Tess Isabel Nepstad

More by Tess Isabel Nepstad

Beijing and Back in One Year

10/16/2011


Many Americans say that Chinese Culture seems the epitome of foreign. Before leaving for my Junior year abroad in Beijing, my dear grandmother kept asking me, “are you sure you want to go for a whole year?” thinking I couldn’t survive an entire year in such a foreign environment. Besides wanting to learn Mandarin and say I had climbed the Great Wall of China, I had a question running through my head, “how different could it really be?” I just had to see it for myself.
 
I had been exposed to various cultures before and was just as ready and excited to soak up everything that China had to offer under the sun. Or was I?
 
I was to live with a Chinese roommate the first semester at Beijing Foreign Studies University. At the beginning, I was slightly worried that we wouldn’t get along. Her name was Lina and she was from the countryside of Hebei province. Her parents were farmers and she had an older sister and a brother, despite China’s One Child policy. In rural areas, the policy was a little more lenient and people could get away with having more than one child.
 
The first time I went out to dinner with my roommate, she took me to a Sichuanese restaurant, famous for their spicy food. She ordered us two bowls of “mala tang”. While I was still getting used to chopsticks, it became even more difficult to eat my food politely as a numbing and spicy sensation began to fill my mouth. I broke into a sweat and my nose began to run. I apologized to my roommate for such indecency. She laughed a little and said, “You eat like a bird!”
           

Millennium Campus Conference 2011

9/25/2011

            
Despite the challenges that we face in our own societies, young college students don’t give up on their passions and aspirations. On Friday September 16th, the annual Millennium Campus Conference brought students and nonprofit-organizations from around the country and across the globe to gather at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts for a weekend long discussion of United Nations Millennium goals, focused on international development and global poverty. Students were able to network, discuss problems and solutions, and be inspired by each other. A positive energy flow ran through the panel discussions as young people shared their personal stories of how they are trying to make a difference in the world.
 
Dick Muyambi, a young college student in the United States, was awarded $10,000 USD. Wanting to give back to his impoverished homeland, he started the ‘Bicycles Against Poverty’ Project to promote economic activity in Northern Uganda. The project would provide families with bicycles as a means of transportation and a tool for economic development.
 

Rain Can't Stop Class Spirit

9/12/2011

A little rain during Mount Holyoke's first week back couldn't stop us from celebrating our return and showing our class colors. In fact, seeing as the senior class is blue, the rain and overall color of the day seemed appropriate. One senior caught this panoramic shot of the classes filing into the ampitheatre during Convocation. A big welcome back goes out to all the returning students, and a warm hello goes out to the Class of 2015!