Author Archives: Sonia Giebel ’14

Abroad Musings, Vol. 3

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Indicatively, I find myself writing a blog in the Vienna airport once more. This time, it’s off to Deutschland for a family reunion. My flight is delayed, but only 10 minutes, which already puts me in a position about 10000x better than my last harrowing flight experience. To finish off that epic tale:

I ended up poorer, but 24 hours in Istanbul richer, after booking a last minute flight for the morning thereafter. Istanbul is the most incredible city I have ever seen, extremely eclectic, bustling, and simultaneously reminds me of times spent in Vienna and Viet Nam. My friend Hiba Dhanani, who is currently on her own study abroad excursion there, busted out her Admission skills and gave me a wonderful tour of the city.

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Next up on the ancient city tour, Athens. My friend Kat Wyly is teaching English in Athens on a now-Fulbright fellowship, so I had the incredibly good fortune of having a friend, hostess, and guide waiting for me when I disembarked my plane. It was so nice to see a close friend after almost a year, and surreal to do so in Greece! The Haverford network is seriously global. I spent my weekdays wandering ancient ruins and eating delicious gyros, and my Saturday with Kat on Hydra, a nearby Greek island.

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Life was good. Extremely good.

So in the end, as terrible as that rebooking fiasco was, the days that followed were just that incredible.

The following weekend I was in Rome, eating the best tagliatelle, gnocchi, gelato, cheese…

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After this trip to Germany, I’m off to Budapest, thereafter to Dublin and Copenhagen, and then I have a mere two remaining weeks in Vienna before flying back to Haverford for commencement. Life is currently beautiful insanity. I knew how quickly my time abroad would fly by; I remember thinking on the bus ride into Vienna, “at some point a couple of months from now, you’ll think back to this moment and be in disbelief that it’s already been so long.” Good work, Sonia from the past, that is absolutely true, but it doesn’t make the realization any easier to internalize.

Seniors at Haverford are finishing up theses, pinwheel day has come and gone, and I can finally retire snow boots to the back of my closet. My time here is waning, and that brings simultaneous anxiety and excitement. I’m sad to think of goodbyes to friends, Käsekrainer, and Kaffeehäuse; I’m a little scared but very excited to be thinking about my thesis, last year in college, and life thereafter; but I’m also looking forward to seeing my friends again, an incredible, paid internship in Philadelphia this summer (cue the next blog post), and reflecting on the incredible experiences I have had and will have in my time away from Haverford.

Abroad Musings, Vol. 2

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Being abroad means a lot of things. It means having to adjust to living in an entirely new country, making new friends, and learning to live without a regular supply of peanut butter. It also means dealing with a lot of very annoying, very tedious bureaucratic messes by yourself and in different languages. Some of these things are more fun than others. I hope you all find some humor in this travel saga; as I write this from Berlin, I am only beginning to appreciate its future storytelling clout.

I’ll start by sharing a few excerpts from my journal, written as I weathered a 5 hour delay in the Vienna airport a few days ago: ‘No one conveniently told me my original flight had been cancelled, so lucky me gets to spend the afternoon in the Vienna airport instead of Berlin.’ and ‘[text has been altered to omit rather colorful expressions].’ Apparently I was feeling philosophical, because then this followed: ‘Patience and flexibility — I guess that’s something I’m really starting to take away from this trip. Miscommunication? Let’s try again. Oh, this operator only speaks Turkish? Who else can I talk to? Who can I go to for help? When should I and what can I accomplish by myself? What risks am I willing to take and when should I listen to my gut and back off?’ Philosophical it may be, but those are important questions that I do end up asking myself almost everyday.

I wasn’t quite so into introspective questioning after finding out that I had not actually been rebooked to Istanbul, as my rebooking confirmation stated, at 1 a.m. in the morning. I was less into the introspection after spending hours on hold, speaking increasingly tense and decreasingly polite English/German, after 4 hours of stressed half sleep. And after breaking down, cancelling my original booking with no guarantee of a refund, and calling my folks in Seattle at 4 a.m. Pacific time to figure out how I was going to get to Istanbul in time to catch my flight to Athens, I just wanted some peanut butter and a long nap.

I am now eating some stale rice and a rather mealy apple, and appreciating my family’s swift response. I am not writing exactly what my plans are because I am terrified of jinxing those too, but I’ll reveal the conclusion to this saga in my next blog post.

The last 24 hours have been the most stressful ones I’ve had recently, but there is a lot of learning to be had. Patience and flexibility are very valuable virtues that I am still cultivating; get receipts for absolutely everything every time; don’t be afraid to ask for help; apparently this is what being an independent adult is like (not actually, but at least at times); and if all else fails, there’s a lot of chocolate in Europe, and the new Justin Timberlake album works wonders on the nerves.

I promise more photos in the next post!

Abroad Musings, Vol. 1

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I’m an English major.  I do a lot of reading and writing, and believe heartily in linguistic power.  For this blog, however, I owe a disclaimer.  I really don’t think it’s possible to describe what I’ve been experiencing in Europe thus far with words.  I will supplement with as many photos as possible, but you, dear readers, will need to supplement with a little of your own imagination.

Where to begin?  I got into Europe about a month ago and have been on a nonstop adventure ever since.  I live in an independent apartment in Vienna proper, about 15 minutes outside the city center.  This is the view from my apartment window:

I just wrapped three weeks of “Intensive German” and am currently writing this blog from a hostel in Berlin; we get a 10 day break post Intensive German-ing, and I’ve been on a jaunt through eastern Germany – Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin — since (most non-casual casual parenthetic ever: also had a quick weekend trip into Prague).  Photographic evidence:

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Dresden

 

I hit the ground running once I’m back in Vienna, as my full course load commences.  I’m taking an Eastern European Comparative Literature course, Sociology of Immigration, The Cultural Heritage of Vienna (auf Deutsch), and continuing with my German class; I also have an Education internship, working with a local Viennese public school.  Conveniently enough, these courses will also garner credit for my English major, and both Sociology and Education minors.  Haverford doesn’t have any of its own, independent study abroad programs, but instead has established relationships with different universities and  study abroad programs; I am currently a student with IES Vienna.

As I write this, I have to admit that my brain feels a bit linguistically schizophrenic, and I find myself thinking of German phrases in place of English ones, or accidentally inserting an “ß” in place of a double-‘s.’ The language immersion is definitely playing its role well.

Though Austrians speak “Deutsch,” they are certainly not Germans.  It’s been fascinating unearthing the subtle, but culturally hugely important, differences between the two countries.  Some of it comes in slight differences in pronunciations, but there are some real cultural disparities.  Exhibit A:

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This doesn’t happen in Germany.  I went to a ball last week – a legitimate ball, complete with Viennese and non-Viennese waltzing, ball gowns, bow ties, and breathtaking atmosphere.  Those photos were taking in the Hofburg Imperial Palace – as in the place where the Habsburgs from the Austrian-Hungarian empire ruled.  Here’s a good place where my linguistic schizophrenia is coming in handy; that night was “traumhaft,” or literally like a dream.  There’s really no other way to describe it.

That’s actually a pretty apt word for Vienna in general.  I’ve never been in such a pristine and beautiful city before.  Just look:

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A square about 5 minutes from the Study Abroad center

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I am really, really relishing my time here.  As I upload my own abroad Facebook albums, however, I can’t help but feel a slight twinge of homesickness when I stumble upon my friends’ albums of Haver-life.  Campus looked beautiful with a fresh dusting of snow, and there are some incredible classes being offered this semester. My dad’s side of the family is German, and so much of this experience feels like coming home and reconnecting with my German heritage, but I also miss my friends and life back on Haverford’s campus.  I absolutely melted when I found out my professor’s four-year-old, whom I normally babysit, asked about me the other day. That said, though I am physically thousands of miles from my Haver-life, this is absolutely enriching and deepening my college experience.  I am so thankful for this time abroad, and owe Haverford much for enabling this adventure.  Bis bald, und viele Grüße!

Expanding Networks

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I got into a spat with my fifteen year-old brother the other day.  The keystone question: who’s the cooler sibling?  Well, if we’re being honest, my brother is a soccer star, plays bass and guitar in a rock band, and pulls off pierced ears with panache… but, I decided we should settle this debate by looking at how many Facebook friends we each have.  He has 759; I have 904.  Victory was mine.  I conveniently ignored the fact that I have a few more networks at my disposal – high school, work, college, etc. – than he does, but these are just details anyway, right?

Unfortunately for sibling rivalry’s sake, networks really aren’t negligible “details.”  As I prepare to jet off to Vienna – at least physically leaving the Haverford network – I’ve come to realize just how important and immensely helpful networks can be.  Sometimes networks mean funny coincidences; my Sociology minor advisor’s good friend conveniently works two doors down from my dad.  But networks carry larger implications too.  For example, midway through the schlump-fest that is finals week, I ignored my trusty sweatpants, wriggled into interview ware instead, and headed to the city to see about a possible summer job.

Given my impending international adventures, over this past semester I’ve been making as many inroads as possible for summer employment.  That meant reaching out to the entirety of the Haverford network: from my friends, to alumni, to former colleagues, to former colleague’s friends, to professors, to professors’ colleagues… you get my drift.  It’s meant sending a lot of kind of awkward emails introducing myself to strangers.  They’re really only pseudo-strangers, though; there’s only one degree of separation from me and all of these possible employers – we’ve got some mutual friends on FB, let’s say.  I soon accumulated a growing list of names, phone numbers, and email addresses in the “Contacts” section of my planner, and all of a sudden, job opportunities, internships, and interviews started to materialize – all catalyzed by the Haverford network.

This has all been pretty informal, but tapping into these networks has also highlighted just how wonderfully, and formally, connected Haverford is.  Janice Lion, the domestic internship coordinator for the CPGC, for example, noted the many bridge programs the CPGC offers for those interested in education and education reform post undergraduate life.  I’m still focused on this summer’s employment options (whilst still beyond excited for Vienna!), but post-Haverford employment, aka real life employment, we’ll lovingly call it, looms.  In addition to the CPGC, our Career Development Office, or CDO, links current and graduating students with alumni, polishes resumes, and conducts mock interviews.  The CDO straddles one of the strongest networks, the Bi-Co, providing Haverford and Bryn Mawr students the resources and connections of both schools.  Knowing these established connections – in addition to the many that are just a phone call away – exist, is like a warm cup of “kaffee mit schlag” (coffee with whipped cream) to those real life employment woes.

Haverford’s community is incredibly strong, and from a friendship standpoint, it’s one of, if not my, favorite aspects of Haverford.  I have made some of the deepest and most genuine friendships here, and that’s been the best.  When all of these incredible friendships also become incredible links, that’s doubly the best.  So, the bestest?  I have just under a week left before it’s “Guten Tag” to Vienna, and “Aufwiedersehen” to Seattle and Haverford friends.  I really hate goodbyes, but I take solace in the fact that Skype is an incredible invention, I’m off on an adventure, my Haverford friendships and connections will remain strong, and this four-month hiatus is just another way of expanding that incredible network.  And I’ll have more FB friends to boot!

 


New Holiday Traditions: Pho in Philly, Foreign Fruits, and Dimpling Dumplings

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Even with my Christmas Pandora station playing, it hasn’t quite felt like the holidays for me just yet. Maybe it’s because finals loom, or because it’s 62 degrees today. Or probably, it’s because my family is 3 time zones away, and getting a Skype view of the Christmas tree isn’t quite the same as smelling the pine in person. All that Debbie Downer stuff being said, I just had a wonderful weekend in the city; this outing might just become my own holiday tradition.

My friend and recent alum, Juliana, just moved into South Philly, so she’s just a few dollars and half hour train and/or bus ride away. She had been meaning to try pho (rhymes with “huh”), the quintessential Vietnamese noodle soup, for some time, so having spent significant times in Viet Nam myself, we ventured to the Vietnamese district. Our lunch soon arrived, with giant bowls of noodles, beef, and delicious broth steaming. Pho is a Giebel family dinner outing staple, and I hadn’t had it since August, so I reveled in nostalgia and happiness as we slurped.

Pho Pho Pho

Next up, a quick walk over to the giant Asian market (fun fact: I wrote my college essay on ethnic markets and multiculturalism). Memories from Viet Nam continued to flood, as mangosteen, rambutans, and dragon fruit greeted Juliana and me. See if you can spot all three in the photo below:

Mangosteen is my absolute favorite fruit; if you ever stumble upon some, it’s worth the probably exorbitant price (it was $7.99 a pound when I was there)! Whole roasted ducks hung a few aisles down, and I contemplated purchasing one and reincarnating a Christmas tradition from my mom’s side of the family. As tempting as that was, Juliana and I opted to recreate my family’s other Christmas recipe: homemade pot stickers/in Chinese, jiaozi. I won’t divulge the full family recipe, but some combination of napa cabbage, garlic chives, pork, ginger, soy, sesame, and TLC summate to the filling; the wrapping entails some carefully cultivated folding techniques.

Note that Juliana made one in the shape of empanada – talk about fusion cuisine!

The finished product!

 

This is normally a huge family production: my aunt will roll out the dough, my uncle and grandma will make the filling, and my mom, cousins, and I are responsible for folding.  It’s a process I associate deeply with family and holiday.  I still feel that way, but I joked that I felt like I was completing a rite of passage, gaining ownership over a tradition that’s been passed through my family.  I feel so fortunate to have been able to share this tradition with members of this collegiate community; it really is cultural fusion — of my familial culture with my emerging independent one — embodied in a tidy little dumpling.

Happy Holidays to all; I hope everyone is reveling in and sharing their own familial traditions, whether they’re currently together or not!

 

Catching Up…

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Well it’s been a bit, and a lot has transpired. To facilitate the most efficient and accurate summation of this past month and a half (sorry guys) I’m going to descend into a bit of a stream of consciousness. Let’s see how this goes…

October brought the usual flurry of papers and midterms, but it also brought my family over from Seattle. Whilst here, I joked that they had a quintessential Haverford experience. First, we had dinner at the very delicious and local Peruvian Barbeque restaurant, Barbacoa. The family platter, complete with a whole roast chicken, pulled pork, ribs, and 2 pounds worth of sides, sufficed in feeding us all. So good. The next morning, we had bagels with my advisor and her family (she conveniently lives on campus, as do about half of our professors); my dad, a professor himself, joked that this would never happen at our house. Well, dear Papi, this is how we do it at Haverford. It was a thoroughly enjoyable brunch, with conversation ranging in topics from digitized course offerings to Boobah (look it up if you dare – I’ll just say it’s fitting for a three year old’s imagination). Next up, the fam and I watched our Centennial Conference champion men’s soccer team take on Gettysburg, whisked our way through a field hockey game, and gabbed with my friends from my freshmen year Customs group. And to conclude, we made the obligatory stop at WaWa for subs…

Hurricane Sandy punctuated October’s end, closing the college for two days. The campus was extraordinarily lucky and managed to escape any real damage. We lost power for maybe an hour in sum, and the only physical effect was some excessive pine needle blanketing. Our campus arboretum stood strong, and classes were back in swing on Wednesday. Those two days brought some welcome extra hours of sleep, movie marathons, and lots of parental phone calls (my dad called every other hour, though he insisted he wasn’t worried about me). Those phone calls weren’t unnecessary, as it turned out, and my friends and I were aware of how devastating the storm really was. The college has come together and many students are proposing various avenues for the Haverford community to aid those affected. Here’s the link for those interested:

www.haverford.edu/news/stories/65711/51

…Soon after, Gloria Steinem was on campus! I don’t throw exclamation points around often, but Gloria Steinem was seriously incredible. She shared a lot of simultaneously inspirational, insightful, and often satisfyingly sarcastic musings. My favorite? “We are linked, not ranked.” The societal (and feminist) implications of this statement are massive and incredibly important, but it really resonated with me as a Haverford student. This is something that the college really tries to embody, in the ways in which the student voice is, essentially, just as important as the administrative one, to our heavily discussion-based classrooms, to the interconnectedness of our alumni network. This isn’t a college predicated on hierarchy, and it’s one of the aspects of Haverford that I appreciate the most. Thank you, Gloria, for a wonderful visit and reminding me of yet another reason why I adore this college…

The election kicked the college into high voting gear. All partisanship aside, I’ve never seen so many Facebook statuses in my life telling everyone to vote. Various groups on campus set up voter registration tables, students were shuttling students to and from the local polling places all day, and sorry professors, absolutely no homework got done on Nov. 6; we were all glued to various screens. I made a huge pot of chili for my friends and myself, and we all huddled around my laptop, flitting between CNN and old SNL clips, as we awaited results. The election ended many group viewing sessions of debates, lots of late night political discussions, and canvassing by Haverford students… until the next four (more) years!

…Amongst all this, our fall sports teams were fantastic, bringing home half of the available Centennial Conference championships! Again, note the exclamation point. Both soccer teams, as well as our Men’s Cross Country teams were crowned champions this year, with Field Hockey and Women’s Cross Country winning second place, and our Volleyball team making the semi-finals before falling to the eventual champion, Franklin and Marshall. Those championships meant NCAA’s, so I decided to take all three extension days on one of my papers and head to Arcadia University for the Men’s Soccer games. There were so many Haverfordians there, from tons of students, to very vocal families, to professors and deans. We didn’t have any national championships (though the Men’s Cross Country team was close! 2nd place – congratulations, Goats!), but the whole college is so proud of all of our teams. Well done, well done, black squirrels!

The coffee I’ve been sipping as I’ve been writing is almost gone, so I guess it’s time to conclude. The holidays are upon us, and that means it’s getting to be crunch time at the college. Bring on those finals! But also, bring on that holiday music; I’m going to listen to Mariah Carey and relish my remaining few weeks of Haverford life until Winter break. Cheers, everyone!

Decisions, Decisions

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This whole college admissions process thing is really, to be overly reductive, a series of decisions: Do you want a big or small school? Urban, rural, or suburban? What’s the student body like? I’m sure there are many more questions percolating in everyone’s applying heads… Within my own traversal of these questions, however, I always had one answer: my junior year, I would be leaving whatever fine institution I attended.

Not permanently, of course, but study abroad was always a given for my undergraduate career. I grew up in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual household that heartily emphasized the experience of the multicultural. My father was born and raised in Germany, but has spent much time in Southeast Asia; my mother was born in Taiwan, grew up in upstate New York, and studied in Germany and Denmark; I was born in Deutschland, and have been lucky enough to have returned to my birth-country many times, to visit relatives in Asia, and grow up bilingually. It was always my expectation – probably from my middle school days, honestly – that I would embark on my own independent excursions come junior year in college.

Fast-forward to that junior year and all of a sudden, expectation had become reality, and a big decision awaited me. Where to??? I had fantasies of slurping noodle soup and finally learning Mandarin in China, sipping coffee in Rome, watching the sun dip and then immediately rise in Sweden… I even entertained Africa and South America and the thought of embracing complete de-familiarization.

Well, it didn’t help that Haverford offers about 60 programs in roughly 40 different countries, so many of these visions actually had the potential for enactment (all of these programs are also pre-approved so I didn’t have to worry about credit transfer or anything like that). And by that, I really mean that it is amazing that there are so many opportunities for study abroad – even if that means that the decision-making process takes a little bit longer. So for a while, a lot of programs swirled around in my head. Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa? I stressed about making the “right” decision. I talked with my family, friends, professors, and skimmed through program descriptions before finally came to a wonderfully specific criterion: my bilingualism is hugely important to me and I wanted to reaffirm my German fluency while I was abroad. That narrowed the field nicely to Freiburg, Berlin, and Vienna.

Even within my international imaginations, I had kind of written off Germany precisely because I already speak the language and feel at home there. I guess I was committing myself to at least some of that de-familiarization early on. Being able to re-evaluate and double back on some of those initial tendencies is important to any sort of decision-making process though. Trust your gut, but let your brain have some say too. So now I was committed to a language, at least.

Once I had sufficiently excited my relatives in Germany with the prospect of my being in or very close to the country, I did have to pick a specific program. That’s where I got into the nuance: Did I want a big city, or a small college town? How close do I want to be to my family? What classes does the program offer? When does this program actually take place?

Being able to digest options in this manner allowed for the distillation of exactly what I wanted from study abroad. I want to speak German, have easy access to, but not be right on top of my family, have the option of taking Literature, Sociology, and Education classes (in addition to stuff outside my major and minors), be able to travel easily, and make it back to the U.S. to see my Haverford friends graduate. Well, within that very specific rubric, the answer became very clear.

And now that I’ve made you read through a big blog post on big decisions, I’ll finally divulge; I am going to be spending my spring semester in the very beautiful Vienna! Seriously, look at this city:

 

It feels amazing to know where I’ll be next semester – to finally concretize those long-held hopes. That fulfillment comes from a decision-making process that can sometimes be stressful and a little scary. The college admissions process is like that too, but there is absolutely light at the end of the tunnel. My best advice in any big process, particularly college admissions, is to keep yourself and your interests firmly in the driver’s seat. You will receive a lot of information from a lot of people in this whole process; a lot of that information is illuminating and helpful, but making sure you champion yourself as you wade through all of that is essential for that ultimate feeling of affirmation.

I am unbelievably excited for my time in Vienna (and will now already promise blog posts from abroad!) and share in the anticipation and excitement of all my readers in the process of their own big decisions! You can do it!!

To the Newest Members of the Haverford Community

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As I write this, the sun dips below the Olympic mountain range, the lights of the Seattle skyline sparkle, and a blissful breeze billows my curtains. I am so happy to be home, relishing my time with family, hikes in the mountains, and lunch dates with high-school chums. Part of me, however, remains at Haverford in spirit…

 

This past Sunday, I spontaneously decided to go to the Seattle-based Haverford Class of 2016 Welcome Party. This is a chance for current students, newly minted Haverfordians (welcome!), and local alumni to connect before the freshmen class embarks on their own college experience. To be totally blunt, I hadn’t planned on going to this shindig; at this point, I had been away from Haverford for less than 24 hours and thought some separation from campus and the Haverford community might be needed. Silly me. Claire Perry ’14 and her family really out-hosted themselves – what a lovely home and such delicious food; thank you! The breakfast strata were wonderful, but it really was the get-together that made the afternoon so memorable.

One of many highlights includes reconnecting with a family I met on Open Campus Day; I had lunch with Anna and her mother that day, chatting about Haverford and the transition from Seattle to this community. I was also able to relive possibly my most embarrassing Admissions moment – and now I’m deciding to immortalize this magical moment online… here it goes! Anna’s mother was in the audience for the “Parents Only Panel” Admissions puts on for Open Campus Day – where parents have a few Haverford students and deans to their lonesome to grill – and therefore now knows my rather impressive commitment to familial connection. A west-coast mother had inquired as to how I deal with being so far from my family, and I perhaps foolishly, but very earnestly, shared that I call my parents on the daily. Plenty of parental applause and personal blushing soon followed.

There was more to my answer than that, even if that’s what ended up sticking. I also emphasized the close relationships you craft with your Customs group and the rest of the Haverford community, and those make the sting of the distance less. Throughout this blog, I’ve dubbed the Haverford community as the summation of current students, faculty, and staff. These are integral elements of my collegiate family – I can’t tell you how heartwarming it is to be welcomed into a friend’s home, or to have dinner with your professor and her family – but “community” really extends to everyone who’s been somehow impacted by the college.

Working in the Admissions Office this summer afforded many memorable moments, but my interactions with alumni were perhaps the most poignant. They ranged in age, from the class of ’52 to the late ‘80’s, but they all shared a commitment to the values of this campus. They emphasized how they adored what a caring community they came from, and how they really try to embody those values – namely, trust, concern, and respect – in their post-Haverford lives.

Meeting Melissa Lanctot, ’00, and Ari Worthman, ’02, both of whom were in attendance on Sunday, only concretized the sentiment. Here we were in Seattle, thousands of miles away from campus, but we might as well have been having a conversation over a DC table. It’s funny how you find commonalities within the community. Sure, Melissa and I have both taken classes with some of the same professors, Ari and I could each contribute moments of hilarity from the Haverford Admissions Office, but it’s much more than that. We recognize what a special place Haverford is, and whether a current or former student, we carry a little bit of campus around with us.

So, maybe to amend my Parents’ Panel answer: I love my family dearly, and I try to call them everyday because I want to hear how their day has been, to know what my fair city is up to, and to keep them up to date with my collegiate life. But Haverford is my home now, and the community – including alumni, family, and friends of the college – has become my very large, very extended, if non-genetic family. That makes the distance of a 6-hour flight seem nominal at worst.

Finally, one thing I didn’t mention during the emotional shuffle of the Parents’ Panel: My father now adamantly states that he doesn’t miss me when I’m gone. This is partly to bother me, but there’s a legitimacy to his jest; he knows how wonderfully happy I am across the country, so he’s happy too. To the class of 2016 parents, you will miss your kid. They will miss you too. But they will also have the time of their lives. Take solace in the fact that your child has come to a place where they can be wholly content, and in the fact that you are now also a part of the greater Haverford community. And maybe, if Parents’ Panel participants adopt my practices, you can look forward to daily phone calls too.

 

A ferry now sweeps through Puget Sound. How fortunate I am to live in such a gorgeous city, and how very, very fortunate I am to be a part of an omnipresent community. I might as well be watching the geese glide through the duck pond…

Diary of a Foodie

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Summer has once again manifested that achingly wonderful temporal twirl; the days are slow and simple, but we find ourselves on the cusp of August, less than a month from the inception of a new Customs Week and school year. In keeping with the time-twist, my recollections of this summer have centered on Bachelorette happenings (one-f-Jef?!) and memorable meals.

I’m a huge foodie. I feel supremely at home in the kitchen, experimenting with and crafting formal and imagined recipes, and going out to dinner at some delectable eatery is always my choice excursion. These past few weeks have been a foodie’s dream; here are some highlights:

A couple weeks ago, I met my dear friend and former blogger, Franklyn Cantor, in the city for a belated birthday meal. I hopped on the Paoli/Thorndale SEPTA train-line (there are two stops just a few minutes off campus) and 20 minutes later, Franklyn and I were standing outside Banana Leaf, a Malaysian restaurant and our dining venue for the evening. Our friend Juliana joined us with a friend from her abroad adventures along with a couple orders of roti, a crispy Malaysian pancake with a rich curry dipping sauce, Malaysian style spare ribs, spicy water spinach, and beef chow fun. Supremely delicious and inexpensive, Banana Leaf embodied both elements of my ideal dining experience. Ignoring our burgeoning bellies, Franklyn recommended/ensured a trip to The Franklin Fountain (all vanity aside, he made sure to emphasize) for the best ice cream in the city. We ordered the Mt. Vesuvius:

“A mountain of CHOCOLATE or VANILLA ice cream ERUPTING with chocolate brownie pieces, CASCADING with hot fudge and BLANKETED in malt powder. A dollop of whipped cream indicates her smoking signal.”

Get it. It’s so good. As we were walking back to the train station, some belated fireworks erupted. Happy bellies, lovely company, and a free light show – what a magical night.

Juliana’s mom came to visit the other week, so I had the absolute pleasure and honor of joining them for dinner. We walked to Verdad, a “Latin-influenced tapas” style restaurant in neighboring Bryn Mawr (also the college locale), and indulged in strawberry, habañero guacamole (the exact right balance of heat, sweetness, salt, and hints of acidity) and the most incredible paella. Mounded in a massive wok, perfectly golden brown, and literally swimming with chorizo and maritime goodies, this paella is as beautiful as it is delicious. And a whole lobster chills on top. Juliana and her mother were wonderful company and our evening together was one of my favorites of the summer.

As part of a CPGC internship (see www.haverford.edu/CPGC/ for more information on the CPGC’s mission and offerings), my friend Stuart has been dutifully tending to the HCA garden. The garden has very kindly spared me much produce shopping, as fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, herbs, and more have been spilling out throughout the summer. I’ve enjoyed many a delicious stir-fry, salad, and pasta dish courtesy of the produce. My favorite has been homemade tabouli salad – cous cous, onions, cucumbers, peppers, tomato, feta, garlic oil, lemon, and fresh mint. Eat. It is good and good for you too!

Food locales — ranging from urban escapes, to suburban strolls, to my literal backyard — are also a wonderful representation of the urban-suburban balance here at Haverford. It’s perfectly easy to stay in the immediate area and sate cultural and culinary cravings, but Philadelphia offers an urban jolt whenever necessary. Beyond food, being able to take advantage of Philadelphia’s vast offerings while maintaining a suburban home has been one of my favorite aspects of my Haverford experience.

The summer’s close is coming hard and fast, but I intend to soak up as many rays of the sun and indulge in as many further food indulgences as possible. And then it’s back to Seattle for salmon!

From The Bachelorette to Annette Lareau: Some Educational and Academic Insights

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I’m ashamed to say I watch such excellent smut as The Bachelorette.  I get sucked into the fantasy, reveling in the brilliant extravagance of it all, and rooting for the sweet, witty (also the sanest) guy with the cool haircut.  So yeah, that’s embarrassing.

I was at my friend’s apartment the other night, indulging in the drama of a scorned suitor and rudely critiquing Emily’s (the lovely bachelorette) parenting skills of her daughter, Ricki.  Can you imagine?  Running around the world randomly while your mom “dates” these guys?  Yeesh. Had I been by my lonesome, I would’ve continued the punchiness, remarking on Emily’s clear plastic surgery or something like that, but since I was with my Haverford friends, the conversation took a turn for the intellectual.

Last semester I took two education classes: Critical Issues in Education, the introductory Education course, and Sociology of Education, a Bryn Mawr Sociology class cross listed in the Education department.  For brevity’s sake, I will only say that these classes were easily the most influential in my thinking and career aspirations thus far; I want to be involved in the education system because of these classes.

Both required Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods.  An ethnographic study, Lareau synthesizes her experiences with twelve different families, exploring the major educational implications of the disparate observed childrearing strategies.  Lareau’s work was deeply resonant and catalytic for my own (re)thinking about the formative nature of the education system, and still colors much of my sociological and educational perspective.  I see the implications of her work everywhere…

 

 

…even incipiently in The Bachelorette.   My co-viewer and friend is also an Education minor, so our conversation deviated from analyzing Ricki’s conversational contributions (a dragon lives in Buckingham Palace… brilliance) to the inextricable relationship between childhood and educational performance.  We noted the fact that Emily is clearly in a comfortable financial stratum, and therefore able to provide Ricki with an education that can cater to and probably encourages international travels.  This is kind of in jest, since Ricki isn’t actually the best example of Lareau’s theories, (being an indirect reality TV star at the age of six isn’t quite indicative of her demographic), but even though the genesis of the conversation was less than serious, our sentiment certainly was.

We did manage to have a more sophisticated conversation, reflecting on our own, reality TV-free childhoods.  We reminisced on the international travel we were lucky enough to experience, our parents’ commitment to our educations, the many clubs we were involved in (these are all elements of one of Lareau’s observed theories, “concerted cultivation”), and how these had parlayed brilliantly into our current educational status.  We were also cognizant, however, of the situations that don’t coincide so well with the education system.  It’s a conversation that I’m incredibly invested in, and while I could bombard the internet with my educational opinions, I will just say that our conversation was simultaneously frustrating and inspiring, far more so than Emily’s amore musings.  By the time we had come down from our educational soapboxes, some guy named “Wolf” (who???) was crying over something, and another guy with an oddly shaped head was making inappropriate and fairly misogynistic jokes.  And so, we had left the real world and its real issues and returned to the fantastic/ridiculous.

This aspect of the Haverford academic culture – the balance of seriously intellectual and thoroughly non-academic – is something that I celebrate and adore.  There’s this moment during your freshmen year where you realize that everyone on this campus is wicked smaht and it’s the most exhilarating dawning.  These are the students that you’re lucky enough to learn from, but they’re also your friends.  You consequently get an academic climate at Haverford that’s constantly curious, but fun and relaxed at the same time.  So, my advice for incoming Haverford freshmen: make sure you keep up with your favorite television offerings, invest in your intellect, and that will inevitably spill out of the classroom into a confluence of the academic and the light-hearted.  Relish this balance; it is far more beautiful than any bachelorette.