My name is Nicholas Baker, and I am a senior at the College of Charleston. I have completed all the requirements for my major (chemistry) and sought to complete my honors immersed project overseas in Lisbon, Portugal. The program, led by CofC’s Dr. Morgan Hughey (public health), seeks to understand the ways in which public green space affects well-being in Lisbon. We will be traveling around the city auditing parks…
The people in Ireland have been so incredibly nice and fun. Perhaps because they’ve had so many hardships that have followed them for so long. They are perhaps a nation of happy people who fought so long to be their own nation that they are accepting and kind because they still know the feeling of being mistreated. My generation is the first in centuries to not be living through death,…
On one of our free days here in Portugal, two others and I decided to take a trip to Sintra. We began the trip by taking a 10:00 a.m. train. It was my first time using the train system in Portugal, and it was an incredibly easy experience. The train ride itself was only about 50 minutes, and Sintra was the very last stop. When we arrived, we had to…
I have had a lot of fun on this trip, and this will undoubtedly be some of the best memories of my life. I recommend it to anyone that wants to make friends, experience different cultures, and see the beauties Spain has to offer. We have taken many trips, some with the school, some without the school. Without the school, about 24 of us went to Lisbon, Portugal. It was…
Iceland is a country full of adventure tourism, and to fully experience the country, our class participated in many of the adventures offered. Our first big adventure consisted of visiting a large waterfall called Skógafoss. When driving up to it, you are at the bottom of it, but you can go to the top, so we climbed over 400 stairs to get to the top, where we had the most amazing…
One of my favorite excursions from the trip was our weekend outing to the town of Boquete. To get to Boquete, we took a boat from Bocas del Toro, the island where ITEC is located, to a van that drove us four hours through the mountains. As we drove through the mountains to Boquete, we were able to watch the climate change from a tropical rainforest to dry forest. This…
My host mother, Marta, has taught me by example what life is all about. She is a single woman in her fifties, a tennis coach and a person of administration at a culinary school. She cares deeply about art, sports, politics, history, and the people in her life. She has a strong sense of pride for her country – especially the region of Extremadura. Marta also has invested time into…
We took a ferry to Cape Clear Island. There was a beautiful hike led by the very knowledgeable Seamus O’Driscoll (turns out he’s on the Hidden Ireland show on Prime Video). We could see Fishnet Rock, the lighthouse that was often the last thing Irish immigrants would see leaving Ireland for what was often the first and last time, so it was often referred to as the teardrop. While on…
Day in the life of Florence Italy! Today I started my day by attending class. My usual class day is from 9 am-12 pm. I start with my PSYC 410 Child and Parent Interactions and Behaviors where today we learned about healthcare in Italy vs in the United States. I found this extremely interesting because Italy has a universal public healthcare system which was a concept that I was not…
Blog Post 3 Following our trip to Santorini, our final leg of the trip consisted of spending time in Greece’s southern most island, Crete. Spending time in the tiny village of Vamos, we had the opportunity to work closely with rural, local residents of Crete where we learned about traditional Greek customs and values. In Greece’s biggest island, we lived like a local for 5 days in this beautiful land…
