savor the experience. Such is the plight of the overly enthusiastic traveler. I could take a ten hour flight (which, coincidentally, I will be doing very soon) and be completely fine as long as I get a bit of turbulence here and there. It might have to do with the fact that when the plane shakes you feel unsafe, but you are reassured by the fact that air travel is far, far safer than driving. It’s free adrenaline!

Side note: I would not enjoy driving to Argentina. Road trips have their limits.

In my last blog I mentioned that I wasn’t feeling much emotion regarding my departure. People kept asking me whether I was nervous or excited, and it felt so unreal that I didn’t have a response. Well, I’m about to leave for a foreign country that speaks a language I have only spoken in a school setting, and hey! I’m not panicking! Score! I guess I’m the type of the person who has to get slapped in the face with change to have any sort of response. My host parents have a four-year-old son, so once I realize I can’t understand a word he says it will probably dawn on me that I am in Argentina.

I had an aisle seat on the plane next to a man who had either a Latin American or Middle Eastern accent. It sounds ignorant of me to not know which was correct, but he was at the point in his English where he was so proficient that there were only notes of his first language interspersed throughout his speech, and I honestly couldn’t tell which was correct. I was only certain that he loved Chinese food, particularly lo mein. He had a big box of it as I sat down and he ate it with such gusto that it was hard to take my eyes off him. He was clearly also a discerning lo mein consumer, because the way he inspected each bite before eating it told me he knew what he was doing. Even after he finished, he held that box between his hands in such a way that I could tell he longed to take another bite. He fell asleep at one point with the box grasped firmly in his hands. He held onto that thing for a good two hours before throwing it away. I never did learn that man’s name.

As we landed and the doors opened, the humidity attacked. We Coloradoans have a word for this sort of weather: swimming. I am more or less used to it now, but this is only Texas. Argentina will no doubt make me drown. (Update: I’m still alive!)

After entering the Houston airport, I found a large Fox News store. That wasn’t the interesting part, though. The interesting part is that it took me less than a minute to find a CNBC store a few shops down. I imagine there is an ongoing rivalry between the two stores involving late-night heists and unrealistic Hollywood hacking scenes.

You can practically smell the green screen.

I also found a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory outlet. My Colorado instincts nearly had me skiing into the store and breaking the displays with hiking sticks and red rocks. Of course, my Colorado politeness kept me from doing something I would regret. The Rocky Mountains are the pride of my state! How could this store betray—ooh, it sells ice cream…

            There was a Dunkin’ Donuts on the other side of the airport that I stumbled across while looking for an outlet. Now let me tell you something about Colorado. We have lovely people. We have gorgeous plains. We have powerful mountains. We take pride in the beauty of our nature.

            …but we don’t have Dunkin’ Donuts.

Pictured above: happiness

            Yes, we created Chipotle. Yes, the Red Robin headquarters is located in our state. But if there are two restaurants I wish we had in our state, it would be Dunkin’ Donuts and In-N-Out. Yeah, you can get your coffee at Starbucks or a local store, but it’s always overpriced and too fancy. Dunkin’ Donuts is the only place you can get a cheap, tasty breakfast and feel patriotic while doing so. 

Dramatic representation >>>

Six Days Later

            Man, oh man has a lot happened since I wrote that post above. Alright, here we go.

            First off, I felt really bizarre meeting with my group. I have since learned to get along with and enjoy speaking to the other members of my program, but it’s still challenging getting to know people you otherwise probably wouldn’t know. That being said, I’m glad I’m in this position because I am once again reminded of the fierce diversity of the human identity when I grow closer to those around me.

            I’m not sure what reputation I’ve formed in the minds of my compañeros here in Buenos Aires, but that’s not a big concern for me. I’ll grow closer to whoever I do and will just be acquaintances with the rest. However, we’re all united by our clockwork-like ability to forget every word of Spanish we know in the face of necessity, and if that isn’t bonding, I don’t know what is!

            Hey, look, a picture of something cool!

            These two statues are one of many at the Cemetario de la Recoleta, which we visited a few days ago. I never thought cemeteries could be beautiful until I came here, and now I totally want to be buried there. Is that gruesome? It doesn’t matter—I don’t have enough money anyway. Some of the statues are absolutely lovely, and some are—

AHH! AHH! AHH! AHH! AHH! GET IT AWAY!!

            Our tour guide had an explanation of who this was, but all I could see was a vengeful ghost woman hovering a good six feet above our heads, ready to shoot laser beams from her eyes to vaporize a randomly selected student from the group. (Note to self: install laser beams in future grave.)

            Hey, look, another cool thing!

            This was from the church attached to the cemetery, and trust me, in person it looks awe-inspiring. I am definitely going to attend a service here at some point, because I have never seen anything like it before.

            Nothing beats topping off a day of admiring the beautifully adorned graves of the deceased with a fresh cup of coffee, so after touring the cemetery we headed to the notable café La Biela to get some refreshments.

It was a nice place, but after being in the sun all day I just got a bottle of water instead of coffee. This café, however, was nothing compared to what we found just nearby.

Whoa.

Whoa.

DO YOU SEE THIS TOO BECAUSE I AM MOST DEFINITELY SEEING THIS

            This hulking mammoth of a tree is a historical monument of sorts right next to the café, and it is so enormous that it requires branch rests to keep growing. I was a bit disappointed that everyone else wanted to go to the café instead of admire the tree longer. I felt like Neville Longbottom in a group of Harry Potters who didn’t care about plants. I intend to come back here just to sit under the tree, because you really don’t realize how big it is until you see it in person.

            Since then I’ve grown closer to my group, made a few good friends, learned to understand the Castellano of my host parents better (although understanding my four-year-old host brother is still a lost cause), and gone to some really cool locations throughout the city. I can’t wait for the rest of the semester!

            As they say in Buenos Aires, ¡ciao!

            -Josh

Howdy to all of you sophomores!

Welcome back to school (a month in)!! How does it feel? From what I have heard from my friends, this semester has been nothing but BUSY. I completely concur with that statement. All I have been doing is studying, doing my extra-curricular activities, studying some more, and sleeping. In a way, I did bring it all on myself. At the same time, I know some things that I am doing this semester are just absolutely ridiculous when it comes to classes and other things. You know what I mean? I keep trying to remind myself that I have to do the dirty work to have the fun. I am not really digging the dirty work though… see what I did there?

Anyways, I was walking to the library today and a thought popped into my mind. I was passing a few freshmen holding onto their lanyards with the proxies attached. They were walking confidently, but almost to the point of being to cool for school. Are we too babied as freshmen or even in general when hitting college? Think about it. Most of us by the time we reach college are 18 years of age. That is 18 years that we have witnessed and experienced life. Is that not enough time to really be independent without some extra nurturing? Of course you could say that it depends on how the person was raised, but is it necessary to have certain skills acquired by the time we hit freshmen year of college that some do not currently have? I know when I was a freshmen, I was ready to fly the coop having been the baby of the family. Therefore, I made sure that I went to ask somebody for help, self-advocating, rather than just slumping around not knowing where to start. For others this did not ring true. If they did not have the drive to really figure out a specific issue, they would not even try to solve it. Either way, my freshmen year was successful because I was open-minded and willing to try new things. Do some of you now as sophomores regret not having tried more as a freshmen or even younger in general? I know I have missed some opportunities.  I feel like there is some need to motivate students, going into a school where they may know a lot of people from high school, to meet new people and get out of their comfort zones. The same things I have seen occur at CU, too. Maybe it is a large state school thing? We gravitate towards our comfort zone when college is the time to expand and break free from it.

I bring this up because I am studying abroad next fall. I think it’s so important to travel and experience the world. It builds your confidence, your understanding of the world, and simply makes you grow as a person. My teacher for my film class agrees with me in this sense. He even mentioned that he is flying to Switzerland for a week starting on Sunday to see a film festival. Who does that?! What a champ, in my opinion.

I challenge you all this week to try something that is out of your comfort zone. It can be little or large. There are people who are currently standing in the plaza holding signs for “free hugs”. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for one! It’s college. For some reason, I have recently felt like I am back in high school because I’ll get weird looks or feel like I am at least. I then remind myself that NOBODY CARES. Well, the mature people don’t care. You’re bound to find those immature people who clearly have not left high school, but don’t let them make you feel inferior. So once again, try something you wouldn’t usually do. You may like it or you may not. Either way you learned something. You won’t learn anything unless you try!

Much love to you all!

~ Chand 

Happy Lucky: Old Town Tea