Newspapers / St. Andrews University Student … / Nov. 2, 1995, edition 1 / Page 6
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6 The Lance Up-Coming Events November 3-5: “Medi eval Mummery” and Parent’s Weekend. November 10;-Baseball Team’s Airband November 11: Dance, Wilmington’s Dress to Im press November 13; 8 p.m. Movie, “Shawshank Re demption. November 17: Thanks giving Break Begins What Is It Like To Be A Foreign Student? BY TASfflA JONES When you are a foreign stu dent, “community” can be difficult to find. One way to experience a bond with your area is to go di rectly into the heart of it. Luis Fernando Ramirez is a freshman from Costa Rica. He de fines community as a place where he “fits.” Although Luis is get ting to know more people, he still does not think he has found his niche. He told me that although people say hello and ask how he is doing, they do so casually, lack ing real intent. He feels that in Costa Rica the people “commxmi- cate more.” Houses are closer to gether there, making dialogue a way of life in the neighborhoods. Since public transportation is of ten used, it is a common occur rence to strike up a conversation while traveling to and from work. It is a different scenario in the United States. Try to engage in a friendly chat on the subway in Boston and you will be mundated with paranoid glances. In America, people live in their houses and drive their cars to work or shopping. It occurs to me that we live and breathe in boxes. We rely on them; we feel inadequate without them. People walk along the narrow four-lane highway in Costa Rica. Here, that is a rarity. Last week Martin Kudlacek went to Columbia, South Carolina to plant trees for City Year. The trip proved to be beneficial to Martin, who is from the Czech Republic. Columbia posed a “new face of America” for him. When planting trees and “work ing with people,” he remarked on how the experience made him feel like a real American. At the end of the interview Martian played, on a guitar bor rowed from a Lacrosse player, a melancholy Czech song. Ironi cally, the song was written by a Russian. Martin remarks that this school has a “good soul.” If we care to find the community that lies in the people. Serve-a-thon Madness Strikes St. Andrews! BY STAN DURA Imagine a Friday night with little or no sleep, the usual unusual crises that occur, and then, at 5 a.m., the alarm clock erupts with the reminder...Serve-A-Thon! Madness. Madness is the only word that could describe the events that fol lowed after eight people packed up their weekend on a cold and misty early Saturday morning and sardined themselves in a can for a two and a half hour drive, be witched with U-tums, just to give service. David Daugherty was the most excited and jammed to techno all the way down, while Jon Slifka was comfortably numb with his CD Discman. We arrived in Columbia, SC to see 1,500 people, CEO’s, gang members. Harvard grads, housewives, pre- school-college students, gathered in a park, doing jumping jacks, chain-breakers, scarecrows and other exercises, psyching them selves up, coming together in ser vice as if they had heard King, Jr. chanting motivations for our “be loved community.” “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” We gazed at the crowd for a moment and then registered and received our service project, which was at the Congaree Swamp Na tional Monument, which is the last significant stand of old-growth, river-bottom hardwood forest. It is a protected sanctuary, as well as an International Biosphere Re serve, with over 320 plant, 41 mammal, 24 reptile, 52 fish and 200 bird species that have been identified, including the Red Caucated Woodpecker, 180-year- old trees that are 169 feet tall and 15 feet in circumference, plus sev eral endangered species. I’d just simply call it a haven of beauty and energy. Our mission, which we de cided to accept, was to plant shrubs around an area where resi dent volunteers will park their campers. Absorbing the energy from the beauty that amazed us. we all dug into the earth and into ourselves, for service is hard work. We dug. We picked and chopped. Liz Meyer dug a hole in record time ( I know she cheated, she had the biggest pick). We clipped. Eric Brinson kept showing off his root(s). We watered the plants and each other and fertilized, the plants that is. We did it all. In fact, we planted every last shrub they had for us, far exceeding their expectations. Afterwards, we walked some of their trails and enjoyed conver sations that probably would not have come about in any other situation. Jonathan Muss ami Sloan McGlaun nearly trekked a 10-mile trail and had to turn around. Soon though, we found that the time was approaching to return to the city for the after- party. With a little reluctance, we left, taking notice of our shrubs and how different our little area looked now. We danced and partied at an after-party with a band, “The Root Doctors,” and went club bing that night. Aroimd 3:30 a.m. after nearly 48 hours of no sleep for some, we called it a night and returned to our gracious host’s and hostesses’s homes to crash for the night. Simday, we awoke to go shop- pmg at a local mall for an hour or so, and then loaded up once more, this time for the trip back home. It was a quiet trip, Martin Kudlacek felt like a “real Ameri can,” and the rest of us were ex hausted. I left thinking of our little area in the swamp and the Star fish story, where a young girl walks along a beach that is cov ered by thousands of starfish, dy ing from being out of the water. She starts throwing them in one by one imtil an elder comes over and criticizes here, saying she’ll never save all of them. The young girl drops her head, saddened by the apathy, then throws another in and says, “But at least I made a difference to that one.” Jonathan, Liz, Martin, David, Eric, Sloan, Jon, we all threw one back in.
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