Conway Symphony Orchestra to present puppet-theater production (in partnership with UCA Schedler Honors College and the El Zocalo Immigrant Resource Center). Read more.
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Sleepless in Shanghai (And Other Chinese Cities): My Summer of Study and Travel on the Other Side of the Globe by Audrey Bauman
HOUSTON, TX—As I board a plane bound for Tokyo, where I’ll catch another one to China, I can feel my stomach slowly disintegrating. I haven’t even left the states yet, and I’m already in an unfamiliar situation. Rather than splitting passengers into numbered boarding groups, the Japanese airline is boarding first class, then business class, and then economy class all in one huge crowd behind the gate. I’m surrounded by foreign voices, and all too conscious that this is the farthest I’ll have ever traveled (to Shanghai, for a summer program), the longest I’ll ever have been abroad (almost two months, taken all together), and the first time I’ll have traveled by myself. I swallow, I sweat…and then I board.
My Honors-funded summer journey took me from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing and Guangzhou—and then back to Hong Kong—all over the course of eight weeks. The longest time spent in any one place was the five weeks in Shanghai, where I attended East China Normal University through a UCA summer program and studied Chinese for four hours every weekday morning. After spending two nights in Hong Kong with my grandmother, flying to Shanghai on a Sunday, and settling in for one whole evening, I joined the rest of my UCA program-mates on Monday morning for the most sobering language placement test of my Chinese-learning history. (Note: Jet lag stemming from a thirteen hour time difference does not a good testing mentality make.) After the test, we got to choose between a harder class and an easier one, because for all the other ECNU international students, this was the tail end of their semester abroad. Our time there was merely a blip.
Once we picked a class, the Chinese-learning head honcho, Maggie He, took us straight to our classrooms. And we began.
To say I felt stupid, and scared, and way out of my depth would be an understatement. With six years of Chinese study (four in high school, two in college), I thought I would be okay. Oh, past Audrey. How foolish you were. After an hour and a half of sitting in a classroom full of nodding heads while the teacher talked so fast and used so many new words I understood practically nothing, I had to meet with the teacher to touch base. She said something, and I stared at her. She paused, and then said in English, “If it’s too hard, you can move to another class.”
For most of that first week, I thought about giving up—who was I to think I could do well in a city where every place I passed was an unfamiliar one, as was almost every word I heard? But I realized I would hate myself even more if I did give up, so I stayed. I fell into a weekday morning routine of MW Speaking, TTH Reading and Writing, and Listening on Fridays—rinse and repeat for five weeks. I found out my classmates were international students from all over, and friendly ones to boot. I was smacked in the face by the sheer amount of new characters and sounds and smells. I also had the novelty of free afternoons where I could explore the city.
Believe it or not, in Shanghai everything is in Chinese. (Shocking!) I had to order food in Chinese, decipher instructions in Chinese, and tell the hotel restaurant ladies my room number in Chinese. The greatest consolation was that my UCA program-mates were as lost as I was. The seven of us figured out how ECNU’s cafeteria worked together, rode the subway together, and even went to Hangzhou together on a weekend trip we organized ourselves. We waffled over where to eat dinner every night, and often that place turned out to be KFC. (Before you scoff—the KFC menu in China was both tastier and cheaper than in the U.S., so it was well worth it. Can you get KFC squid in ‘Merica? Didn’t think so.) We fumbled our way through Shanghai together, ferreting out the best places to walk around (People’s Square) and the best places not to study (the too-quiet library and the nearby park, where a bird pooped on my head). We ate street food together and hung out our clothes to dry. There were mix-ups with train tickets, and delicious soy sauce chicken was eaten. My Chinese improved tremendously, both through the classes and through sheer exposure. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences in the world when my program at ECNU finished and I could understand almost everything my teacher said. Part of why I came was for my Chinese minor credit, but I began to regret my stay in Shanghai was so short. “What if I came back for a semester?” I wondered, and tabled the idea for later.
Of course, Shanghai wasn’t the whole trip. There was also seeing my grandmother again for the first time in seven years and the Hong Kong visit after Shanghai, where I experienced a world of crazy expensive stores and crazy delicious food. There was Beijing, where everything was just huge. Huge! No matter how many pictures you see of the Great Wall, there’s nothing like the moment when your tour bus turns a corner on a mountain road and you see the wall sprawled across the slopes. There was the on-a-Chinese-guided-tour experience itself, where half the tour was spent at factories buying silk and Chinese traditional medicine—or at restaurants. There was Guangzhou, where I saw my uncle, aunt, cousin, and the family home built by one of my great-great-grandfathers. There was going through immigration so many freaking times the process became boring, even though the first time I encountered the immigration line in Hong Kong I nearly cried because I was so scared. There was so much in China, and by the end I had nearly forgotten what America felt like.
I don’t want to oversell my experience. It was often crowded, it was always scorching hot, there were numerous mishaps, and most of the time I felt like the stupidest person on earth. But I also experienced living in a city for the first time ever, saw the historical sites of one of the oldest lasting civilizations in the world, made new friends, saw old family, and learned a lot of Chinese. I realized how enormous the world is and how the piece of it I occupy is tiny in comparison. I gained confidence in my ability to solve problems by myself, without my parents there to figure it out for me. I gained confidence in my ability to adapt.
Also, the food wasn’t half-bad.
All of this—a full, crazy two months six thousand miles away—because of UCA Honors and the TAG the college provided. I remember filling out that TAG application and not knowing what to expect, what kind of memories I would return with. After the fact, I can say definitively that they were lifelong ones. And I can’t thank Honors enough.
Norbert O. Schedler Honors College Receives $500,000 Pledge
University of Central Arkansas alumni and philanthropists Rush & Linda Harding have pledged $500,000 to benefit the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College.
Rush ’76 and Linda Harding ’82 have a long history of support and service to the institution.
In 2002, the Hardings established the Holloway-Hicks Scholarship to benefit African-American students. In 2004, they gave more than $1.4 million to UCA, which was the single largest gift in university history at that time. Those funds were used to support student scholarships and to construct Harding Centennial Plaza, a signature landmark on the campus.
“Nothing has impacted our lives and the lives of our family as much as UCA,” said Rush. “Linda and I are so pleased to make this gift, and we look forward to supporting our alma mater in a meaningful way for years to come.” Read more here.
Halloween Tree (a project directed by Adam Frank)
Log Cabin: The Conway Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration with the University of Central Arkansas Schedler Honors College and El Zócalo Immigrant Resource Center, will present a puppet theatre adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree.”
Directed by Honors College faculty Adam Frank and with a live orchestra ensemble led by Israel Getzov, “The Halloween Tree” uses shadow puppetry and 3-D puppets to tell the story of three children trying to save their friend on Halloween night.
As the children chase Pip through time to ancient Egypt, Stonehenge, Notre Dame and Mexico, they learn about the ways we understand the borderland between life and death throughout history. The performance includes original compositions by Paul Dickinson (UCA), Karen Griebling (Hendrix College), Michael Pagan and Cory Winters. Read more here.
A Look into a Spanish Doctor’s Life: Medicine, Tapas, and Siestas by Sawyer Hickey
I left the Houston airport on a Wednesday with two friends, Nicole and Pristine, headed for Madrid. After one connection, a 3-hour layover turned to 7 due to “a sensor malfunction,” and a 10-hour plane ride, we were finally in Madrid to experience not only the public healthcare system in Spain, but also the Spanish lifestyle. That night we went to Madrid, ate the traditional Paella, and absorbed every snitbit of Spanish culture we could absorb. After riding the subway back to the hotel, my friends and I prepared ourselves to go to our city where we would be shadowing, Talavera de la Reina. After an hour and a half bus ride we finally made it, we met our site coordinators, David and Sabella, and went up to our rooms to conk out for a few hours.
The next day we started in the hospital and my first rotation was cardiology. I was able to watch several procedures including an esophageal sonogram and an electric shock therapy in order to fix an irregular heartbeat problem. While working in the cardiology department I realized how different the public system in Spain is from the private system in the U.S. While shadowing my internal medicine doctor the second week of my internship, I realized doctors in Spain spend much more time with their patients and have a lower patients-to-doctor ratio than the U.S. On a normal day one doctor had 8-10 patients while in the U.S. a doctor doing rounds would have upwards of 20. Although both of these systems worked, I realized that many of the patients in Spain had much more time with their doctors and had a more personal relationship. I believe this personal relationship was vital in the Spanish community in order to establish the trust between doctors and patients, while in the U.S. it is not as vital. During my third week at the hospital I shadowed orthopedic surgery and saw several knee replacements, carpal tunnel repair surgeries, and even a hand realignment surgery. One thing I found interesting is that the hospital in Talavera had very limited resources and didn’t have simple equipment or as new of equipment as hospitals in America.
While in Spain, we also went to Salamanca, Toledo, and Las Lagunas de Ruidera. In Salamanca, I was able to experience one of the oldest cathedrals in Spain, being over 700 years old and having experienced damage from a major earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, over 200 miles away. Huge cracks in the walls exemplified the age of the building and the damage from the earthquake. After leaving the cathedrals we went to the University of Salamanca, one of the most prestigious universities in Spain and one of the oldest in the world. Walking through the university with classrooms dating back to 1600 gave a sense of knowledge and learning about what happened while students sat in the scorching heat listening to professors. The trayed ceilings gave a sense of the Muslim culture that was in Spain before they were pushed off the peninsula.
After this first excursion Nicole, Pristine, and I started to become good friends with two of the other people in our group Leah, from Florida, and Christian, from California. We all began to hang out outside of our hospital and began to explore Talavera. We got several weird looks with Leah and I being extremely white and Pristine, Nicole, and Christian having darker skin tones, but I think every person in Talavera knew we were “los estudiantes Americanos,” the American students. Although I expected for some people to be very rude to us, since a lot of Spaniards do not like Americans, it turned out that most everyone accepted us and even taught us all about their culture through tapas, siestas, and staying at the dinner table for hours talking about random nonsense.
My favorite memory is when our group went to the salsa/bachata “discoteca.” Whenever we walked in everyone looked at us like we were a group of crazy Americans that didn’t know what they had gotten themselves into. Although I am terrible at dancing, Pristine and Christian, both coming from Latino heritage, taught me and the other people in my group how to bachata and salsa. At the end of the night all of the older Spanish people in the discoteca were coming over to dance with us, especially Pristine and Christian, since they were the best dancers in our group. Then, they all laughed as we danced together, looked dumb, and sang to the music.
Another great moment is when we all went to Madrid and had to find an AirBnb, all while having no data, connecting to public Wi-Fi, and then scrambling, laughing, and running down subway tunnels with our loaded backpacks in order to catch our trains. Although there were many good times in Talavera there were a couple of tense ones as well; such as the time I got mad at Nicole and Pristine for getting off the bus at the wrong stop and then me feeling bad for yelling at them. After our shadowing experience was over we all sat quietly on the train to Madrid, reminiscing on the good times we had over the last three weeks. The next morning we sat in the airport terminal, I really thought about turning around and staying another week, and then got on the plane, unready to come back to the U.S. Throughout this experience the culture of Spain and their healthcare system helped me to look inward on myself, who I want to be, as well as help to change things about my own life.
Italy: More Than Just the Boot by Whitney Meyer
Every time you visit a new city it leaves an impression, sometimes the impression is immediate and obvious while other times ambiguous. However, before we get to the story we first have to back track to November of 2015, the moment that set the story in motion. I was applying for a TAG grant from the Norbert O. Schedler’s Honors College to be a study abroad student and temporary resident of Florence, Italy. Ever since I was little I’d heard stories of Europe and it’s beauty from my dad, a native of Germany, but they were just thirty-year-old stories. So I bit the bullet and applied for a grant to travel to the continent of my heritage.
Now fast forward to June 2016. With a suitcase 1 pound under the weight limit and a backpack full of travel necessities, chiefly my passport and snacks, I was boarding my 1st international flight. After about a day and half of travel I was finally across the pond! Within the first few days of living in Florence I quickly surmised that the stories I grew up on were true, but at the same time it wasn’t the same Europe my father had left behind more than thirty years ago. I found myself in a historical city bustling with new construction, renovation, world-renowned museums, and top of the line stores. Florence was a melting pot of old world art and history with touches of modern advancement inside the cobble lined streets.
Our weekdays leisurely consisted of “class” in the morning, lunch at Panini Toscani, and the afternoon spent wandering the city. Eventually we’d find our way to a supermarket to purchase fresh produce and vegetables for dinner. But the real thrill and adventure of being in Italy happened on the weekends. The most memorable and striking adventure happened my first weekend in Italy.
On our first Friday in Italy our gaggle of 25 students and 3 professors marched into the Santa Maria Novella train terminal. Initially I thought I had stepped backed into the international airport we landed in at Amsterdam. Italians, or at least people who understood the layout of the train station and departure board, were zipping past as Brooke (my roommate and confidante during the trip) and I made sure our backpacks weren’t pick pocketed. Police were canvasing all over the station with the recent attacks of Belgium and France still fresh on everyone’s mind. In addition to the Polizia, there were the stubble-chinned men, who we nicknamed “our best friends”, of the Italian army carrying semi-automatic rifles with triggers at the ready. While taking in all these cultural differences I felt our herd begin moving. I quickly grabbed my pack and sprinted to the platform as the buzzer was ringing for the train doors to shut.
Three and a half hours and one connecting train later we were pulling into the Dolomites, or the Italian Alps as some call them. It was one of those picturesque scenes out of a movie, ya know the one where everyone crowds the windows to see the view? That was us, 25 American students with noses to the glass oohing and aweing at the snow capped peaks as we pulled into the station in the city of Bolzano. However, stepping off the train I was questioning if I was still in Italy or if we’d magically crossed into Austria or Germany. We had left the colors and style of Tuscany behind and were greeted by alpine culture, crisp mountain air, and the sound of German.
You might be asking well that doesn’t seem too adventurous, and you could be right depending on your definition of adventure. But the true “adventurous” part of the trip came the next day as we took buses and cable cars up into the Dolomites. Most of us followed the professors’ lead and went on a two-hour (straight out of the sound of music) hike. Yet somewhere between the two cable cars and bus stop back into town Brooke (my roommate/confidante), Alex (Brooke’s boyfriend), and myself lost the herd. Okay so maybe it wasn’t magic that we lost the herd, but a stop at a restroom seemed appropriate before a 30-45 minute ride back into town. Imagine our shock when we walked down from the lodge toward the bus stop to see no one from our group. Our first thought was, “oh we must have beat them here.” We quickly realized as we all got texts from our roommates asking if we made the bus that this was most definitely not the scenario which was occurring.
So there we stood, and while none of us would admit it to the other we all had some small twinge of fear down in our gut. We tried to read the bus schedule that was conveniently written in German, a language we had not prepared to decipher and Google Translate offered little help. From guestimation it seemed the next bus would arrive in about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes came and went, and even though several buses drove past none of them were bound for Bolzano. So there we sat, each with 3.50 euro ready for fare evaluating our options. We knew the buses stopped running around 7:00 p.m. so we hatched a plan: catch any bus that was heading down hill regardless of destination. Around 6:30 a bus was coming down the hill. The driver pulled over and opened his doors, and in our best Italian we asked, “Bolzano autostazione?” We were answered with a firm “Bozen.” Bozen? What the heck was Bozen? Given our circumstance, arguing was not in our favor so we paid our fair and walked to the back of the bus praying that we had made a halfway intelligent decision.
As the bus rolled down the hill we began seeing some of the same towns we had passed that morning. A definite sign of comfort, but we still had no idea if we’d picked the right bus. The bus started rolling into what looked like the edges of Bolzano, but our stroke of luck was confirmed when we saw out the window our hostel! I jumped up and rang for a stop, I’m sure the driver was surprised that this crazy American knew where she was going. After confirming our arrival with the professors, Alex, Brooke, and I went out for celebratory kebabs.
While this is one of many adventures I had in Italy, it seems the most telling. Similar to the class environment I’ve experienced at the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College: I was presented with a problem or issue, I had tools and resources to attack the problem, and ultimately I came to a solution or deeper understanding. Forcing myself outside of what was comfortable allowed me to become a more culturally diverse global citizen. Italia taught me many things like how San Giovanni Battista day is the Florentine Memorial day, or that the Renaissance was shaped by the ninja turtles: Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo. Yet the most important thing I learned from Italia was to enjoy the journey. It may be long or short, difficult or easy, but it usually only happens once so enjoy the ride.
Leia Isanhart (Honors Class of 2000) Helps Kenya’s Forgotten Children
Doug Isanhart, Executive in Residence and Lecturer of Management in the College of Business, recently shared an extraordinary story about his daughter Leia’s effort to establish health care and social services in the poorest parts of Nairobi, Kenya. As senior technical advisor of health for Catholic Relief Services, Leia Isanhart, in collaboration with Special Olympics and Adventist Center for Care and Support, was instrumental in developing a pilot program to care for children with intellectual and physical disabilities and provide positive parenting training to families. These forgotten children, previously locked away, receive the physical therapy and social interaction necessary to achieve their full human potential. Read more about Leia’s efforts here.
Democrats, Delegates, and Cheesesteaks by Jesse Hufstedler
Sweat dribbled down my neck as my suitcase fell over and I stopped to check Google maps for the third time in five minutes. How was I supposed to know how to get to the University if the dot couldn’t keep up with me? Picking the forty pound green monstrosity that I called luggage up off the ground, I turned to Badria, a fellow Arkansan whom I had met on the train from the airport, and apologized for the wild goose chase Google maps and Apple seemed to be conspiring to take us on. “No worries” she said, for what would be the first in probably over a hundred attempts to reassure me over the coming two weeks.
After the standard orientation type meetings that take place at the beginning of all such events, we were released to find our rooms and meet our roommates. Morgan Hall, a brand new modern dorm at Temple University in northern Philadelphia, mirrored Farris Hall at UCA remarkably well save two things: it was ten stories tall and had functioning stove tops in every suite.
My suitemates and I, two reminiscent of Leonard and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory and one the near picture of an all-American hunk, laid out our opinions on Brexit, Bernie Sanders’ populism, campaign finance, and a host of other issues all before our suitcases had been unpacked. We broke for dinner, me meeting back up with Badria and her suitemates, my suitemates going and doing their own thing (a schedule which we would repeat for most of the next week).
As lectures started on Monday the days of the week seemed to blur together. We heard from speakers as notable as the CEO of the DNCC (Democratic National Convention Committee) Leah Daughtry and former Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell. Mornings were reserved for speakers and then, in the afternoon, we broke into small groups for discussion — an academic structure very similar to that present in Honors at UCA. I soon fell into the familiar rhythm of work, play, sleep deprivation, and repeat. It was during this week that I visited such sites as the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Philadelphia’s famous South Street diner Ishkabibble’s known for its bag-staining cheesesteaks, and the National Constitution Center (where I got to pretend to be a Supreme Court justice and take a selfie with a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin).
Then, with my routine and friends firmly established, my world was realigned. The week of the convention arrived and it was like Philadelphia came alive (in a sort of manic I-made-my-coffee-with-Redbull kind of way). The streets of Center and Old cities, neighborhoods in Philadelphia where most of the touristy and cultural attractions are, became clogged with protesters, delegates, spectators, and journalists alike. Apart from the signs carried by protestors (my favorite of which said “You’ve Got to Fight for your Right to Third Party”) it was nearly impossible to distinguish who was who.
I soon learned the value of the “credentials” which everyone was carrying when I attended my training session for the Access Control team. Access Control was an arm of the DNCC responsible for organization within the Wells Fargo Center itself. My job with Access Control was to stand in the vomitoriums (a word of Roman descent which refers to the hallways which connect the outer concourses of a stadium to the inside of the bowl), and insure that only those with proper credentials were allowed to sit in my area — this is how I got access to the color coded schematic of what credentials were given to who.
As a result, I was to identify people on the street based on the color of their credentials (I got two interviews with delegates on the subway because I knew what credential colors to look for when choosing my seat next to people).
In descending order of clearance (meaning the places in the stadium where certain people were allowed to be) were Delegates (red), Honored Guests (orange), Special Guests (teal), and Green (DNCC volunteers and the press, who had special sections reserved for them). The problem with this system was that more credentials were given out at the Honored and Special Guest levels than there were seats to accommodate them. Therefore, I spent most of my time fighting back what, during the speaking times of well-known individuals, could be referred to as an angry mob trying to get into the bowl to see and hear. Luckily, the bans on people standing in vomitoriums were lifted each night before the keynote speaker too the stage so I was able to hear the speeches of former President Clinton, President Obama, and Secretary Hillary Clinton even if I did miss some of those that I would have enjoyed hearing (I missed Joe Biden saying “mellarky!”).
One night I happened to be stationed in a vomitorium through which the press accessed one of their stands. The aforementioned Badria, whose fieldwork assignment was with CNN, came rushing through the door to the press stairway and said “Jesse! Elizabeth Warren is about to come right through here!” For those that might not know, Elizabeth Warren is a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts well known for her harsh criticism of Wall Street banking practices. As such, she is a progressive heroine and was a featured speaker on the first night of the Convention (not to mention her role as one of my favorite politicians, like, ever). In a momentary lapse of decorum, I let out a muffled squeak which got me yelled at by a couple of camera-men that I had banished from the vomitorium only minutes earlier for clogging the stairways. Badria was the designated person sent by CNN to ensure that Elizabeth Warren was not swarmed by fans on her way up and that I would actually let her up the stairs (big name people did not always have their credentials on them which led to a considerable amount of tension, one of my Access Control friends actually refused to let Leon Panetta, the former Director of the CIA, into a room he was over because he had not bothered to pick up his credential). The minutes ticked by, Badria and I standing breathlessly outside the vomitorium trying to contain our excitement, when she got a text from her boss saying that Warren was not coming. A complete fluke, it happened that one of our friends sent us a text at nearly the exact moment stating “Elizabeth Warren sighted running on the suite level!” Apparently something had come up that trumped an interview with CNN.
The Convention itself was well choreographed machine designed to give the party the opportunity to advertise their nominee, build party unity, and formally nominate their selection for President (though this last role is really a vestige of a time when primaries did not foretell who the nominee would be). A result of this, it seems that there is a certain amount of selective coverage that happens to the detriment of a conveyance of what actually goes on at the Convention. One of these such instances of seemingly selective coverage came to me upon my return home from Philadelphia.
I have discussed with several people the moment when Hillary Clinton formally accepted the Democratic nomination for President. In the hall Sanders supporters, who had been relatively quiet since Monday, suddenly sprang into action. Running around the concourses and breaking past the Access Control staff when possible to get into the bowl, they chanted slogans such as “Never Clinton!” and “Hill No!” This, apparently, did not make it into the coverage of the acceptance speech on any of the major networks. It begs the question whether the networks were giving some deference to the desire of the party to show itself as unified behind Clinton at that all important moment. Those causing a scene were the fringe element, but even still they were individuals that had somehow gained credentials, meaning that they had done something right.
My time at the DNC was not the solitary, gallivanting around Philadelphia time that I envisioned myself having, meeting important members of the press and delegates. It was hot, hard, stressful, and often crowded affair. It was one of the best weeks of my life. I made connections with people of my own age from all across the country with similar beliefs, hopes, and dreams as my own. As a Democrat from Arkansas that is not always easy to do. I am grateful that the opportunity to attend this event was afforded to me at this point in my academic career and not during my freshman, or even sophomore, years. The unwieldy scheduling, late nights, uncertain outcomes, and angry people that I encountered during this journey would not have been well-received by me at any previous time in my life (I struggled with them as it was). It is for this reason that I have garnered a new respect for the Honors College requirement that people receiving TAG/URGE moneys be at least sophomores. The mere life experience and age that I had going into this experience set me apart from some of the younger students that I met who had a much harder time coping with the ever shifting landscape that was our time at the DNC.
Farris Honors Hall Receives A New Look
The Honors residence hall, Farris, received a facelift this summer including stained concrete floors and brand new furnishings. The Honors Council, the elected student representatives of the honors student body, was consulted in making decisions regarding the type of furnishings they thought would be most used as well as the color scheme. The end results are spectacular!
