Month: February 2018

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My 1+4 Story: Evan

by Evan, Tufts 1+4 Participant

The beginning of college can be a stressful time for many people. After months of anticipation, you are abruptly thrown into a new environment and expected to make friends, some of whom will supposedly last you your whole life. This period of stress can last a week for some, and months for others. In my high school grade, there was one other girl going to Tufts, which was a social luxury that not all Tufts students have, however, I did not know her very well and figured that I would be mostly on my own making new friends. This was before I was accepted into the 1+4 program.

One of the largely unpraised beauties of 1+4 is the social network that you have when you return to campus. In addition to the four fellows in country with me, I had eight others who shared the experience with me virtually from their respective locations, as well as 13 more from the year before me who would be sophomores when I arrived on campus. While many of my peers scrambled around to find social groups in the first weeks, I knew that I would always have my friends from 1+4 to fall back on if I had any problems. They had all gone through the same crazy experiences that I had and would be more than happy to take time out of their days to spend with me. While many students enter college knowing people on their sports teams or through various mutual friends, I had four intimate friends who had lived and worked with me for nine months, who knew me better than many friends from home did.

This is not to say that I avoided making new friends because I already had a small network at my fingertips. Instead, I felt more confident taking my time finding new friends, thus I was not pressured to latch onto the first group of people that I met. Tufts has so many different kinds of people, and it takes time to find people that you can feel completely comfortable around. Being a 1+4 alumnus allowed me to take the first few weeks as a time of exploration and wait until I found the right group, knowing that I already had a tight group in which to confide when I needed it.

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A Week Out of Home-Sweet-Home

By Rujen, Tufts 1+4 Participant
After spending two and a half months in Florianopolis, I finally got the opportunity to leave my state, Santa Catarina. Our next training seminar was scheduled in Morretes, a historic city in the state of Parana. This was the first time I got the chance to spend some time out of my host family’s house. I was really excited for it, partly due to the fact that I could meet all my friends and mostly because I was leaving everything behind for a week. 
 
We left Florianopolis at around 8am that day. After a long six-hour bus ride, we arrived at Curitiba, the capital of Parana. At Curitiba, we explored the famous Jardim Botânico and played some fun games inside its premises. We spent the night there in Curitiba and were ready for our visit to Morretes. Even though the bus ride to Morretes from Curitiba was only an hour, we took a four-hour train to enjoy the amazing landscapes, rich animal and vegetation biodiversity, canyons, gorges and waterfalls of the Serra do Mar. I felt that I was in the ‘real’ Brazil then. 

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Ducha Gratis

By Henry, Tufts 1+4 Participant

Every day at 1, we go home for a 2 hour lunch break. Yesterday was my laundry day and as I walked the block back from the lavandería with my bag of clean clothes I noticed it was sprinkling. I wasn’t too worried. They don’t have real rain here, I thought to myself. All of the rain I’d experienced in Cuenca had amounted to no more than a drizzle. My host mom had even told me that it rained durísimo during the parade, which I had comfortably endured without a rain jacket. I wasn’t worried.

When I got back to the house I threw my bag of clothes on the floor and decided I had time to watch one YouTube video before leaving for work. About halfway through the video, however, Neil deGrasse Tyson was interrupted by a deafening crack of thunder. I pulled my earbuds out of my ears and immediately noticed that the drizzle from earlier was now roaring against the sides of our house. That’s odd, I thought as I popped my earbuds back in and finished the video. Then I threw on my rain jacket, switched my suede for my tennis shoes and made my way to the front door.

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Volcanoes

by Sophie, Tufts 1+4 Participant

     When I saw the sweat drop off my face and streak my mud caked ankles I really thought I am never doing this again. Never again am I going to let someone convince me that hiking 5 hours up a mountain will be fun. I get winded carrying my school books to a third floor math class, so why did I think I would be capable of hauling a 50 pound backpack to the top of a volcano. 
        By the time we reached the top and fell onto our bags, I hardly cared about the volcano sitting behind me. All I could think about was how, on top of everything, there was no shower, and no bed. The only things waiting for me were a too–small tent and a very early hike back down. All I could think was that I never wanted to do this again.
        But then we started walking up the final slope to the rim of the volcano. All at once, the forest was gone and my entire view was consumed by reddish rocks. I was in a movie or on Mars or in a dream, and my brain was so preoccupied with consuming it that, for a moment, the aches were forgotten.
        The rim sloped like a tilted soup bowl, that is, if soup bowls dropped off in a way that instinctively made you crouch and grab the ground with your hands even though you’re still several feet from the edge. Between puffs of sulfur, glowing lava lit the bottom. Through a camera lens it looked like nothing more than a few orange specs, but in person it was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. We watched the sunset paint orange across the tops of the volcanoes that lined the distance. 
       That night, the tent fit about from my head to my knees, making it an incredibly unsatisfying sleep for my gelatinized muscles. But we laughed at the craziness, the drunken silliness of sober people who have had a hell of a day. 
     In the morning, we scrambled half-asleep to the top of another ridge where we were met with rooster cries echoing from all directions. The sun rose and left a clean, clean blue. Mist snaked below us in between the ridges, a river of breath flowing through the treetops. I wasn’t bitter that it was 4 am and I was awake. Actually, I was wondering how I missed this every single day. 


Now that I’m back in the comforts of my home, and all I can think about is how to get to the tops of other volcanoes. Yet again, never again has become what’s next.

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My 1+4 Story: Henry Baer-Benson

By Henry, Tufts 1+4 Participant

“I love the weather Cuenca. It’s sunny in the morning, rainy in the afternoon and cloudy in the evening. My only qualm, as a Minnesotan, is that it seldom dips below 55 degrees. Winter is my favorite season and the thought of going an entire year without touching snow is not a happy one. However, several weeks ago, I was in Quito with Stephanie and Maxito and we decided to climb one of the surrounding mountains. As we neared the summit, we came across a bluff that cast a small patch of shadow on the ground below and at its base was the largest snow bank I’ve seen all year.”

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Siblings and Host Siblings: Worlds Collide

by Rebeca, Tufts 1+4 Participant

Over the course of the nine months I spent with my host family, we got very close. My host mom, Maria, treated me like a daughter and was always open to talking about anything I was dealing with. My host sister, Irene, and I shared music with each other and went on little excursions every once in a while. We had long conversations, watched an obscene amount of vine compilations, and practiced doing make-up on my face, among other things. She is 15, just like my little brother. Towards the end of my nine months in Madrid, Mikel, another fellow in Madrid, gave me the idea of doing an exchange of sorts with our siblings and host siblings. Maria and Irene loved the idea. For the month of October Irene stayed with my family in my hometown in Alabama (Huntsville). My brother and Irene got along pretty well. Irene got to go school with my brother and visit Orlando with my family (thank goodness because Alabama is not that exciting). I went to visit her on one of the weekends she was with my family. We took her to the lake (classic Alabama activity) and had a great time catching up. The following weekend, my family and Irene came to Boston to see me and we toured the city together. Seeing her again after a few months was wonderful and so much fun. It was like my two worlds, the U.S and Madrid, had finally met. Maria told me after Irene went back to Madrid that Irene benefited so much from the change in environment and meeting new people. She seems to be more outgoing now, which is exactly what happened to me after living in Madrid. Irene and I now share this experience of living with each other’s families, which I think is really special. I know I always have a home in Madrid, and Irene knows she always has a home here in the U.S.