Apart from birds, squirrels, cats, and the occasional rat, I am not accustomed to seeing extensive wildlife in the cities of South Carolina. For this reason, when I studied abroad in Havana, Cuba this past spring, I was taken aback by the number of animals I found on the city’s streets. This is not to say that the animals in Havana bothered me or made me uncomfortable. On the contrary,…
My name is Isabel Del Mastro, I am a sophomore at the College of Charleston studying Spanish and Latin American Caribbean Studies and I am staying with the Buenos Aires Housing institution with a host mother and her son. I chose my program here in Buenos Aires because I wanted to improve my fluency in the Spanish language and live in a Latin American country to go along with my…
Recently, on a College of Charleston led, semester-long study abroad program to Havana, Cuba, I went on an excursion to the mountain town of Las Terrazas in the province of Artemisa, Cuba. The excursion began on a Friday morning in late February at the corner of Calle 19 and B in Vedado, the Havana neighborhood we all lived in. My classmates, I, and our professor piled into a van driven…
During our time in Cuba, we spent lots of time visiting Habana Vieja, which was a taxi ride away from our neighborhood of Vedado. Habana Vieja is full of brightly colored old taxis, plazas with gigantic cathedrals, and parks with statues of José Martí. We even saw a little park full of cats. Our tour guide, Fidel, told us that the Cuban government gives the dogs and cats in the…
When I decided to go on this trip, I did not know what to expect in terms of food. I don’t eat foods that come from animals, so I was a little bit worried about how that was going to go. On the paperwork for studying abroad I specified that I was vegan, so I knew that there would be options for me I was just hoping they would be…
My name is Emma Burton. I am a sophomore at the college, and I participated in the Havana, Cuba study abroad program. I chose this program because I know that it is difficult for people to the U.S. to travel to Cuba, and I saw it as a rare opportunity to be able to live and study in Havana. My goals were to improve my Spanish, make local friends, and…
Coming home early is the nightmare that every study abroad student has. For all of the global class of spring 2020, that was our reality. I always knew that transitioning back to the US culture was going to be hard but going from exploring Buenos Aires without a care of being sent home to being quarantined in my childhood bedroom in a 48 hour time span was definitely not the…
For one of our last trips if our study abroad program, we decided to go to San Pedro de Atacama which is the town right next to the desert. We stayed in some cabins in the center of town right in the middle of all the restaurants. We had a pool in our cabin area, so we spent the first day hanging out by the pool, relaxing, and enjoying being…
My overall experience in Chile was absolutely amazing. I loved my host family like my own, and I plan to visit them as soon as I can afford it. My classes were overall pretty good, except for missing a lot of classes due to the political unrest. The weather was completely different than Charleston – opposite seasons and no humidity or rain ever. The city we studied in is huge,…
Santiago de Chile is a very busy city with about 6 million people making up it’s population. There is no doubt that I lived in a booming city. My first month in Chile consisted of me getting comfortable with my surroundings and acclaimed to a life in Chile this fall of 2019. I was quick to notice the social conflicts within the country, where the society brings attention to these…
