Dartmouth Abroad

When I was a prospective student looking at colleges, one of Dartmouth's biggest draws for me was the number and availability of foreign study programs for Dartmouth students. Indeed, I cannot imagine Dartmouth without its LSAs (Language Study Abroad Programs) and FSPs (Foreign Study Abroad Programs). And these programs are as pervasive as they are ubiquitous: Dartmouth has the highest participation rate in foreign study programs among all doctoral-granting institutions in the United States. Most students go on at least one; about 1 in 10 students go on three.

Dartmouth has about 44 Dartmouth-only programs available to its students. Many are for foreign languages. French, for example, has programs in Lyon, Toulouse, and Paris. Spanish has programs in Puebla, Mexico; Barcelona and Madrid, Spain; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. There are two German programs in Berlin; Chinese in Beijing; Arabic in Fez, Morocco (that program is soon moving to Tunisia, I think); Japanese in Tokyo; Portuguese in Salvador, Brazil; Russian in St. Petersburg; and a few programs in Rome.

There are three types of language programs. The first are LSAs (Language Study Abroad). The prerequisite for these programs is the level 2 course of a language at Dartmouth (e.g. for the French LSA in Lyon, students must have taken or passed out of French 2). The LSA+ is a little more advanced; its prerequisite is level 3 (and in some cases 10, which follows 3 in the sequence.) The most demanding program is the FSP, or Foreign Study Program, which has a higher prerequisite.

In addition to the language programs, most majors have their own FSPs. These programs are taught in English and occur all around the world. For example, there's engineering in Thailand; Biology in Costa Rica; Geography in Prague; Environmental Studies in South Africa; London has Government, Music, Theater, and History; there's Linguistics and Anthropology in New Zealand; Art History in Rome; and others.

Dartmouth's off-campus programs function as if you were here at Dartmouth taking classes. Your course credit is given the same way, and tuition and financial aid are also exactly the same. But enough with the details. Let me tell you a bit about my experience on the French LSA+ in Toulouse.

Getting to Toulouse was an adventure in itself. I flew from New York to Paris via Detroit (wasteful economy, anyone?) where I met a friend from high school who was in France for the year on a Rotary exchange. We hung out in the city for a little while before heading to Bourges where he was living. His host dad met us at the train station and drove us home, where I was given dinner and my own room to sleep in. In the morning, Jim's host dad drove me back to the station to catch my train to Toulouse. Definitely a great start to the trip.

I think the best way to describe my early impressions of being in Toulouse is to actually copy a blog post I wrote for my friends after being in France for about a week. I'm a little far removed from the experience now, and I think this does a better job of capturing my feelings at the time:

"The train got into Paris at 10 to 5 on Saturday, just in time for me to meet my host family. They’re really great people, and I feel pretty lucky since the family is probably the most important part of the LSA experience. My parents, Miki and Hervé, are a retired couple, and they live in a house pretty close to downtown (Centre Ville) Toulouse. Miki is always worried about whether I’ve eaten enough and if I’ve liked what she cooks, which is great because French cuisine is, well, you know, different. Turns out though I’ve happened to like just about everything she’s mentioned, and she’s convinced I’m lying to her. Having wine at every meal is a great backup though, because it can drown out the taste of just about anything, so I have no fear of trying new things. It makes me kind of sleepy though.

My host mom, Miki, telling me to try *this much* foie gras.

"Hervé is a really cool guy. At first I thought he wouldn’t take much of an interest in me, but it turns out we have a lot in common (at least when it comes to what to watch on TV), so it’s been fun so far. He used to jump horses and he’s interested in most sports, so between those and game shows, that’s pretty much what we watch. We also showed each other card tricks the other day, and he was mad cause he thought he’d figured mine out but in the end he hadn’t. The Dakar Rally is going on now, and so there’s coverage of that every night. I guess it’s interesting… And the French are really into American basketball. I swear I know more about how the Nuggets are doing now than I ever have in my life before.

"Mami, Miki’s mom lives upstairs, but is here for lunch and dinner every day. She’s 87 and of course smokes (everyone does), but is in excellent health. She’s just like a grandma – she corrects my French when I mess up, and than passes me chocolate under the table. Since my only grandparent (mother) that I knew passed away when I was 9, it’s really cool for me to have someone like Mami around.

"Miki and Hervé’s granddaughters, Jeanne and Ninon, who are 2 ½ and 7, have also been around a lot, along with their dad, Laurent. Both of the girls are fascinated by me because I’m American. It’s really funny. And for me, coming from such a small family, it’s awesome to have 4 generations coming in and out of the house."

La Garonne at night - Toulouse

I went on to describe the early social scene, which mainly involved going to clubs and discotheques with most of the other Dartmouth students from the group and some French friends we'd picked up along the way before getting to the heart of what going abroad really meant for me:

"There’s a lot more I could write about, given that there have been so many ‘firsts’ in the last week and half, but I’ll stop here and end with an early observation. Globalization is made very obvious when you travel abroad. My Bourges friend’s host dad drove a Ford, and everywhere you look you see foreign cars. Nissan is popular, as is Suzuki. I was watching a show before that featured a Honda Accord and a Chrysler Sebring. I saw a sticker on the back of car before that said "J'aime ma Toyota" (I love my Toyota). The music here is mostly American, and you hear it a lot in commercials or as background music during some television shows. It's funny. I’ll be like "Ah, the theme from American Beauty," and I look at the TV and it's a commercial for dog food or something. It's also interesting to realize that so many of the goods advertised in America are not really American at all. It was strange at first to see a Volkswagen commercial in French, but really, France is a lot closer to Germany than we are. It’s just interesting, I think, that we (or at least I) think of a lot of things as inherently American, when they’re not at all. And the French do a lot of things right. It was so nice to go to the morning market my first day here and see everyone out buying fresh food for the day, and even though this is the 5^th largest city in France, my host mom met no fewer than 7 people that she knew in the short time we were there. Businesses are closed on Sunday, which is something I wish we’d see more of in the US. Most of the stores are small and locally owned. Banks don’t charge you for using their ATM’s. And eating dinner together as a family every night (not lunch for me during the week since I’m at the university) is something I look forward to every day."

Villefranche-sur-Mer: one of my vacation stops during our 10 day break

Over the following 9 weeks, I had many great adventures, built amazing relationships with not only the Dartmouth students but also a number of other French people, and learned a lot about myself. It would take me pages and pages to begin to relate these experiences, and maybe I'll make a mention of one or two of them in a later blog entry. But this post is getting rather long and, to be honest, no two individuals' off-campus programs are going to play out even remotely the same, so it's more or less inutile for me to relay specifics about mine. I recommend checking out this page to see a (almost) complete list of off-campus programs available. More than that, if you visit campus, I strongly encourage you to ask students you meet about their foreign study experiences. I can promise you won't hear the same story twice.