Peter Zhang ‘14
Computer Science and Math major
PRESHCO, Cordoba, Spain
Academic Year 2012-2013
Studying abroad greatly influenced the course of life that I have taken.
I probably wouldn’t have foreseen this rather dramatic- and cliché- sounding result during my sophomore year, when I was applying to study abroad for both semesters of my junior year, “somewhere far, far away”. That’s what they all say about studying abroad, don’t they? Surely it must be an overstated exaggeration that is meant to induce pre-departure excitement only. I was lucky, though, to find out how wrong I was.
I wanted to go to Spain as a part of my grand scheme of things ever since the beginning of my time at Colby. This desire was partially irrational, partially logical: on one hand I always knew that I wanted to achieve a certain level of fluency in Spanish due to its increasing importance and do a study abroad program where I could be fully immersed in the linguistic environment is the most logical choice. On the other hand, I didn’t really understand where this urge of needing to go somewhere came from, at least not until I actually on the road.
As the semester started I settled down in Cordoba with 40 of my other classmates on the program. As the ancient capital of the Moorish caliphate, Cordoba has witnessed the coexistence of the Muslim, the Jewish and the Christian cultures within the same walls. It is very easy to get lost in the alleys of the old city, but each turn presents an opportunity for discovery. I passed through the Juderia (Jewish quarters) many times where most of the pre-Reconquista era buildings still exist and are still occupied, but it never ceased to amaze me each time when I discovered something new on every street corner: columns from the Roman era, mosques and synagogues that are still preserved until this day (even though many have been converted into Christian churches), 15th century palaces used by the Christian monarchs, or blocked apartments built by the Falange social welfare agencies in the 1960s. In addition to native Spaniards, the city also attracts a large amount of tourists as well as European exchange students, so hearing something that wasn’t English or Spanish in the streets was a common occurrence for me. Old, new, Christian, Muslim, local, foreign…those seemingly contradicting factors all serve as the foundation of the city in concordia. In this process, I have realized one of my many purposes in life: to embody as many cultures as I can to achieve multicultural literacy, and to eventually find the commonly occurred theme of harmony among different cultures.
While, in some ways, the rigorousness of the academic program at the university was not comparable to what one is used to at Colby due to the prevalence of public holidays and strikes, in many ways in addition to the usual in-class learning, the real classroom was outside of the university gates. Nevertheless, as a Computer Science major, I was able to take some CP classes in Spanish at the Universidad de Cordoba!
Thinking about it now, my purpose in travel was motivated by a need to see more places and experience more of this world so that I may find my place in it. For this reason, I took ferries on the freezing Baltic in December, walked around the town center of Munich and through the edges of Riga, befriended strangers in Prague and almost got into a fight in Bratislava, spent Easter at the Duomo di Milano and Christmas at Alexander Nevsky in Tallinn, and wandered from town to town in southern France. Those are the things that I wouldn’t have thought of seeing or doing, had I remained in my own little haven of small town America. It is said that we are defined by our history and experience, and I felt a sense of new transformation everyday into this journey.
During the last days of my year of study in Cordoba, I spent a lot of time sitting on the Roman bridge on the river in front of the mosque cathedral, on which walked the Roman centurions, Visigoth warriors, north African traders, Jewish mathematicians, Castile conquerors and tourists from all over the world, when the same sun submerged into the Guadalquivir, the way it did thousands of years ago.
It just felt like the right place to be.
