A Japanese businessman entering through the main gate of Zojoji Temple in Tokyo.

To me, Japan has always seemed to be a place where modern and traditional life overlap. Tiny shrines are tucked neatly between high-rise buildings, and businessmen dressed neatly in suits take shortcuts through the courtyard of a temple on their way to work. Most people wear western clothes on a daily basis, but every once in a while, a woman wearing kimono will walk past. Even the language is a combination, integrating three writing systems into one fascinating, complex tool for communication. 

I went to Japan intending to learn about Japan, but what I found was so much more than that. My school was known for its international program, and I was surrounded by foreigners in my classes at school and when I returned home to the share house I stayed at. My roommates were from Singapore, Korea, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, and China, and my classmates exhibited just as much diversity, if not more.

A few of the incredible people I met, posing in front of the somewhat famous “LOVE” statue in Shinjuku.

Living in Japan was a perfect chance to explore my GLI theme of Culture and Politics. As a foreigner, and living with other foreigners from all across the globe, I got a glimpse into what Japan is like from many different perspectives. My experience as an American in Japan was not the same as many of my friends. One day, I overheard a conversation between my classmates from Iraq and Pakistan reflecting on the fear they both had had of being rejected when applying for their student visas to Japan—a fear I had never experienced. My Korean roommate was often harassed due to her ethnicity, at work and in her daily life, despite the fact that she spoke Japanese fluently and had graduated from a Japanese university.

I got the chance to learn about why this subtle (not so subtle) racism exists in Japan. With Japan’s recent history as a colonial power in Asia, Japan portrayed itself as a “liberating power” to free other asian nations from western rule (then place them under Japanese rule). However, with Japan being Asia’s first industrial success story, the idea that Japan was superior or especially exceptional took hold, and remnants of this belief are still seen today. Historical revisionism has been an issue (and not an issue unique to Japan), in which some politicians attempt to sweep the darker parts of Japanese history under the rug. For example, “comfort women” who were taken from Korea and other countries to service Japanese soldiers during the war are sometimes portrayed as “volunteers”– prostitutes who willingly came along, rather than young girls tricked and forced into leaving their homes. The infamous Unit 731 of the Japanese army that practiced experimentation on humans in Manchuria during the war is often not discussed– in fact, many of my Japanese classmates had never heard of these war crimes before.

A street vendor making okonomiyaki at a festival.

One of my main goals in Japan was to practice Japanese, and happily, I found many chances to use the language. I was able to incorporate Japanese into my life far beyond the classroom— buying okonomiyaki (a kind of savory pancake) from the lines of food stalls at a festival, chatting with my seat mates on trains and buses, and reconnecting with a few of my old friends. There are still many situations where I feel uncomfortable using Japanese, and they push me far out of my comfort zone. However, I learned to advocate for myself even when I struggled to communicate. Despite only having an intermediate command over Japanese, I was able to get a job at a climbing gym (via stumbling through a terrifying job interview in Japanese), open a Japanese bank account, and register for national health insurance. By no means were any of these smooth, natural transactions, but they are far more than I could have ever dreamed I was capable of accomplishing in a foreign language.

A cityscape near my university in central Tokyo.

Studying in abroad has helped me be more confident, as well as more open-minded. I realize that my perspective is different than the perspectives of so many other people from around the world. However, I have also found that whatever our differences, people are all more similar than not, and I am happy to say that I have friends around the globe. I loved my time abroad, and I know it has helped shape me for the better.

My name is Noelle Annonen and my Beyond the Classroom Experience was interning in Dublin, Ireland, with a content production company called Maxmedia. This dry description doesn’t do any justice to the experience that I had when I lived in Dublin. Yes, I did gain skills in writing, social media content creation, and even website development. But more than that, I learned about a surprisingly completely different culture from my own. My global theme and challenge is Inequality and Human Rights. While I lived in Ireland, I learned about a country that is still dealing with prolonged historic oppression and religious segregation and violence from the perspective of Irish people.

My experience taught me that even western cultures that I assumed could be similar to my own are actually incredibly different. Superficially, the island of Ireland is more socialistic than the United States. The people I met seemed more connected with each other and their communities than with career and individualistic goals. This difference seemed extraordinary to me, and prompted me to analyse my values and the values of my country. The experience and questions that were raised weighed heavily on my mind as I continued to learn and grow in Ireland. More importantly, I learned that the island of Ireland is divided, by religious differences and a past of violence between the two countries on it; the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The time period that best illustrates the extent of this conflict is known as the Troubles, and while it occurred in the 1970s and 80s, the unresolved issues are still at play. Within the discussions of the people I encountered, I learned about the love and pain that stems from this division in the lives of people on the island today. The interconnectedness of the culture, as I witnessed it, gives conflict and division an impact that stands the test of time.

The Troubles were ended by what was essentially a call for a cease fire. But while I lived in Dublin, I learned how the religious discrimination and oppression is still felt throughout a society that, only recently, threw off their British overlords and began creating their own country. This experience gave me a fresh drive to better understand conflicts like the one on the island of Ireland and to fight for the rights of people who are discriminated against and oppressed. My end goal is to lead in advocating for and helping create a more equal world and society.

Thanks to COVID-19, my 6 month experience was shaved down to only a 3 month experience. I am left with a strong desire to learn more about the culture and all the intricate details and impacts that the Troubles have and continue to have there. I would like to know how the Good Friday Agreement fell short and what moves are being made to amend past mistakes. More importantly, I keep asking myself, ‘When can I go back to Ireland?’

My GLI theme is public and global health. I worked with the Open Aid Alliance to achieve this theme. The Open Aid Alliance is based out of Missoula Montana and they are committed to serving the people of Missoula who suffer from substance abuse disorders and/or have STIs. COVID drastically affected my experience, instead of working in an office in Missoula we had to resort to an online environment. Unfortunately because of this I have no photos of my experience. Because of that change I worked out of my hometown of Billings Montana. With working from home I wasn’t put into a new environment in the traditional way. Instead I was introduced to different people and different ways of life by way of webinars and articles. With the various perspectives and lives I was introduced to it changed how I look at the issue of substance abuse and how it is treated as of now. Also it made me look at my own bias and background. This experience taught me not to take things for face value and that you never know what someone is going through. A lot of the webinars and articles I was introduced to challenged the American culture towards people with substance abuse disorders. To be completely honest this experience has changed my perspective not only on my theme and challenge it changed how I look at modern health care. I saw so many people not being treated correctly or not being treated at all. It also introduced me to subgroups of people I wasn’t aware of and their challenges and whether or not they are getting the help they need. With this experience being online I had to be my own boss. I pushed myself everyday to put out the best products I can. I also had to insert myself on various projects. Since I was the first person to do an online internship with the Open Aid Alliance, my drive and motivation was a big component to what made this internship so successful. Some of the questions that came out of my experience were about our current healthcare model. How do we better serve people who need it? How have I not heard of these issues earlier? I realize that this is a complicated issue but we need to make some drastic changes so people can get the help they need. One of my final questions was: How is the United States so far behind?

This experience has changed my life and I am extremely thankful for the opportunity. I would like to thank the GLI program not only for the scholarship that made this possible, but for helping me find an experience that best fit my interests. I would also like to thank Amanda Reese at Open Aid Alliance, she could’ve just cancelled my internship but instead she worked with me to find a way to make it work. And finally I would like to thank Kevin Hood at the University of Montana. He helped me figure out the details that made this internship work. I know that a lot of this internship was self motivated but with out the team of people that helped me navigate this experience it wouldn’t have been possible

If you would like to see some of the projects I did during this internship attached is a blog I created for the experience. Along with some of the projects posted on my blog I would say that the most memorable project was creating an educational tool for high school students to learn about harm reduction.

Thank you all for the expirence

-Drake Leonard

https://openaidsallianceinternship.blogspot.com/

I wasn’t sure what to expect from living in Granada, Spain. My preconceptions included beautiful beaches right outside the city, a huge palace right next to campus, and live music everywhere. I thought maybe there would be pomegranate trees everywhere, since Granada translates to pomegranate. It turns out, the beaches were farther away than I thought, and the giant palace was about two miles away from the Cartuja campus on the hill. There were no pomegranate trees, but pomegranates were printed on everything and they were sculpted in metal everywhere. Granada ended up throwing me lots of surprises and was not a place that I could have dreamed up.

It had it all. Big city, traffic, hiking, beautiful hills and night lights, a river, art shops, and the picturesque Albaicin, which is full of narrow cobblestone streets and white buildings. It had orange trees, fruit stands, statues, and protests, and an entire district full of beautiful, high-end stores. One area of town was entirely Moroccan. The blend of happenings in the city was amazing.

My GLI experience abroad took me to this beautiful place. My global theme is Public and Global Health, and as part of my experience I took a class called Antropologia de la Salud, or Anthropology of Health. This class focused on health disparities in both Spain and around the world, between different demographics of people, as well as different types of attention and medicine practices in various cultures. This gave me really good insight on how medical attention systems differ around the world and gave me the opportunity to really delve into health disparities. It also further proved just how much work the American health care system needs, given that it is completely unaffordable and unattainable for so many Americans to even receive care.

In Granada, there are a few different programs that as an exchange student you may enroll in. Two of them are taught in English, are off-campus, and are mostly Americans who want to learn Spanish. The third option is the one I chose, which was to directly enroll into the main University of Granada and take the same classes that the local Spanish students take, alongside them.

What this choice meant for me is that I had to quickly adapt to the language, accent, and slang to succeed. It was incredibly challenging, but it pushed me to listen closely, be a good student, and improve my fluency, which was my reason for choosing Spain in the first place.

I’ve studied Spanish for a long time and am a Spanish minor at UM, but part of the learning curve during this culture immersion was finding out that the dialect in southern Spain is difficult for even native Spanish speakers to understand. I picked up on a lot of differences between the central/southern American Spanish that I had studied and the Andalucian dialect, and learned from my Spanish friends that I apparently “talk like a gangster.”

I’d say that being forced to focus so heavily on my communication is a skill that translates really well into leadership. Not only was the language a focus area for me, but a lack of understanding made me use nonverbal cues a lot more and find alternative ways to express myself or ask for clarification. These are essential leadership skills, because as a leader you have to understand what is happening with your team on a deeper level than simply what is said – you have to read into what is left unsaid. It’s also important to really listen and be able to develop an effective response as a leader, which are two objectives that require more effort when becoming fluent in another language.

There were lots of culture differences between Montana and Granada. The biggest adjustment for me was probably the schedule. Spaniards stay out late every night of the week, and often they don’t even leave the house until midnight and then stay out until seven am. For several hours in the afternoon, everything is closed for siesta. Another big difference for me was social, as people here at home are much more willing to have a conversation with a stranger. In Spain, people aren’t as chatty with someone who isn’t part of their group. The culture obviously goes much deeper than these basic functional level differences, and I got the privilege of learning a lot about the history of Spain and how it has affected its people.

I took a History of Modern Spain class that focused on the last three centuries and gave me a lot of insight into the instability and politics that have shaped the country. I learned how big of an impact the recent dictatorship had on the way that present-day Spanish society functions, and especially how it affects women and education. I also learned a lot about Spanish culture from the friends I made there who are from Spain. Some things I was shocked to learn. For example, my friend Lucia explained to me that it’s actually rude to ask somebody what their job is, because the Spanish completely separate their work lives and personal lives, unlike Americans. If you do ask, it could be interpreted as you trying to find out how much money they make to take advantage of them.

Though I had to leave suddenly and early due to COVID-19, by the end of my experience I had picked up on a lot of these cultural nuances, and Granada felt like a second home to me. I was left with more questions though. Since I left so early, I didn’t get to do or see a lot of the things I had planned on. The palace I talked about earlier, the Alhambra, is a huge part of Granada’s history. I had booked tickets for about two weeks after I had to go home. I also only got to travel out of Granada three times: once for a hike, once to Cordoba, and once to Bordeaux, France. I would love to return to travel around the rest of Spain and visit the beaches, the islands, and cities like Sevilla and Barcelona.

So, I bid Granada a “see you later,” and hope that one day I get to return to revisit these unanswered questions and my pomegranate paradise. I’m so grateful that I got this opportunity to explore, learn, and better myself through GLI.

-Haylie Peacock

Fries, beer, chocolate, and waffles all quickly became staples in my Belgian diet. As well as the removal of the word ‘French’ before fries because, as I learned, there is an ongoing dispute between France and Belgium about where the fries were invented. Regardless of the dispute, the Belgian fries were delicious and you eat them with this tiny fork, which I love. A small aspect of my weekly routine that I miss.

I spent this past fall studying European peace and security studies in Brussels, Belgium. This specific program, while through my host institution, pooled the expertise of the Belgian military, NATO, the European Union, and the Global Governance Institute in discussing contemporary security challenges from a distinctly Brussels view. These courses were incredibly difficult as the professors were very distinguished practitioners in the field of security studies (a bit intimidating to say the least). The students were also primarily graded based on a midterm and a final, something I was not used to at UM. These courses were perfect for studying my GLI theme of social inequality/human rights and the balance between human rights protection and international security concerns. 

In addition to Belgium, I was able to do a fair amount of traveling, and visited 13 countries over the course of 5-ish months. However, one country caught my attention that I wanted to highlight in this post because of the impact it had on me both personally and professionally. Before I proceed, I want to write a trigger warning in this post as I will be talking about a very emotionally difficult subject: genocide. As many of you might know, Model United Nations has been a big portion of my life and something that I enjoy doing. I love stepping into the shoes of other nations and seeing international issues from their point of view. Last year, the UM Model UN team was assigned to represent the Eastern European country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the annual New York City conference. After intensely researching the country for well over a year, I decided that I had to visit this place as plane tickets were not too expensive and I had a week off of school in October to travel. 

I landed in Sarajevo and it was one of the most beautifully complex places I have ever seen. It reminded me of home in Montana, with the mountain ranges and the river flowing through town. It was my first time in a Muslim majority country, and the mosques were so intricately constructed that I could stare at them for hours. Yet, beneath all of this natural and man-made beauty, the scars of the deadliest European conflict since World War II looked fresh and raw. Holes from shrapnel puncture the walls of buildings, graffiti telling stories of the war through art were scattered across town, thousands of white and grey tombstones line the many city graveyards, and 200 ‘red roses of Sarajevo’ mark a spot where at least three people were killed by a mortar shell explosion during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992-1996. The town, which was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics, looked as if it was a city slowly coming out of a coma. 

During my time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I visited the tiny town of Srebrenica, a place synonymous with a massacre where 8,000 perished. My tour guide was a former soldier who fought for the Bosniak Muslim army during the war when he was my age, and he recounted the war from his perspective. After the tour of the Srebrenica cemetery and memorial, my guide took me to see a woman on the Serbian border who lost many male loved ones during the genocide. She made us traditional Bosnian coffee and snacks, and I was able to have a conversation with her (through my guide as an interpreter) about her life and ways she coped with losing those around her. The woman told me, “for what I have been through, and this country, things are finally okay.” Even though I could see incredible sadness in her eyes, I saw someone who was resilient in the face of unimaginable loss. Courage does not always come from someone who fights with a gun during a war or politicians who command an army, but through individuals who try to pick-up the pieces of their lives even when there may only be a few pieces left.   

My trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina was a surreal experience, one that brought me to tears at times, as well as almost to the bathroom to throw-up from the stories. It pains me that the country is still synonymous with war, chaos and destruction. Many of those close to me, at times, strongly urged me to reconsider travel there because the war stories are still etched into people’s memories. But what I found was a country teeming with beautiful landscapes and the warmest people I encountered in all of Europe. Inspired by my time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the year I spent researching the nation, I intend to pursue a law degree focused on humanitarian law, an area of study closely related to my GLI theme of social inequality and human rights. I believe my time in Bosnia and Herzegovina has given me a new, powerful perspective on how international organizations, for lack of a better word, fail to protect human rights during times of conflict. And the thing is that it is (and can) happen again. In various roles at UM, I had learned how to discuss uncomfortable issues in a professional matter, and that was a vital skill that I exercised during my excursion to Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Thank you for reading this somber part of my post. I promise Europe for me was more than learning about the dismal record that international organizations have on protecting human rights. As I adjust back, I am still processing all the ways that I am a different person and, to be honest, while I am, it is hard to exactly write in what way. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t planning my trip back to Brussels to visit my lovely, smart, free-spirited, 82 year old host mom from Germany and her, sometimes terrifying, cat named Blair. 

If I had to take-away one reflection from my time in Brussels, and Europe at large, it is to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. You won’t always have all the answers or know exactly what’s going on. You might dress differently or be forced to eat a food you hate because it is the social custom (Brussel sprouts for me). Or you might have to quickly (and discreetly) google translate the words on your menu before you order at a restaurant. I walk away from this experience with a whole new meaning of the phrase ‘c’est la vie,’ and the knowledge that change is possible if we allow ourselves to step into the shoes of other nations.