Students Broaden Their Horizons With Study Abroad Trips
Ada Lambert | September 13, 2023
Every semester, Warren Wilson College (WWC) offers several faculty-led courses with subject-specific areas of study that include 2-3 weeks in another country at the end of the semester. This previous spring, three of these courses were offered: Poets and Dictators, Care Farming and Gender, Food and Religion.
The gender, food, and religion course’s area of study was centered around culture in Southeast Asia— specifically Singapore and Indonesia. This area is where the class traveled to at the end of the semester.
WWC sophomore Remi Luckiewicz was eager to take the class upon learning that Siti Kusujiarti, a sociology professor, would be leading the course to Indonesia. Luckiewicz had taken a previous course with her and thoroughly enjoyed the material.
“To me, I think it's a lot harder to go to Asia and that part of the world on my own, compared to going to Europe by myself,” Luckiewicz said. “Being able to go with a group, and with someone that knows the language and knows their way around was very enticing. That's what pulled me towards that specific trip.”
The group spent much of the semester learning parts of the language, connecting with Indonesian students virtually, and learning about the different cultures in various regions of the places they were planning to visit.
“[We were learning about] how gender plays a role in food, and the different kinds of food culture in Indonesia and Singapore, but primarily in Indonesia,” Luckiewicz said “Then we learned about the main religion — Islamic religion — and how that shapes their society, and their day to day activities.”
While Luckiewicz felt prepared when the group was ready to embark on their trip, she learned the most from her time actually living with a host family in an Indonesian community, the last week of their trip.
“I got along very well with my host family,” Luckiewicz said. “It was super nice because they would try to teach us new words and my host dad spoke Japanese and not Indonesian, so he would always try to teach us Japanese too. I had a lot of great times with them. We would have dance parties on the patio which was so wholesome.”
One of the highlights of going abroad for Luckiewicz was creating bonds with her classmates from WWC, and being able to take in all the new experiences with great people around.
“I made great friends on my trip — like, people I wasn’t friends with last year [even though] we had class together,” Luckiewicz said. “We talked sometimes because we were in class, but then we left [for Indonesia] and now I still talk to them. There’s people who go to school with you and you might not even know how great they are, and then you realize they're awesome and they were right there the entire time.”
At the same time on another continent, the Poets and Dictators class was exploring Berlin, Germany. The course was structured around German history and dove deep into subjects like art, philosophy, writing, music, and other cultural aspects of Berlin. Callum Dooley, a junior, was initially attracted to the course for its focus on art and history.
“I was really interested in German history beforehand, and got really into it in high school,” Dooley said. “Not just German history, but the history around that period and the philosophy, because I got really into Marx for a while. I also love so many artists from the Brücke Museum with all the woodcuts. I’d seen a lot of that stuff before, and got really interested in high school in a fun printmaking class.”
Most days of the trip were spent going to art museums, eating new foods, and visiting important landmarks. There were also many opportunities to go off and explore in groups, allowing students to have a level of freedom that made the experience all the more enjoyable.
“There was only four hours of [itinerary] a day,” Dooley said. “Getting so much time off to just go and explore was so great. I feel like getting to go out and go to bars and see the nightlife— all of that was very exciting. That's what Berlin is known for.”
North of Berlin, students in the care farming course were in Amsterdam. Care farming is the idea that an agriculture-oriented environment can be healing for people, and is used as a therapeutic technique. These types of programs are widely available to many groups of people. This class worked on a farm for adults with developmental, physical, or intellectual disabilities.
Lexi Parker, a junior, came to WWC looking for a way to combine her interests in agriculture and social work. When she saw the course, she knew she had to go.
“I didn't know anything about the social farming culture in the Netherlands,” Parker said. “I didn't know it was so big over there. I slowly learned more about it and got connected with the care farming network. And so when I saw the class, there was no other option. I was going to take the class because that's my big interest.”
Parker enjoyed going to museums and exploring nightlife in Amsterdam, but her favorite experiences were spent on the farm with her classmates and the people working there.
“Everybody would break work and go have coffee or tea together and just sit and chat for like an hour,” Parker said. “During that, some other folks on the trip played music. We had a guitar there, and everybody just played music and sang songs together. It was so wholesome. We felt such a sense of togetherness in such a short time which was really cool, and it was awesome to see music doing that.”
Studying abroad can be daunting, but the students who participated in these courses felt like they were able to come home renewed and with new experiences to guide them.
WWC will be offering new courses for the upcoming spring semester. These courses can be accessed through the myWWC website, alongside price estimates, course descriptions, application deadlines and links for further information.
Students interested in participating in a faculty-led course should start looking into the process now! The deadline for applications is Oct. 6. For any additional questions, contact Rachel Kerr, assistant director of global engagement, at rkerr@warren-wilson.edu.