By Shane Smith, Guest Blogger – Peru, Summer 05 – About six months ago I was, like all first year medical students inching their way towards June, faced with a decision. How should I spend the final few months of summer vacation that I would ever be granted? Looking into my future I saw 40, maybe 50 years ahead of me void of a similar opportunity to follow my nose where it would lead without distraction.
There are several things to consider when making this decision and each must weigh them according to their own priorities. Being of the ambitious mold our type heralds it is natural to consider an activity that is both productive and fattening for one's CV.
Research The Study Abroad Opportunities
Even the word elicits a bilious taste in my mouth, along with memories of leeches sliced open and stuck with electrodes from my more sadistic undergraduate days. Obviously, my own unpreference for research is not shared by everyone, which is something I am glad of because hey, someone's gotta do it.
You might also consider working in order to pare down some of that crushing debt (or maybe just those gas bills) you are most likely incurring. And that would be fiscally responsible of you. But honestly, unless you're pulling down some serious cash how big a dent do you think you can make?
Volunteering, shadowing, plotting your revenge on all pathologists. These are all worthy endeavors. But I wanted to do something I couldn't do during the school year. And having lived in Los Angeles for 19 of my 24 years, what is the one thing that I want to do more than any other, but can't when classes are taking place? That's right, leave.
So, I got on a plane and went to Peru. Now, I've been around the States and to Canada, Mexico, and even to England. But Canada and England hardly qualify as significantly unfamiliar cultures and my trips to Mexico mainly consisted of 45-minute drives south from San Diego to Rosarito. Needless to say, Peru was an unknown quantity for me and once I crossed that Rubicon of ignorance I would surely be changed.
I spent the next 5 weeks learning to speak Spanish, volunteering in the local hospital, absorbing Peru's culture, and visiting some amazing places. The program, called SALUD, was organized by AmeriSpan in conjunction with a local language school and hospital in Cuzco. I took 80 hours of Spanish lessons and spent 40 hours volunteering in the hospital (which surprisingly was prettier than LA County). By the end, my Spanish was about 1000 percent improved and I had seen patients with TB, pseudomembranous colitis, leishmaniasis, and AIDS.
I was lucky enough to stay with a local family that treated me like the adopted gringo. Gilbert (the dad) is a civil engineer for the local government and Cecilia (the mom) owns a pizzeria. Mariana, nine, and Marcello, five, sang me happy birthday and gave me cologne for my 24th. I guess they thought I was smelly. Also, Marianna came down with measles and I actually got to see Koplik spots up close and personal. Yeah medicine!
Cuzco is an Andean city about a million people strong and located at 11,000 feet. Yes, the altitude took some getting used to but in no time I was playing fútbol and thinking back to that hemoglobin lecture in core with pictures of red-faced Cusqueñans kicking la pelota. My fellow grupo SALUD members, from med schools all over the country, and I had a favorite nightspot called Ukukus where we could test our newfound lung capacities. They always had a local band playing, plenty of dancing, and good drinks (I got fooled once though by the Pisco Sours which have egg-whites mixed in). And at the end of the night they always played Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive. Funny how a song that I've heard 17,000 times can now have a new meaning attached to it.
The culture is mainly a mix of indigenous native-American (deriving from the Incas and pre-Incas) and Spanish. Accordingly, many people speak both Spanish and Quechua (the language of the Incas). Though poverty is ubiquitous, it's a lively community and the saying is that everyday there is either a fiesta or a protesta.
The food is somewhat similar to Mexican with lots of carbs, but it isn't spicy and they definitely have some unique specialties. One delicacy is alpaca, a relation of the llama, and it tastes kind of like a chicken/steak combo. They also like to eat roasted guinea pig, or cuy (COO-EE) and think we are the freaks for keeping them as pets. I must have grown up on a farm because I managed to not get sick once in five weeks. This is really quite amazing considering that the first dish I had there was eggs sunny-side up with hardly-cooked onions and I pretty much ate everything thrown at me, except the cuy.
I traveled to a few of the more miraculous places of the world while I was there. Machu Picchu (which means Old Mountain in Quechua) is remarkable for its perched location and impressive architecture. I visited the Colca Canyon, which is twice the depth of the Grand Canyon, and saw some wild giant condors. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable body of water in the world at 12, 500 feet above sea level. Basically, it's huge and it's high. I was told by some Grecians that it looks just like the Mediterranean. The Uros Islands, on the lake, are floating manmade islands of grass reeds where indigenous people live out their lives. I also spent a night on the Island of Amantani (a natural earth island) with a family that only speaks Quechua and watched the sunrise over the Bolivian Andes from the island peak. Better than research.
So, to wrap up, how would I rate my decision for the last summer vacation in sight? Well, I enjoyed all the people I met there, including the other medical students from around the country. I enjoyed the sights and the food. The music was great. I learned a bit of Spanish, I learned a little about Peruvian culture and heritage, and I learned about some less common diseases. That said, I also learned traveling is just as the cliché goes, addictive..

By Alexa Boyce – While studying abroad in Marbella, Spain, I heard a rumor that Antonio Banderas not only lived there, but owned a restaurant in town as well. I asked my host family and sure enough, they gave me directions to La Posada de Antonio, which happened to be three blocks from the school. A classmate and I would often alter our route to ensure that we would walk past the restaurant – just in case Antonio dropped by. La Posada specializes in tapas and grilled meats, and it always smelled delicious. However, meals cost between $10-30, and being the poor college students we were, we never opted to actually go in and eat.
Antonio Banderas was born and raised in nearby Málaga, so it is no surprise that he has held on to his roots there. However, many other celebrities call the Costa del Sol home (or home away from home) as well. Melanie Griffith and King Fahed of Saudi Arabia own houses in Marbella, while Sean Connery and Michael Douglas are often seen yachting and clubbing in nearby Puerto Banús. Bruce Willis and Boris Becker occasionally drop by on their yachts as well. Deborah Kerr and her husband, scriptwriter Peter Viertel have named this resort area as a favorite vacation spot. Of course, Julio Iglesias is a fixture around Marbella.
In the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was a “boom” of celebrities purchasing summer homes on the Costa del Sol. Towns such as Torremolinos-Benalmádena, Fuengirola and Mijas became popular. The boom did not truly explode until it hit Marbella. Celebrities such as Ringo Starr, Onassis and Maria Calla, Frank Sinatra, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, Esther Williams, Sylvie Vartan, Mary Pickford, Johnny Halliday, The Duke of Windsor and the Kennedys all owned property here. The Prince of Monaco and Grace Kelley spent their honeymoon here. When you live in a place as beautiful as the French Riviera, that means a lot!
Source: Costa del Sol Tourist Board www.visitacostadelsol.com

By Beth Klemick

The European Union, formerly known as the European Communities (EC) or the European Economic Community (EEC), was founded on November 1, 1993 to enhance political, economic and social cooperation amongst 25 democratic countries known as member states. The Union today has a common single market, consisting of a customs union, a single currency (the euro) managed by the European Central Bank (adopted by 12 of the 25 member states), a Common Agricultural Policy, a common trade policy, a Common Fisheries Policy, and a Common Foreign and Security Policy.

There are four important EU institutions which are comprised of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament. Althought the European Parliament origins date back to the 1950s, it was not until 1979 that its members were elected by the citizens of the European Union to represent their interest. Since 1979, elections into the European Parliament have taken place in five year intervals with the last election held in 2004 which returned 732 Members from the 25 European Union countries.

The European Union's activities cover all areas of public policy, from health and economic policy to foreign affairs and defense, the extent of the EU powers differs between many countries. As an example, take the United States – it will always be categorized and function as a constitution-based federal republic. The EU on the other hand can be categorized as a federation, a confederation, or an international organization depending on the area of interest. Probably the most important current issue of the EU today is establishing the European Constitution. To date, the future of a consitution is unknown. Countries like France and the Netherlands have failed to win popular support which has caused many other member countries to delay their own ratifications procedures.

The European Union has been extending its influence east; Romania and Bulgaria are scheduled to become members in 2007. Supporters of the European Union argue that the growth of the EU is a force for peace and democracy. With that said, there is much controversy as the EU continues to grow eastward and the candidate countries' accessions are more difficult. Attempts to unite the nations of Europe precede modern times. Given Europe's collections of languages and cultures, these attempts usually involved military subjugation of unwilling nations, leading to instability. Today, however, with the establishment of European Union, things like passport customs checks have been abolished at most of the EU's internal borders, thus creating a single space of mobility for EU citizens to live, travel, work and invest.

Check out Wikipedia for more information on the EU.

In present-day Poland about sixty folkloristic regions are recognized, each with their own specific traditional costumes. In some areas, like Podhale, Kurpie, Opoczno and Sieradz, the tradition still lives and the costumes are still made and worn at holidays. Many other regions don't have a living tradition. The costumes are still made, but mostly for dance-ensembles and choirs. In some regions the traditional costumes had to be reconstructed from paintings, museum collections and written accounts.

The Polish traditional costumes are characterized by a very colorful presentation and a great diversity. Every costume has variations (sometimes very small), often containing information about for instance the town of origin, being married or not and wealth. Nowadays it not always clearwhat function certain details have (had).

Some properties of the costumes are more or less common. In Mazowsze and central Poland the lines and color stripes of the womens' costumes are running vertically. In the south-east these are running horizontally. In the west of Poland the men wear their shirts in their trousers, while the men from the east wear their wide shirts over their trousers with a certain belt. The size of this belt is tells how high from the mountains the man originates.

The most famous costume is that of Krakow. Therefore it is often seen as a national costume. Almost every beginning folk ensemble starts with this costume. Unfortunately it is no longer part of the living folklore. Source

If you're interested in other traditional or historical dress or costumes from all over the world, check out The Costumer's Manifesto.

By Anne-Marie Dingemans

One of the best known festivals in Spain, after the Fiestas de Abril in Seville and the Fiestas de San Fermin in Pamplona (running with the bulls), are the Fallas of Valencia. Fallas are gigantic creations of paper mache, wood and wax, and are build by neighborhood groups, taking months, often close to a year, to complete. The Fallas depict current events and political figures, often in a satirical way. There are more than 300 of them, all proudly displayed in the streets starting March 15th. They are beautiful to see, and every Fallera celebrates pretty much around the clock with open bars and music in the streets and everyone is welcome to join. A good Falla-celebrator will go round the city (on foot, hopefully) to visit the various fallas and have a drink at each of them. With hundreds of Fallas, this can take a while, depending on your stamina and tolerance for alchohol!

Las Fallas is essentially a celebration of fire; firecrackers (the noisy kind, not the beautiful displays of fireworks) are lit 24/7 from March 13th-19th, and on the night of March 19th, the day of St. Joseph, homage is paid to this Saint by lighting all Fallas on fire! At midnight, the work of months, hundreds of people and millions of Euros (a Falla can cost up to 300,000 Euros – and there are 300 of them) go up in flames, surrounded by a deafening display of fire crackers – spectacular!

As you can imagine, many tourists from Spain and all over the world come to Valencia to celebrate with the Valencians. About as many Valencianos, however, actually escape the city during Las Fallas. If you're not a Fallera yourself, it's actually not a lot of fun to not be able to sleep because of the firecrackers (you won't believe it unless you experience it, but seriously, I'm talking actual 24/7 and trembling windows here) and to have half the city blocked off. So far I've tried to avoid all of it but I may pop out on Saturday night to see the Fallas as they are so beautiful and funny. Then I'll also have my yearly treat of porras (you can also have churros or bunuelos, but I prefer the porra); thumb-thick sticks of deep-friend dough with sugar . Yummy and makes it almost worth the suffering!

Oh, and you don't want to confuse porra with porro or puro (watch your rolling "r" there)… but that's a topic for a different blog!