Student Views

“Hey! What’s up? How was your summer?”

I cannot come even close to counting how many times I’ve had to answer that question in the last couple weeks. And my answer, in my head at least, is almost always something like “Holy goodness, where do I even begin to describe my summer?”

But for you, I’ll give it a shot. Simply put, it was my best summer ever.

It started out with shoo-in for awesome times - a study abroad trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I went with a Southwestern program for upper-level Spanish credits. An SU professor traveled with us to teach a class and a professor from the university in Buenos Aires taught the other.

We had classes Monday through Thursday but also had plenty of time for exploring the city and soaking in the culture.

View from the balcony off my room

Cruzing the streets of La Boca

Cutest kid EVER- his sign says “Free Hugs”

 My favorite park, just a little ways from my house

Cathedral in Tigre, a city with canals kind of like Venice

While there, I lived with an Argentine host family - some of the kindest and most open-hearted people I’ll ever meet.
Though it’s really hard to describe how great the experience was, the best thing to say is that I now know that I’ll always have a home if I end up back in Buenos Aires.

(If you want to read more about it - which you should - I wrote a blog while there too!  http://pm-mispostales.blogspot.com/)

So… as if that wasn’t amazing enough, a mere 24 hours after landing in the US, I was off to a new adventure. This one involved the flip side of my passions - community organizing.

I was able to take part in an amazing program with an amazing group of activists in Austin called Summer of Solutions. The basic gist of the program was to build models of sustainability in lower income areas of East Austin. We worked to involve a couple of neighborhoods in community garden projects, handed out energy saving light bulbs along with information about saving electricity and money, signed people up for City of Austin programs that allowed them to get free water saving toilets and have their home weatherized AND worked with Austin area youth in a green job training program to teach them outreach skills.

We made connections with organizations I probably never would have had relationships with before. At one point, we needed rocks to build up garden beds and a construction materials company donated some so my friend Jeni and I headed out to pick them up. She in a sparkly tank top and me in my sandals… they saw us a mile away. But we got the job done!
All in all, it was a busy, productive and awesome program and I loved every minute of it. Even hauling rocks.

Working on a garden at the Montopolis WIC Center (photo by Zoë Martin)

So now I’m back on campus, transitioning from my amazing summer to life in class once again. But I do have some awesome things on the plate for this semester - a new job with the Office of Civic Engagement, more SEAK amazingness, and getting ready to go abroad next semester! Get excited for updates!