Study Abroad Secrets

While in London I came to a few shoulda coulda woulda realizations, mostly about packing. In fact packing is the number one thing I get asked about by people wanting to study abroad and it is treacherous terrain. Some of my discoveries:

Most of the clothing I brought with me on SA would not come home again.

Everyone has a major style shift while SA maybe because it’s a new culture maybe because you’re off campus and feel the need to step up your street style game and maybe, depending on the program, it’s because you are bouncing between school and work and need to look put together. Either way you do a lot of shopping and with the exception of a massive down jacket that was cheaper state-side I’m glad I didn’t buy much clothing before going abroad I did tons of shopping there.

Contact solution is expensive, especially in a national health care country. In England you can get cheap contact solution through your doctor and you can get fairly expensive cleanser at the drugstore but when it comes to clean eye balls you don’t wanna mess around. Buying my usual brand was more than double the price so I had a visiting friend being me a years supply from Target.

You regret the trips you didn’t take not the ones you do. This one has a major caveat – don’t spend money you don’t have. Student loans being what they are I wouldn’t take more than I needed to just for a trip, with interest I’d be paying way more for the trip than I should AND I can always take it later. Also if you don’t feel comfortable visiting a country for political or safety reasons – don’t feel like you have to. There is no rule that during SA you need to jump out of your comfort zone and embrace danger (although it sort of feels like there is). Those tidbits aside, I remember being asked to go to Morocco and not going because of cost and in the end I had the money or maybe could have skipped a few Primark trips. Once you’re on SA the options become a bit overwhelming and I wished I had actually written down the top 10 places near my SA destination that I wanted to go, before I was actually packing.

Study Abroad: The First Weekend

The first weekend has so much opportunity it is hard to imagine doing anything other than making memories. The problem is you’re jet-lagged and unfamiliar with your terrain.

I remember well the hazy Friday morning I woke up, looked at the clock, and croaked to my roommate “the train leaves in 3 minutes.” We didn’t make that train (apparently we could have just hopped the next one). We were exhausted, overwhelmed, and under-informed.

The first weekend is the perfect time to nest. Find some free advertisements around town and hang them as posters in your room. Spend a little money on bedding, those dorm beds are rocks, and get a few cleaning supplies (especially laundry & dish detergent). While doing these hum-drum chores, poke around your neighborhood and your school’s neighborhood to find the best commute, a good lunch place, a place with decent coffee – all the things you will need. It’s also not a bad idea to find things like Starbucks, Friday’s, McDonalds, and the local American ex-pat bar. Don’t sniff at it just yet! A few weeks in you’ll hit you’re limit of new experiences and a little trip to America will be just what you need.

Starting off with a weekend of sleeping and exploring will set you up for future weekends where you get off a plane at 7am Monday and you still make your 10am lecture. A slow weekend also gives you time to plan the weekend after. I found that for the first 2 years of college all my friends and I talked about were the weekend trips we were going to take during SA, then we began to apply, got accepted, and planning those trips seemed like nothing but stress. Of course once we had a few of our pressing questions answered (Who’s my roommate? Where’s my flat? What courses did I get? Will I get homesick? – For me it was 1. a great friend, 2. South Kensington aka royal digs 3. Great courses, a ton of work 4. not really ;)…

Unpacking and getting ready for school is great and you can also meet other SA students who crop up in your classes. My program involved a dozen schools and we were connected to a local University. Two of my favorite people came from a school hundreds of miles away.

Study Abroad: Picking your Destination

One of the hardest parts of studying abroad is deciding where you want to spend the next 5-10 months of your life. It sounds like a long time, and it can be, but my oh my does it go by fast. I don’t know anyone who regrets SA, although I know plenty of people who wish they’d gone somewhere else. What do you even consider?

1. Where is the one place you’d LOVE, absolutely go bananas, to visit and live?

So often people know the answer to this in a heartbeat and then they can’t decide where to SA because it is too overwhelming. Most people going to SA are also going somewhere they’ve never been and they may have never even left their home state before. Everyone has to leave home for a “first time”. So don’t worry about it!

Ignore your desire to see the entire world or even a specific landmark. If you SA in Cambodia you’re going to Angkor Wat once or twice, not every weekend like you do in your Indiana Jones fantasy life. Think about who you are and what a city is known for. Are you taking long walks on the Seine looking at antique books while wrapped up in 10 scarves? Are you down on Bondi beach 24/7 running, diving, and drinking? Your school probably has essays written by students who have gone before you and they can also give you the e-mail address of a previous student if you need to pick their brain. Find out the day-to-day and ignore anything you’d find in a guidebook.

2. Do you really want to live your fantasy life?

Sometimes fantasy doesn’t live up to reality and sometimes we don’t live up to our ideas of ourselves. If you’re not a pro-hiker at home why do you think you’ll become one once abroad? If you think you have the potential and you want to live a new lifestyle for SA, go for it, but don’t box yourself into pretending to be something you’re not.

3. Do you want to be with friends?

If you won’t go to the school store alone you may not want to move to Japan alone either. While I wouldn’t recommend choosing your SA destination based on what a friend wants (and it will come up, trust me), deciding that going alone is too far out of your comfort level is fine. SA is challenging and you should push yourself only so far.

Tip: Start going out alone. See a movie solo, eat lunch alone, figure out a map by yourself. This is a good way to gauge your instincts and see if you have fun alone. I always have more fun with other people and am not a big proponent of traveling alone (especially for women) but I don’t mind going out without my friends. Find a way to balance your fears and your fearless expectations for yourself.

4. Do you want to be with family?

China is really far away and a Semester at Sea often comes with no cell reception. If you get homesick easily, or if your favorite pet is nearing the end of their life, consider the fact that you may not make it home. This is a scary thought, and you don’t want to get too frantic with the hypothetical, but a healthy dose of reality is always good.

5. What do you want to do on the weekend?

If you SA in Berlin you can weekend in Paris, if you SA in Sydney you can weekend in the outback. Both are tempting, but one must win your heart. Passport stamps are an addiction and if you want to get to the end of the passport Europe or Asia are the way to go.

6. Can you speak the language?

Most people use SA to become fluent in a language they are already studying and many programs require you to take a semester of the native language before you go. If you’re not a natural omniglot this can be stressful and you need to make a realistic plan for how you will handle that stress. You can go to England and avoid it (sort of) or go to France and embrace it.

Peru: Before you go

You’re off to Peru! Now that you’ve booked that ticket and begun to navigate the maze of hotels and hostels you’ll be jetting to and from, it is time to prepare.

Vaccines. As of March 2014 all the vaccines for this trip will be $1,000-$1,500 dollars. This pretty much makes South America just as expensive as Europe so I would suggest planning South America/Asia/Africa trips around the same decade since some of these last a long time. You need Meningitis, Hep A&B, Typhoid, Yellow Fever (Amazon), and Tetanus. Rabies is optional and I skipped it. Malaria and Typhoid are both pills. You also need MMR etc. but if you’re in an American school you’ll have that already. Get these ahead of time so that you have at least two weeks for your body to adjust before you start taking Typhoid, then another two week before you leave and start taking Malaria. There’s nothing wrong with an all at once approach but it’s hard on your system and you’re about to start doing some serious traveling. You can get these shots at any Yellow Fever approved health clinic – call around this can be hard (not impossible) to find since Yellow Fever is CDC regulated.

Hotels in Peru are either one star or four star, there is really no middle ground. You’ll also move around so much you’ll rarely stay in the same place twice. In my suggested itinerary I try to simplify as much as possible. I’d suggest just using Expedia. Their app is really easy, your price is non-negotiable (for providers), if you hate your hotel it is a swipe-click to change it. You will also have your entire itinerary in your smart phone so you can pull up directions etc. very easily. Wi-Fi is readily available everywhere in tourist Peru. (Tourist Peru = Lima, Cusco, sacred valley). How much you want to rough it is up to you. If you prefer the middle of the road (think Holiday Inn) you won’t really find it so I suggest a split. Stay in a nice hotel the night before and after Machu Pichu in Aguas Calientes and stay in a nice place in the Amazon. Cusco is a good place to go cheap.

Bring medical supplies and snacks – see my upcoming packing list!

 

Top Ten Tips for Visiting Peru

10. Don’t skip your vaccines or fail to fill your stomach prescription. The water is roughhhhhhh.

9. Bring 100 SD cards. Oh the pictures you will take!

8. Use Isango! or Viator to book taxis before you go. You’ll get a better price and won’t get tricked (particularly in Lima).

7. It’s not that hot. Bring a rain jacket, fold-able sweater, and hiking boots (that’s right not sneakers!). But also sunscreen and an awesome hat. Peru has that whole scorching sun – cold mountain wind thing going on.

6. Machu Pichu must be done at dawn. Sorry.

5. Don’t miss the Amazon. So many people skip the Amazon because they expect it to be a terrifying adventure in the wild. Tambopato is very well-organized and there are a ton of reserves you can stay at. I wouldn’t show up unplanned or camp though… never camp… (We stayed at Inketerra Amazonica).

4. By the time you arrive in Peru your information will be outdated. Things are changing in Peru by the second. They are currently building an airport near Cusco that will render everything I’ve written useless (should take about five years). I did my research before this trip and spoke to people who had already been – everything is different. Prepare for the worst in amenities, food, and health care – things aren’t that bad but it varies greatly by region and it’s better to be prepared.

3. Bring a Spanish guidebook. Unlike in Spain, Spanglish won’t get you far in Peru where most people speak a blend of Spanish and Quechua. Sometimes pointing to a word in a guidebook is more effective than trying to say it – even if you speak fairly good American-University Spanish.

2. Think of prices as suggestions, you can haggle and your provider (taxi or hotel) can change the price on a whim. Just because you spent 2 soles to get to the market doesn’t mean it won’t be 14 to get back.

1. Get soles before going to Peru. The idea of wandering around with $1,000 is daunting, particularly in Peru, but getting small bills in Peru is nearly impossible and many businesses won’t take larger bills. A taxi ride may be 2 soles (50 cents) but it will cost you the full 100 soles (50 USD) if you don’t have change. Many places also take American dollars if you ask. Also use your credit card whenever possible and save those bills you do have! For the most part banks in Cusco are ATMs without humans and ATMs give out 100s which is a huge amount in a country where your average meal will cost you 7 soles.

 

This is Post 1 of my Peru:2014 Series.

Restoration v. Destruction: Keeping your Piece’s Value

We all want our DIY to be beautiful. We want the envy of friends who wonder where we get these great pieces from. We crave the word bespoke. We also want them to continue to be worth at least what we paid for them. Vintage furniture can go for a pretty penny these days and selling off some antique furniture can help us make rent – but not after it is destroyed. A lot of people think about what someone would pay for an item at the Brooklyn Flea but that’s only applicable if you’re actually going to sell it and if you manage to sell it while DIY vintage is still in style. Tomorrow a tech wave can take over and lay waste to your assets (if your assets are 100 oil cans, vintage dresses, and reno furniture). Turn on the Antique Roadshow and you’ll hear the same thing over and over “this was restored horribly and is now worth much less”.

Some steps towards maintaing the mons are easy:

1. If you remove original knobs or hinges put it in a bag and duct tape it to the back or underneath the piece. (Bonus tip: when I’m not using shelves or sconces, which I did when moving around in college, I duct tape the screws to the item since I know they fit and hold.)

2. Google first. That clock is cute, and will be even cuter in marigold, but if you see a name on the bottom or learn any info that gives you a researchable lead, don’t ignore it. I bet you’d like five grand better.

3. If you don’t know how to weld but think a dresser lends itself to an industrial match up, get the work done professionally. The fix it idea was still yours but any major work like this can really ruin a piece if it goes wonky.

4. Estate sales and auctions often have pieces with provenance but you may have to ask. Finding out that there’s a rumor Benjamin Franklin used to smoke the pipe you now own gives you something to research and adds a great story, even if you can’t prove it.

Those were the simple tips from a lifetime of loving ‘old shit’ as they call it in museum studies (not kidding I’ve had multiple professors call it this haha).

Over the years I’ve pulled a number of things out of flea market bins and antique shoppe closets and it has always ended in the same conversation ‘how can I fix it up?’

Odds are if you like vintage you probably fall into DIY by design or necessity. Pieces often come with damage or minor eyesores and that is no reason to leave something behind. But the question of how you can fix it up requires more than just imagination, first you have to ask yourself should you fix it up? I’ve seen some gorgeous reno jobs, like this piece by Decorating Insanity.

The paint job and fabric enhanced the piece and did no damage to its integrity. Replacing the fabric was the most drastic move but I have spent many hours discussing fabric pieces used in museums and even then they are often replaced because natural bleaching and fraying completely destroys the pieces. I also would never recommend someone bring something into their home that was riddled with 100 year of dust mites or lead paint.

Now, I’ve also seen some heartbreaking DIYs which is what really inspired this post. I go crazy when pieces are unnecessarily destroyed. I once loved a box decoupaged with love letters until I found out the letters were original and antique, actual pieces of history, that had been cut up and pasted so you couldn’t even read half of them. This DIY would have been just as aesthetically beautiful if the letters had been reproduced and aged. This also would have left the original letters for another DIY – maybe set in frames for a romantic party, set under glass for a one of a kind coffee table, or slipped inside the photo-holding part of a photo box (which can also be used for your own letters of love! Cute gift idea!) Word decoupage can be done with reproductions instead of originals; they sell fantastic reproductions of original printings by Shakespeare, the founding fathers, Lewis Carroll and others.
As bad as destroying those letters was to me it wasn’t nearly as bad as an overheard brag of someone who had obtained Asian antiquities (which they haughtily noted was now illegal) and they had then cut the wooden relic in half because it looked nice flanking an entry way!

Good DIY requires imagination and with enough of it destruction of a piece is never necessary, DIY is the chance to pass down a piece of yourself to future generations, don’t screw it up! Just kidding.