#utstudyabroad

[la-vie-de-roseyeh]

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Next stop:  Parque Natural Quebrada de Macul

[travelslugbug-blog]

Vienna Life

We arrived back from Croatia with very little trouble. All of us were happy and spent from an unbelievable beach weekend. Monday morning class came a little too quickly but with some wine and gelato from Café de l’Europa in Stephensplatz we all survived.

Tuesday- we had a short visit to Saint Peter’s Church right next to Stephensplatz after class and a concert later that evening. The concert was for the bands Team H-Town and Astronautilis. One of the advisors for our school facility (IES Abroad) is a rapper for Team H-Town and invited us to come watch their show.

*Check out Team H-Town on Facebook or Spotify for info and music: https://www.facebook.com/teamhtown?fref=ts&ref=br_tf 

The weekend was a class planned field trip with the entire group of 30 students, our professor and some of the IES Abroad advisors. We would be going to Geneva, Switzerland to see CERN (the European Center for Nuclear Research), take a lake Geneva Tour, and visit the United Nations.

Before we took off that afternoon we had a visit to the Schonnbrun Palace in Venna where Maria Theresa and the imperial Hapsburg family lived. The 1,441 room Baroque palace is home to beautiful furniture, art, royal family relics, and many more treasures. Also on the grounds are acres and acres of gorgeous hunting ground-turned gardens and an exotic zoo. We only had a few hours to explore before we needed to pack up and leave for Geneva. This was unfortunate for one could spend days exploring and learning on the Schonbrunn grounds and still never tire of all the beautiful scenery outside and interior decorations on the inside.

[utaustin]

Longhorns Make History in Cuba

This past week, the U.S. flag began flying over the country's embassy in Havana for the first time in 54 years.

This summer, UT Austin made history by sending the first study abroad group on a program to Cuba.  

The four-week program brought the students from Havana to Santiago as they explored Cuba's cultural and political history and future through architecture, art, film and media.

The group of 19 Longhorns experienced firsthand how the once-embargoed country is changing now that relations between Cuba and the U.S. are normalizing.

“This program has a greater significance now since our students are going to be experiencing a changing Cuba,” says César Salgado, an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese who leads the program. “We are in the fortunate situation of being able to see firsthand the transformation that is going to happen.”

Students in the group represent a diversity of perspectives with majors ranging from International Relations and Global Studies, Spanish, and Latin American Studies to Sociology, Physics, and Kinesiology. The students met weekly throughout the spring semester to complete coursework and readings to prepare them for their lectures and excursions while in Cuba.

[Horns Up Across the Globe: Travel the world through the eyes of Longhorns who studied abroad this summer.]

While the announcement that Cuba and the U.S. would normalize relations came recently, the study abroad program has been in development for years. Because of the embargo and other legal issues, it was not possible until 2012 when a new law allowed students to travel to Cuba for educational reasons. The program, called Cuba in Question, was approved in 2014.

There are 78 countries in which Longhorns can study abroad, attracting more than 3,000 students each year and making UT's study abroad program the second-largest in the U.S.

UT's International Office makes study abroad possible for every Longhorn by offering financial aid tailoring programs to fit every field of study and integrating the experience into graduation schedules.

Cross-cultural experiences enrich students' lives and strengthen the entire university community, helping to make UT Austin one of the best universities in the world.

[melinprague-blog]

A Thousand Words: Bone Church

My class visited the once flourishing mining town of Kutná Hora, about an hour drive from Prague. When I heard we were visiting the “Bone Church” there, I assumed there would be a few bones displayed in the chapel, maybe some pews for worshipping and possibly some stained glass windows. Well, that was definitely not the case.

Before the Bone Church was constructed, the cemetery in the town was a popular place to be buried among aristocrats in the 17th century. Then, when the graveyard ran out of space, old remains were dug up and used to decorate a nearby chapel, using bones from an estimated 40,000 people. The bone-adorned church is supposed to symbolize the fate of death – to remind people that it will happen to everyone someday.

Everything was made of and decorated with actual bones from the cemetery, aside from a large crucifix placed on the back wall. A huge chandelier that hung in the center was made completely of bones, (mainly arm and leg bones is what it looked like) and strings of skulls dangled at you from the ceiling. Some walls just had a large deep hole carved into them with neatly stacked bones piled taller than me. It was a bit disturbing, yet strangely fascinating. I still can’t decide if it would be troubling or honorable to have my bones displayed in a church, but it was intriguing to say the least.