Day 7

And yet another day comes to a close.

Time is going too quickly, and I can't believe 7 days have already passed. I miss everyone already. But why am I getting sad?! Tomorrow, we leave for Philadelphia, and I'm so excited.

This morning was the last day of our first week of classes. We finished up our mock European Union, with a successful treaty for the North, South, East, and West. I'm glad that we could come to such a peaceful compromise.

While this conclusion seems to be quite simple, the discourse that actually went into coming to this conclusion was quite tricky. For example, there seemed to be some clashes between members in their own groups and of course with groups of others. Thankfully, I think we were able to learn from each other, actually--not only about the ideas of democracy and types of government, but also how to handle "internal" and "external" conflicts. In fact, the "world" almost came to war once! Thanks Wouder-Jan... Or "Wes". A new friend from Belgium.

The final resolution and our signatures

After lunch, in which I learned to eat like an European, we broke into investigation labs about certain different topics. There was one about education and child welfare, environmental sustainability, documentary films, radio and journalism, arts and expression, and human and civil rights.

Eating like a European

The human and civil rights group was quite interesting. Our leaders are Ilaha and Aaron, and we discussed in depth what the ideas of morality and ethics were behind the existence of human rights, as well as specific types of human rights violations that we found interesting. Among the few named were organ trafficking, color blindness, and religious and ethnic discrimination.

In our lab--Human and Civil Rights

 Afterwards came dinner. We played an international game of "football", and Molly taught me how to do a cartwheel! In exchange, I sprained my ankle. Gunes from Turkey was unfortunately injured, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Thankfully, he's better, but he still has a cast. People have been getting hurt so often. A few days ago, Anathea fell quite badly, and her face was bloody and bruised. I hope both of them get better soon.

Sleepy Sigvard

Adam from Poland and I also had a heart to heart. I'm so excited to be meeting people from all over the world who are so diverse. He loves art and music, and is so unique and kind. We learned some fun phrases in each other's languages, and discussed French politics.

Afterwards, Wouder-Jan and I listened to some music together. Mumford and Sons, Dave Matthews Band, Avett Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, Norah Jones, The Civil Wars, Bon Iver. His Apple MacBook's keys are in Dutch! Crazy stuff. Ciao.

As sort of a PS) Joe and Kat say that my British accent is getting better! I think I will only speak English with an accent for the rest of my life. It makes me sound slightly more sophisticated!

Dutch Keyboards? Blows my mind

Day 6 - An International Dinner

I woke up super late today. While the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Institute is amazing, it's incredibly difficult to smush a time of such productiveness and fun into one month. And I'm a little tired, but I'm having too much fun to care. Maybe I'll start drinking coffee.

Anyway, after a mad dash to wash myself and go to breakfast and then to the announcements, I went to class. This class was taught by Dr. Alessandra Von Burg, and is called "Citizenship and Conflict". http://blogs.bftf.org/classes/citizenship/ Essentially, today we were able to go around and discuss various methods of citizenship and the social movements within the populaces of each country, which took quite a long time. Afterward, we split into different groups and began to serve as leaders of fictional countries to practice the ideas of compromise and democracy. I'm currently the president of the country "North", which is an authoritarian regime stooped in poverty. Go figure. 


But I think the negotiations worked fairly well! Tomorrow, we'll be writing a resolution to the resolutions to see if we want to build alliances (and YES, we do, in order to expand our trade routes). Shout out to Denada from Albania, Gabriela from Bulgaria, Alvaro, and Richards! 

Lunch, I think, is always one of the more fun events during the day. Even though we're rushing to get between classes and such, we always have funny little instances that occur that brighten the whole rest of the day.

Richards is eating 5 plates of food. The American Dream has been achieved.

For example, my friend Lorik pulled out his wallet. To a ton of money. I'm not going to say how much, but it was a lot. His reasoning? "Where else would I put it?"

Lorik... Just because we are at the Benjamin Franklin Institute doesn't mean you carry around multiple Benjamin Franklins...

Molly from New York? Euros? That's my girl.

Classes resumed, and basically negotiations between countries occurred. I can finally understand why discourse in Congress seems to go nowhere sometimes. Because while I may try my best to move forward on a point, there will be obstacles. And quite honestly, some of those obstacles are unexpected. For example, there sometimes are cultural differences or personality differences in between some of the fellows that I'm noticing. Today, there were constant tiffs between some of the fellows between rival nations, and it was quite uncomfortable. I didn't realize that some of the fellows would take simple questions so personally, and as a non-confrontational person, I hated it. But in the end, I think we're almost to achieving the ideal state for the "North".

Last, but definitely not least, was the International Dinner. Some of the recipes submitted by my friends were selected to be prepared. Those that were selected prepared a course (appetizer, entree, dessert) for all of the fellows. It was delicious. In the great words of my friend Victoire, "I'm too scared to try new foods because if I fall in love with it, I will crave it for the rest of my life." And that is quite true. I will want some of these foods for the rest of my life.

And afterwards, those that didn't prepare food (namely me), helped clean up. And even cleaning up was a simple pleasure that I will not forget. We ended up singing songs from "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins" as we scrubbed away, swept, and folded chairs. And afterwards, we played basketball/soccer/football/volleyball with a bouncy ball that had lost most of its air. Some of the boys remarked that I was a great weight for weightlifting. Go figure. Again. And some of them decided to go ahead and practice. Go figure. Thrice. But all in all, it was a beautiful time of different foods and different cultures coming together for a literal celebration of diversity.

My plate in the middle of my demolishing it.

Emma, Vilde, and Antreas preparing their foods.

Day 5 - An Independence Day Celebration

Today honestly has been one of the best days of my life.

After waking up and just heading straight to classes, I learned about comparative constitutionalism by studying the United States Constitution and comparing it to other constitutions, namely the South African constitution. One thing that was really interesting was how the South African constitution had so many specific outlines for its sections, while the United States constitution had a relatively general and vague wording. I then wrote my own constitution with a group of people that became the country... Franklainia. Shout out to Cedric, Claudia, Carmen, Karla, Hemide, and Modesta!

The Constitution of Franklainia

Lunch is always entertaining. Even as an Asian-American, I'm adjusting to the constant stream of "American" food, so the adaptation process of some of my friends has been hilarious.

Austeja and her pizza

After lunch, we came back to class, and prepared for a more formal style debate. This was really interesting because I do debate for my school, and I've been fairly heavily involved in the forensics community--I've even debated at Wake Forest before. This time, I took the position of a judge, and ruled in the negative of the following resolution: the United States constitution should stand as a model for democracy in emerging democracies.

But of course, we had a few adventures during that period. For example, Francois helped me learn French. Je sui convencue. 

The actual debate!

After the debate was the exciting part. We had a fourth of July celebration! Cedric of course was his usual paparazzi self.

Paparazzi.

 A water battle ensued after Dr. Petrou brought out the water guns.

Joe from the UK

As usual, I finished up the evening with a nice jog, and came back to my room to find that Max from Georgia, Christos from Greece, and Antreas from Cyprus had started up a game of UNO with Cristina, my suitemate. Of course, I joined in. Soon, Antreas and I had formed an alliance. The photo below was taken to imitate some of the world leaders in their jolly handshakes when signing an alliance, but I'm struggling a little bit... We were such nerds! We could have called it UN(oh) rather than UNO... Ciao.

Cyprus and North Carolina make a formal alliance.

Day 4

I kicked off the day with a jog. Bad decision; I am not a morning person, let alone a morning runner. Anyway, I ran with Cedric, Tom, Cristina, Vilde from Norway, and Joe from the UK. Cristina and I ended up breaking away from the group and finding a waterfall on campus! It was scenic and fun, but morning runs make me sleepy. One thing I thought was interesting: Cedric is from France, and he tells me that nearly everyone smokes. I've seen him light up a few, and roll his own cigarettes, but he even decided to smoke one before and during (yes, I said during) his jog with us! It seems a little bit counterproductive, honestly... But it's his choice!

Today was again a long day of classes for the most part.

We finished up our last session with Mr. Zaluski, and studied the effects of technology in media and publications. For example, we examined the decreasing role of newspapers, such as the New York Times, due to the rapid spread of such technology like website publications (ie. the Huffington Post) as well as constant accessibility to the Internet for news updates.

We also discussed the use of software and hardware in our everyday lives, and how the innovation of technology has literally changed us. We also designed our own gadgets that we predicted would be invented in the future.

My group, Alvaro, Victoire from San Francisco, and Katarina from Montenegro, designed the iChip from SKAV (Sara, Katarina, Alvaro, and Victoire). Slightly unoriginal, yes, I know, but we agreed that it was inevitable that some kind of universal object that will be created, and perhaps even implanted physically into people's bodies.

We presented our product as one that could receive and give neurosignals to digital objects and could stimulate our sensations to give the brain knowledge without physical vision. For example, like if we wanted to watch the news or a movie, we could just think of one, and watch it without need to actually physically watch it--since the brain is what actually interprets what we are watching, and not the eyes.

This was the end of our documentary series. After that we went for lunch, which was one of the most entertaining times of my life. My friends all attempted to eat an "American" style lunch.

Hello there Alvaro.

Richard from Latvia... Knife and fork...

Hamburga for Cedric. Nom nom nom.

A lively discussion about American eating styles and obesity also ensued. Apparently many of them were surprised when they got off the plane and they didn't see any overweight people. Doesn't bode well for the United States' overseas image. I then went to the campus convenience store with Alvaro and Tom from Denmark, and they were so impressed to see firstly the cheaper prices for things like Ben and Jerry's, and second, the cheese in a spray bottle. Thank you Kraft.

After lunch was our second set of classes, which was "Comparative Constitutionalism". This one required a much more interactive approach than the first one; we started out describing the constitutions of all the nations that the fellows were from in the group. I hadn't realized that Luxembourg was a constitutional monarchy with a Duke, nor had I realized the socialist policies in place in Denmark. There's so much left to learn about the world.

And then we took a political and social beliefs survey and compared it to a Pew Research Poll center poll for different countries. It's interesting how so many diverse beliefs could be reflected in one room!

Last, but not least, another documentary was shown. This one was co-created by Chris Zaluski, and was about station wagons. Not my favorite subject, but it was artfully done.

Day 3

I live in Charlotte, however, I feel like I've traveled so far away from home to be here on Wake Forest's campus.

After a mad scramble to wake up this morning and go to breakfast, today was mainly a long day of classes. My class today was called "Documentary Film and Media in Society", led by Chris Zaluski. (http://blogs.bftf.org/classes/documentary-theory-practice/) The lesson was quite long--we spent almost 7 hours total in class, and we discussed a variety of topics concerning the role of the media and the role of the audience.

We watched quite a few TEDTalks (love them; they're so interesting) about the subject as well as various clips of documentaries from different genres and famous producers. (One of them is linked here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling.html).  We also talked about the role of print media like magazines and newspapers, and how evolving technology seems to have changed the role of the audience in terms of news. A prime example discussed was the idea of the Arab Spring.

A scene from "Jesus Camp"

We also talked about the idea of propaganda, which I thought was quite interesting. In fact, in my Theory of Knowledge course at school, we had discussed something quite similar--at what point was "advertising" considered "propaganda", and can "propaganda" be justified if used for an ethical cause? In any case, that ensued to a lively conversation. Cristina, my suitemate who was also in my group, talked about GonziPN as an international example, which was a propagandistic slogan created by the Nationalist Party in Malta that was parodied by the Labor Party, which was the opposing sector.

After the course, we also watched a documentary called "Ink From My Soul", which was produced and directed by one of our own mentors, Vanessa. https://www.facebook.com/InkFromMySoul It was about a program called Authoring Action set in Winston-Salem, where teens could come to write and speak about events that they struggle with or have struggled with throughout their lives. I thought it was very well pieced together, and also had a few very interesting cinematographic choices I would use if I ever put together a documentary.



Afterward, a few of my friends and I went to watch a documentary called "Tabloid". The key word to describe the main subject of the documentary: she crazy.

I've also been able to make some new friends through running. See, my cross country coach told me to run on my own and follow the workout that he gave us. Fortunately, I've met some running lovers from all over the world who have been willing to keep me company. Today, I ran with Ludwig from Germany and Tom from

Luxembourg all over Wake Forest campus--we found waterfalls, and ran on the state of the art track and whatnot. What an adventure.

Anyways, it's been a long night, and I'm getting up early tomorrow to yet another day. Good night, or should I say... Ciao?

Day 2

So day 2 is now drawing to a close.

My other suitemate Cristina from Malta arrived perhaps around 2:30 in the morning, so I'm sure she's exhausted. But now everyone is here, and I'm so incredibly excited to be spending a month together with everyone. Even though I know that I've said that before. Her Maltese accent is so beautiful too. I'm honestly very tempted to try and speak English with a slight accent because of all the different accents that are present in the program--they're all so interesting!

Today, because Sunday is often a day of worship for many religions, the BFTF crew sent us out to many different places of worship, including a mosque, a synagogue, a Protestant church, a Catholic mass, and a Greek Orthodox church. I attended the Greek Orthodox church called the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. (http://www.wsgoc.org/)

It's interesting how different branches of the same religion can be. For one, obviously, the language of the message and service. Because many of the members of the congregation were newly immigrated from areas of Greece, the deacon explained to us that the church often used a form of Byzantine Greek during its Scripture readings and hymns. Because I come from a Baptist background, I'm also used to a more lengthy message and soulful praise music. However, the message was quite short and sweet and to the point--conflict can be solved by loving your neighbors. The music was also quite not what I was used to--there was a Greek choir of a few men who sang what seemed to be traditional melodies.

The architecture of the building was not a traditional Orthodox building, but the deacon also pointed out several factors that indicated its Orthodoxy status. For instance, on the panel of the wall that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the congregation, the church's name was recognized as the Annunciation on the panel on the left of the Virgin Mary. The deacon also gave all of us a book on Orthodoxy, which I thought was a nice gesture. For me, I had never given much thought to Orthodoxy nor knew what it really was, so I'm looking forward to learning more about it.

But speaking of conflict, I thought the message was an amazing coincidence. During my breakfast, I sat with a few European fellows and we discussed European history. Andreas, the fellow from Cyprus, discussed how Cyprus was divided amongst the Turks and the Greeks, and how that often led to violence. Hana, the fellow from Bosnia and Herzegovina, talked about the discord between the Serbs, Bosniaks, and the Croats led to violence. One particular image that stuck out in my mind was when she described the "roses". She talked about how her father had actually passed away 30 minutes before she was born due to ethnic violence, and how areas in her neighborhood had been attacked with grenades and other explosives. The "roses" were areas in the sidewalks and concretes in which the grenades had exploded and left a hole. The townspeople, she said, would fill those craters with red paint--a solemn reminder of the violence that had occurred against civilians--and especially children.

We also had the traditional scavenger hunt for the fellow today. My team was called the "Funny Fellows" (puns and alliteration!), and we came in third place after only not getting one image! It was nice getting to know people in smaller groups, and everyone here seems equally excited to spend time together. I was the photographer, so, unfortunately, while I'm not in any of these photos, I think some of them came out quite well! My roommate Martina from Slovakia was also on my team, as well as Chanine from the Netherlands, Alvaro (Alvy!) from Spain, and Cedric from France.

Oh, yeah, and in conclusion: today, we also attended the Orientation and Welcome Ceremony to officially welcome us to the Institute. Dr. Petrou and the other mentors kept on reiterating how this month would be the "month of our lives", and honestly, after these first two days, I'm beginning to not doubt it.

An Introduction to the Benjamin Franklin Translatlantic Fellows Institute 2012 - Day 1

And I guess now begins a new sector of my blog! Right now I'm at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with 49 other students from all around the United States and Europe! I'm one of the 10 United States representatives to the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Institute, which is a program that endeavors to "foster relationships among youth from Europeans and American in order to advance links and awareness of shared values, encounter principles of freedom and cooperation as challenges of the global 21^st Century", as it says on its website. http://blogs.bftf.org/about/the-program/overview/

Well, the relationships have begun. 

I arrived around 7:30 PM-ish on campus to meet and greet a few students who had already arrived. I'm honestly astonished at how some of the European students are still awake and fully functional at this point--I live only around an hour and a half away from campus and I was already tired. Some of them had nightmare stories about airport and airplane food and multiple connection flights. But everyone was so interesting and kind, and I spent most of the time until now getting to know a few of the people. As well as a few of the animals. Here's the golden retriever my mom dubbed the "official BFTF dog". And since I know my mom's probably going to read this, HI MOM!

My roommate, Martina from Slovakia, just got here maybe around 12:30 AM. I'm really looking forward to getting to know her, and we've already talked a little bit about her potentially studying in the United States! And since I'm also a rising senior and looking into colleges, I think the topic of universities will come up quite often. It's only been around 6 hours since I got on campus, and I've already learned key phrases in a few different languages, met perhaps 40 or so new people, and am incredibly excited for the upcoming month.

Maybe a little bit too happy. I'm cheesing away even just setting up my sleeping space. 

On another note, I am a little bit apprehensive. While I know that I will have the time of my life, it's going to be hard balancing other responsibilities and commitments while I'm here. I'll just have to do my best and see what happens!