It is no secret that the International Residence College provides students with a unique housing experience, but what many people do not know is that it also provides students with unique Spring Break experiences.
In preparation for excursions to St. Croix, Greece and France this break, the IRC currently is offering three one-credit spring seminars available exclusively to IRC residents. These seminars focus on the philosophy of mindfulness and on finding a balance in life between the fast and the slow.
IRC Director of Studies Marga Odahowksi described the trips as “experimental learning opportunities.” She said they are designed to be different from the typical academic learning style one finds in a lecture.
Odahowksi is a great believer in the “power of being present, experiencing the moment and understanding mindfulness practices.” She said the trips are the chance to go to a new country, experience a different lifestyle and try to employ those philosophies in the students’ travels.
Odahowski will lead the trip to St. Croix, where she and four students will stay at an organic farm and partake in a “bush training program ... spearing fish and hunting for herbs.” To enhance team building and see how well the students can work together, Odahowski said her group will be cooking a Caribbean-influenced dish. The students are all biology majors, Odahowski said, so “they don’t mind dealing with bugs” during “a trip of playing in the dirt”.
The trips to Greece and France, meanwhile, are less rural and will cater to five students each.
“I applied on a whim, I don’t know anything about Paris outside of the movies,” third-year College student Courtney Fay said.
The French trip will be led by IRC Principal Brad Brown. Students will stay in apartments in central Paris, cooking together every night.
“[Food] gives people an opportunity to connect, to slow down and savor life,” Odahowski said, explaining why students will cook together during their trips.
The students going to Paris also will explore the city at a manageable pace. Fay said her class will focus on Parisian public transport.
“It gives me a lot of freedom in where I can go — I’ll have to take some kind of transport to get there!” she said.
Fay said her philosophy is about slowing down to experience local food and culture. Americans rush their meals, Fay said, and as such, each of the proposed IRC trips will pay special attention to food and its role in our lives.
The trip to northern Greece is themed “Life and Chicken” and also will incorporate group cooking.
“We like to get students together to cook meals ... It is a great bonding experience,” said IRC Scholar in Residence Noah Egge, who has led the trip since it began in 2004.
The trip is a home-stay at a potter’s house in Thessaloniki, Egge said, noting that his connections are in northern Greece and he prefers to take students there, rather than the typical Athens-then-island-hopping trip most tourists choose to take in the southern part of the country.
He added that northern Greece has just as much to offer as the country’s more southern areas.
“It’s the land of the Byzantines, of Alexander the Great,” he said.
First-year College student Karin Elwood, who plans to attend the trip to Greece, said she chose it because although she has been to Europe before, she has never been east of Italy.
“I wanted to break out of the typical European box,” Elwood said, adding that she also was intrigued by the slow pace at which Greek culture approaches time.
Egge said students will have plenty of choices in terms of how to spend their time and will have many opportunities to explore during the day. A home-stay also affords the chance to try other kinds of cultural projects, Egge said. In the past, students have been given woodcarving lessons from a priest, Egge said, but because this trip involves staying at a potter’s home, ceramics most likely will be the craft of choice.
Variety in learning is something the students said they appreciate. Students going on the various trips offered through the IRC are given a lot of say in what and how they learn, Elwood said.
In seminars, students not only research the areas they will visit, they are taught how to most effectively keep a travel journal. Odahowski said this means focusing on what to incorporate in the journal and making it “a complement to students’ photographs.”
None of the trips presently have specific itineraries, though, in part because the seminars are designed to let “students take ownership of their learning process,” Egge said.
The trips are funded by the IRC, which has the largest activities fund of any of the University’s housing options. Students need only to pay for their airfares and some incidentals. Everything else — food, accommodation and in-country transport — is paid for. For only a few hundred dollars, students will be given a chance to breathe during a hectic semester, and will have the opportunity to slow down, think about time in a new way, find balance in their lives and, of course, enjoy some good local food.
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