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Show AggieLife Page 8 Monday, Sept. 28, 2009 Aggies around the world Dreams of the Swiss become reality When students go abroad, they never tell you about the time they sat in a classroom halfway across the world. That’s not what leaves the impact. Switzerland. Looking back, it seems like my time there was a dream. Did I really wake up to the Alps ringing with the sound of cow bells? Did I read ghost stories in the meadow where Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein?” Did I take off my shoes and walk the pilgrimage of St. James’ Way? Did I touch the Oberhofen dungeon walls where a prisoner counted off the days he’d spent there? The pictures say I did. The loads of Swiss chocolate I brought home seem to confirm the memory. People ask me what I liked about Switzerland the most. I could no sooner pick a thread from my favorite sweater. It was the combination of many equally wonderful moments that made it so special. The first thing I noticed was how clean Switzerland was. It doesn’t have random bits of trash along the sidewalks. Even its large semi-trucks were spotless. On the bus ride to our hotel, I kept saying to my friend how pretty it was. Switzerland looks like every picture I’ve ever seen of it. O bv io us l y, there were going to be big cultural differences but there were some things I could not get used to. I was never at ease in JENNY YOUNG the cash-based society. People in Switzerland don’t typically use credit cards and much of their cash is in large coins. So every time I went to buy something, I’d juggle pulling exact change out of my wallet with the items I wanted to buy while trying to determine how much it was going to cost (no sales tax). I never expected to have culture shock when I came home. It should have seemed natural. The hardest part was adjusting to the massive size of our Wal-Mart and traveling in cars as opposed to trains. Even large, busy stores in Switzerland seem compact and intimate. Something a lot of people don’t know is that there are three different official languages in Switzerland: French, Italian and German. From what I understand the Swiss German is rather different from that spoken in Germany, though. I spent the majority of my time on the French speaking side, though most people speak English. In fact, it is normal for most citizens to be fluent in three different languages. It is also normal for signs, menus and even grocery item labels to be in three different languages. While in Basel, Switzerland, we went to the Paper Mill Museum. We learned how it made paper in “ye olden days” from scraps of cloth that had been pounded in to pulp. I even was able to make my own paper. And the architecture. Everything is built with intent. No detail is too small. I took so many pictures of doors. They were all so ornate. They build their homes to last centuries and we build them to last 30 years. While in Leysin, we visited a wooden house that was older than the U.S. Constitution. You can see in every stone that is laid and every carving that these peo- Fribourg, Switzerland is an example of the complex and distinctive architecture found in Switzerland. photo courtesy JENNY YOUNG ple build with their hands. They take care in choosing every piece of material they place. Something that is quintessentially Swiss is the cow fights. Farmers exploit the natural tendencies of this particular strain of cow. The females fight for queen of the herd and these particular cows are not only agitated by being in a pasture with other unfamiliar cows and have not been milked, but they are pregnant. Irritability takes over and they fight. It’s intense. They are fenced in only by a wall of squishy humans. However, it is not a fight to the death. Every cow that is injured is immediately pulled from the arena. By arena, I mean a grass meadow that sits at a 35-degree angle. We also had the opportunity to go to the Callier chocolate factory. The Swiss takes its chocolate very seriously. Callier actually does not even export its chocolate. It like to keep the best for itself. While we were at the factory we were able to do extensive taste testing. I’ve never eaten so much chocolate in my life. Facebook: Students take advantage of networks -continued from page 6 less about popularity and more about USU student involvement on campus, he said. Baylis takes it upon himself to inform the student population and the majority of his Facebook use is through his cell phone. He said it makes it convenient to be online for a large portion of the day. The day of the foam dance on the HPER field, Baylis sent an event notification to all of his friends. Within hours, he had 300 attending guests. Baylis found that it is now possible to tag friends to status updates and events, which can create even more campus circulation. Baylis has a Twitter account and said he believes it is a reasonably useful networking system; however, it cannot compare to Facebook. “Twitter is going to fail because Facebook is going to eat it,” Baylis said. New venues for Aggie Connection are popping up all over social networking sites. Groups to join on Facebook are as diverse as “Boys at USU suck!!!!” and “USU GLBTA (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Allies) Services.” Benjamin Bielefeld, junior and theatre design major, is a Facebook group administrator for non-mormons. He said he started the group as a joke to counteract the plethora of LDS groups and it was initially put on a hidden setting. stream religion” to feel a sense of belonging, though this was not his initial goal. Students who are not interested in converting to Mormonism often feel pressured by the flocks of LDS members residing in Logan and the group is a way to find others who feel the same way. The amount of time USU students spend on Facebook has gradually built an online campus community. It even led a group of protesters to support saving higher education last year. Reale said Danielle Babbel started a Facebook group to create awareness about USU’s financial issues after the budget cuts took effect. Reale said none of the students knew about the financial changes illustration by Jason vonGermeten until Babbel started the page and ultimately created a movement “Then about a month later of 6,000 passionate students we made it public. The next day fighting for their education at over 80 people joined it. It was the state capital building in Salt just crazy,” Bielefeld said. Lake City. He said the group is a way – catherine.meidell@aggiemail. for those not in Logan’s “mainusu. There was a medieval festival going on at the Gruyere Castle while we were there. While there, members of the company asked for volunteers to participate in some medieval dances. Myself and about fifteen others from our group jumped at the opportunity. Though Switzerland is by no means a third world country, it taught me how much I take for granted – free restrooms and Clean Air Acts, for instance. The Swiss do not live to work, as many Americans do. While the cities are not slow, their lifestyle is to take time to enjoy what they do. They have taught me that I need not be in such a rush to reach my destination but to enjoy the scenery. I know that’s clich, but being among a different culture in a foreign country helps you to appreciate what is going on in your life. Traveling abroad should be a requirement for everyone. Jenny Young was a Study Abroad student. She also works for the Office of International Students and Scholars Insects: A vast collection -continued from page 6 five things to their sister, but they can go out and raid, they can build nests, they can do all these complicated things. How can something that simple be put together to give you something complicated?” Pitts said. These are the kinds of questions people try to answer through studying ants. Antlions are insects that live in mostly desert regions. They are found in Cache Valley, as well as in places like Arizona. Antlions are not well studied. Some make traps but most don’t, Pitts said. Antlions are foragers. They look for food rather than sit and wait. “Many antlions forage beneath soil. Whenever they get under the prey they yank it under the sand and eat it,” Pitts said. Flies are considered pests in many places, but Pitts finds them interesting for many reasons. “Animals die or deposit feces and flies get rid of all that stuff. If we didn’t have flies we would have piles of dead animals and feces all over the place,” Pitts said. They can also be used in forensics, because they can tell when someone was murdered based on the maggots in them. “I’m interested in flies that have been duped into pollinating plants. For bees to pollinate, the plant offers pollen, which is their food and nectar for sugar. Many flowers have tricked flies into pollinating them, but the fly doesn’t get anything out of the deal,” Pitts said. Flies that pollinate flowers don’t get food or nectar and often get trapped instead, sometimes for days, in a flower that smells bad. “I find that interesting. We think of flowers as pretty and smelling sweet and yet we have flowers that have evolved to trick flies into pollinating them. How do they do that? They look and smell like rotting meat.” Pitts said. While Pitts has gathered thousands of wasps for the bug collection, he doesn’t collect whatever insects he finds remotely interesting. “Some entomologists are stamp collectors. They like to collect stamps and coins and that and this, and they also like to collect insects, and they put them on pins and put them in museums, but they don’t do anything with them. I collect the insects that I’m specifically after to answer questions about geological events or evolutionary behavior, so I get irritable about people collecting just to collect,” he said. – april.ashland@aggimail.usu.edu |