Pajareo sin fronteras

“Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred.” -Proverbs 15:17 It's weird to think that, just a week ago, I was sitting in Hanoi listening to the hum of motorbike engines and the chatter of street vendors. Right now I'm in a house hidden in a maze of alleyways in the medina of Rabat, literally half a world away. And boy, does it feel like it. Before I start describing that, however, I have more to write about Vietnam. The second half of our stay in Vietnam was in Hanoi, the capital and second-largest city (after Saigon). The differences between the north and the south, or at least Hanoi and Can Tho, our previous home, are immediately apparent. Can Tho gave me the feeling of constant growth and development, like it was a city that had just sprung up out of nowhere. In Hanoi, one can tell immediately that it's an immensely old city, with centuries upon centuries of history. Hanoi was made the capital of the Vietnamese Empire in 1...

“The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.” -Rumi One of the prevailing themes of this semester's program has been issues of water use and water scarcity. I'm in Morocco right now, just a mountain range away from the Sahara Desert, so water scarcity is a huge issue. In Vietnam, however, things are a different story. Judging by the torrential downpours we experienced almost every day, I don't think scarcity of water is a huge issue, nor will it be in the foreseeable future. A bigger issue, then, are dams. The Himalayas are just across the border, so Vietnam is blessed with many fast-flowing rivers heading towards the ocean, giving it some of the most fertile rice paddies in the world and allowing it to support a very, very dense population. The same raging water also gives it a huge potential for hydropower production. The two most important rivers in the country are the Mekong River in the south and the Red...

"I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains." -Anne Frank With the globetrotting nature of this semester's study abroad program, it's often difficult to reconcile our identity as both students and tourists. Yes, we're studying in the country, and yes, most of our day is spend in class or going to lectures. But at the same time, we've never really been in one place long enough to feel like we're really living there; it's always felt more like constant travel. It feels like I'm wearing two different hats, especially in a country like Vietnam where I'm very unfamiliar with the location or the language.  This particular day, however, we got to fully enjoy our tourist role, because SIT decided to send us on a day-long tour of Ha Long Bay , a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most beautiful places in Vietnam (and probably the world). It's a bay in northern Vietnam dotted with literally thousands ...