By Aryaman

This Diwali was so different from all others. This was the first time I celebrated this festival away from my hometown and with my maternal grandparents.

As I walked around the bazaar in Paratwada, I got lost in a world I had barely seen—India.

Street vendors selling Diwali festivities were littered around every corner of the bazaar. The buzz of the crowd was so loud I could barely hear my own voice as I struggled to find the space to walk through. It seemed as if the whole village was outside—celebrating, buying new clothes, sweets and gifts. In this space of shared happiness, the town felt alive with joy—as if everything else had stopped so that people could come together and celebrate life.

Up till now, my experience of Diwali had been completely different. Somewhere in the hustle and bustle of the city the festival had lost its soul. To a large extent, Diwali felt like just another time of the year when you do what you do and just get done with it. Every year, we would follow the unnecessary customs as quickly as possible so that we could return back to our normal life. In the Blacks and Greys of my modern city, the colors of Diwali didn’t fit in.

 

 

 

 

However, standing in the middle of the market, surrounded by hundreds of shops and stalls selling artistically designed Diyas, ornate Kurtas and new Rangoli colors, I felt complacent. A tourist in my own nation, I walked around the streets of Paratwada endlessly, in awe. I was seeing shades of India which had eroded away from my life.

As the day passed by, one by one, families started to come out in the street dressed in beautiful traditional clothes to place Diyas in front of their houses and to embellish the Rangolis which decorated their gateways. Each house began to turn on its unique display of festival lights and, before long, the sky was sparkling with every color imaginable.

For the first time, I consciously saw the India I heard of as a child. The one I had only read about in history books. An India where people wholeheartedly celebrated the unnecessary customs and traditions of the Indian subcontinent.

 

 

Seeing the beauty of Diwali in Paratwada has made me question the boundaries of behaviour I had so eagerly defined for myself. Despite India’s colorful history of the previous 7800 years, my Indian identity has been defined by the subsequent, solitary 200. However, till recently, I didn’t truly understand the effect colonialism had on my life.

     

I grew up in a city where I constantly heard of a better world. As I struggled to pronounce the language I was supposed to speak, or figure out the clothes I was supposed to wear. I learned from western TV shows. Not only how I was supposed to look but how I was supposed to behave. I grew up without understanding the perpetual dilemma of the duality of India’s post-colonial society. I didn’t understand why English was the “superior” language and or why our lives revolved around what was happening in the west. Though I had read the history of Colonialism, I hadn’t truly understood the effect of my internalized inferiority.

Slowly, I got further institutionalized into the systems which were created by my oppressors, I bleached all aspects of my personality and got rid of the disease that was my Indianness.

Both me and my city have become more western over time. The cultures and lively attires which littered each corner of my country have now been whitewashed into the black and greys of my “modern” city. This western culture in India has not been adopted, it was violently imposed as the whole country became subservient to another for more than a century.

One of the reasons I took a gap year was to truly understand myself, and now, I have realized understanding myself also means making sense of my complicated national identity and how that identity advances the biases with which we have created our systems of subtle oppression which I, till very recently, believed bettered my life.

The horrors of colonialism continue to haunt my country—and much of the world—today, but this Diwali, on the victory of light over darkness, I saw the dying glimmer of Indian culture in the back of my mind and I learned to truly embrace my identity.

 

 

By Ally

 

It’s been five months since I walked across the high school graduation stage-a fifteen step journey that commenced the adventure of this year. I’m now sitting on a multicolored couch in the corner of “Café con Libros:” a slice of coffee shop solitude I’ve found amidst the infinitely busy center of Malaga, Spain. To my left is a heap of Spanish books, and through the partially open window to my right is “La Manquita:” the only partially built cathedral that seduces tourists with its renaissance architecture. Last week marked one month of my stay in Spain, but I still feel like I’m getting settled here. The culture, although western, feels so unfamiliar. Water here costs money. It’s considered strange to leave a tip at restaurants. My Netflix has changed to Spanish. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to properly flush the toilets here. We walk everywhere. Public transportation isn’t as confusing as I once thought! Everything is closed on Sundays, and there’s a Catholic church around every corner. 21 degrees Celsius means 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Bread is a part of every meal. Dinner is at 21:00, which means 9pm. And lunch is at 3pm. We dry our clothes by hanging them outside.

It’s October, and Christmas decorations are already up. The birds are green here. People wear jeans in 80-degree weather. Fruit is eaten as dessert after every meal. There are outdoor, public gyms! No buildings use air conditioning, and the windows in our house are never closed. Spaniards are incredibly friendly, but they also speak incredibly quickly. People dance… a lot. New foods have not disappointed! Dogs are everywhere, and somehow they’re all perfectly behaved. The pigeons are a little too comfortable around people. Showers longer than five minutes are frowned upon. We’re not supposed to walk barefoot inside the house. Nobody uses crosswalks. Kissing your friends hello and goodbye is the norm. Sunsets are incredible here. Shops and restaurants close for “siesta” every afternoon. Parking only comes in one form: parallel. We use tote bags and fanny packs instead of backpacks. There are street musicians and artists galore. Scooters and bikes are everywhere. I don’t leave the house without a deck of cards in my purse. American accents are very distinct in Spanish, apparently.

 

I love it here. It’s so different, and I feel so out of place sometimes, but I’m starting to befriend the unfamiliar. Living with a host family has allowed me to experience an authentic Spanish lifestyle, and I’ve met people from across the world. My roommate is from Japan, and my group of friends span Europe: Germany, France, Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium. These people have taught me so much about their home countries and different cultures, and I learn something new with every conversation. It’s fascinating. Learning a new language comes with its challenges, but I’m able to see improvements in my Spanish every day—I (hopefully) successfully gave someone directions to the bus stop yesterday, and I understood 80% of Crepúsculo (Twilightin Spanish). It’s the little successes that count! It’s been a month of growth and discovery, but I still have so much left to learn here. I can’t wait.

By Charlie

 

As I hoped going into my gap year, I have already started to learn things I never expected. I did my laundry in a communal laundry machine, bought groceries at a nearby supermarket, and traveled on planes, trains, and busses. Each of these things was further complicated due to the need to navigate a foreign language and another country’s COVID-19 protocols. I also spent a week quarantined with three new friends in a room the size of a large closet.

When I signed up for Year Course, I was not expecting the cultural differences to be such a key factor. I am staying in Jerusalem on the Kiryat Moriah campus, which not only houses Americans, but also Canadians, Guatemalans, Germans, and Israelis.

The cultural differences exist outside of my campus as well. As expected, I am learning more about Jewish heritage and Israeli history in courses and tours. One of my most interesting courses, “The Politics Behind the Conflict,” addresses more than just Judaism. In our first meeting together, we went on a day-long tour of the four quarters of the Old City: Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim. We saw areas of the Old City in this class that many tourists never take the time to see.

Although there are restrictions on who can go inside the Dome of the Rock, we were able to walk around outside of it and learn about its significance. I also walked through the Shuk (an outdoor market) in the Muslim Quarter, where we learned what it is like to live in the Old City. Surprisingly, despite different beliefs and cultures, the Old City is a very peaceful place, and the people usually get along.

 

I walked through the narrow streets of the Armenian Quarter while I learned about the Armenians’ relationship with the Jews.

I also visited the Western Wall, which is the holiest place in Judaism because it once surrounded the First Temple.

In the Christian Quarter, I went inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Although there was not a line to enter and the church was mostly empty, it was impossible not to appreciate the significance of the location.

My gap year in Israel has exceeded expectations so far, and I cannot wait to blog more about my time here in the coming months.

By Grace

 

Training to be an EMT was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done.

It was also one of the hardest.

For six weeks, my classmates and I spent our Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays together, motivating each other through ten-hour lecture days and seemingly endless back boarding sessions. We made it through 36 hours of ambulance ride-along, a day-long event lovingly referred to as the “EMT Olympics,” and a simulated nine-patient Mass Casualty Incident. 

We did all that, yet when all was said and done I felt nowhere near ready to work on an ambulance and take the lives of others into my own hands. Although I passed the national EMT exam (the NREMT) and volunteered with ambulance companies in the Bay Area, the terror and uncertainty I felt when treating patients prevented me from actually signing contracts with any of them.

Instead, I enrolled in NOLS’ Wilderness EMT semester program.  

Although I told family members I was going for the wilderness aspect of the program — which, don’t get me wrong, is incredible — I signed up because I didn’t feel confident in my ability to care for others, and thought that relearning the material would help.

A month later, I packed everything I had into two duffel bags and headed off to Wyoming.

Again, I met peers who motivated me to be my best. Again I practiced skills for hours on end, spent nights sorting through simulated Mass Casualty Incidents, and made it through “The Room of Doom.” 

I did all that, and yet at the end of the third week felt no more confident than the day I graduated from my last program. 

Yes, I was a better EMT than before, but that didn’t translate into increased confidence at the thought of actually treating patients. 

At first, I was disappointed. How can I do all of this, I thought, and still fell unprepared? 

 

 

However, as I kept on thinking about my trepidation, I came to a realization — up to this point in my life, I haven’t really put myself in positions where I feel unconfident. I practice speeches until I can’t get them wrong, switch hobbies when I hit plateaus, and rip the “bad” drawings out of my sketchbook before I show it to people. It was a crutch I could get away with when I was younger, but now it actively prevents me from doing the things I love to do. 

 

Confidence, after all, doesn’t come without experience. And experience, at its core, is making bad decisions, messing up, and learning how to do better next time. In order to pursue the things I love doing (EMT work included), I need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I need to be okay starting where I am, and improving from there. 

I’m writing this on a bus to Utah, an hour away from putting on a 50-pound backpack and embarking on a month-long technical canyoneering expedition. It’s something I’ve never done before, which seems as good a place as any to practice what I’ve just preached. 

 

So here I am, starting.