Two happenings we brought to our attention today involving Columbia students past and present on the internet.

First up, by way of tipster "um... anonymous", Torah Bontrager, GS '07, has told the Four Hour Workweek blog the story of her escape from the Amish.

In the Q&A, Bontrager spells out some "common misconceptions" about the Amish. For instance, according to Bontrager, it's untrue that "the Amish are 'peaceful gentle folk." Amish also speak Amish, which is different from English and actually more closely related to German. Who knew? She also describes community-wide child abuse, including her own experiences with her parents. (The blog is careful to note that this is one person's experience and is not intended to stereotype all Amish.) At 15, after a near-suicide attempt, she picked up in the middle of the night, leaving her parents and eleven siblings behind.

While spending a semester studying abroad in Ecuador, Bwogger in exile, Sara Vogel, fell into an internship with the press office in Ciudad Eloy Alfaro, where the country's brightest and finest (we hope!) are hard at work forming the Republic of the Equator all over again, and for the 21st time. Her dispatch:

I just got a text message from Luis Hernández, a bald ex-colonel in the Ecuadorian military and one of the 130 people charged with writing the country's new constitution. It reads:

"Hola, como estas? Soy Luis Hernandez. Cuando conversamos sobre la democracia y la libertad de expresión en USA?"
(for the Spanish-challenged: "Hey, how are you? It's Luis Hernandez. When are we going to talk about democracy and freedom of expression in the US?")

I didn't expect text messages stalking after I interviewed Sr. Hernández as an intern for the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly's press office. But I also never thought SIT Study Abroad would be able to deliver a job like this for the three-week long final independent study project all SIT students must diligently complete. Maybe it was less the program that set me down in this over-air conditioned office, and more the networks of friendship and patronage that grease the wheels of Ecuadorian politics generally: SIT's directors knew a woman who knew a guy who knew a guy.

Once again the finger-food was set out at 60 Morningside Drive and once again the president of Fair Alma took a cue from FDR, hosting a fireside chat in his humble, multi-million dollar abode.

Employees from the President's Office removed my coat and guided students from every part of the University up an elegant marble staircase to the reception, which featured an array of crusty breads, fancy cheeses and hors d'oeuvres both sweet and savory.

After a healthy dose of schmoozing, Bollinger described the format of the discussion: first he would entertain questions posed by the student body and then he himself would ask questions of them.

When friends go abroad, it's often tiresome and troublesome keeping in contact. Adding + 44 before dialing a ten digit number? Who has that kind of time? Luckily, we are living in the age of the internets, and maintaining overseas friendships is as easy as blogging.

Take Off Broadway, a Wordpress blog chronicling the studies abroad of six Columbia juniors—including many Blue and White and Bwog alumni—in Amman, Cape Town, Kyoto, London, Ecuador, and Buenos Aires.

Posts about standing on the zero degrees latitude mark, not bungy jumping, and Valentine's Day in Japan are lovely and interesting, and the diversity of the places discussed makes the blog very readable, even as you jump from Quito to Kyoto.

Know anyone studying abroad and blogging about it? Email bwog@columbia.edu

Much in the news today about paying for college and college paying for you. American studies director Andrew Delbanco and former dean of students Roger Lehecka co-wrote a New York Times article about Harvard and Yale's distribution of financial aid. Our Ivy brethren to the north, in an attempt to make attending college possible for "families across the spectrum", have re-calculated their financial aid allocations to benefit families earning between $120k and $180k per year.

They argue that this decision will compel other universities to do the same--helping out more middle class and upper-middle class families. The problem is that most (read: all) schools simply do not have Harvard or Yale's budget. In all likelihood, the money going towards funding an upper-middle class student's education is going to prevent many poorer students from receiving aid at all. The article also argues that most upper-middle class and middle class students are deserving of aid, but most "find a way to attend college." Most poorer ones do not.

Blue and White Managing Editor Katie Reedy spent her winter break in Guatemala with a nascent NGO called DreamWeavers. Here, her dispatches from Nebaj, Guatemala City, and San Pedro. (Ed. note: All images from Google, since there are no camera cords in San Pedro.)

Nine days ago, we ended up in Nebaj.

Up blind curves with no guard rails, swerving to avoid the 'chicken buses,' the 1970's-era American school buses festooned with colorful paint and religious slogans that are used for common transportation in Guatemala, our van climbed higher into the altiplano. Windows open, bachata and salsa blasting, duffle bags rolling around on the roof, the van ascended the mountains at an alarming speed, stopping only to let girls vomit and shit in the woods to rid themselves of the queso they ate on the streets of San Pedro the night before.

Nebaj, one of most remote villages in Guatemala, is so high up that there are clouds in the streets. The people rarely speak Spanish (Mayan Ixil and Quiche, instead), old ex-guerrilla guides sadly point out hills where their fellows fought and hid during the decades-long civil war, and maintaining standards of sanitation is a distant priority after hauling enough wood for fires and reaping maize from steep mountainsides. The whole place was dark and corroded, faces more taut than in the warm lake towns-- probably due to the fact that more than 100,000 people in the area were killed in a genocide that ended just 13 years ago. The plan was to arrive in Nebaj, stay at a Peace Corps-built hostel, hike for two days to visit even more remote settlements in the mountains, and then book it back to the warm recesses of San Pedro La Laguna, our home base.

Our optimistic 24-girl group set off up the trail mountain. We had come to Guatemala for various reasons-- some for the volunteer work, some to document local cooperatives and fair trade movements, some for vacation-- but all under the auspices of DreamWeavers, an NGO put together by Kai Zhang, BC '09. We had bonded after a week of hanging out with schoolchildren and exploring Lake Atitlan, and it was time to test our bonds by hiking the Cuchumatanes.

In the vein of our dispatch from Mongolia, Bwog friend Ernest Herrera, CC '09, tells us what's going on down south.

Since no one ever assumes I'm a 'gringo,' I can't always tell when my cover is blown in this country. However, I know better than to think I can completely 'fit in' when a rabbi in La Paz tries to convince me of my Jewish heritage as I don my Bolivian fedora, or when I — more through fatigue than misunderstanding the language — ask the money-changer how much a shoe-shine costs. But after a few months in South America, at least I'm comfortable enough to slip up with Spanish phrases in paragraphs I'm trying to write in English.

[At right: The scarred face of Cerro Rico, or 'The Mountain that eats men.' A mining mountain whose resources funded Spain's 17^th and 18^th century wars in Europe, and whose tin kept food fresh for Allies in World War I.]

Thanks to a crazy suggestion from our study abroad dean to travel sooner than later, I am spending this semester studying in Bolivia with the School for International Training (SIT). The group consists of twenty-six American university students, with interests ranging from theater to economic theory, based in Cochabamba, the just-right-porridge city in a country with regionalistic politics and extreme climates. We attend lectures from university professors, academics, and political and social leaders regarding 'culture and development' — a mix of history, politics, and anthropology. We also travel and have 'class' in the form of visits to places like the 'Birthplace of the Sun,' where the 2700 year-old Tiwanaku empire held its seat on an island in Lake Titicaca, and Cerro Rico, a mountain in Potosí that has claimed the lives of nearly eight million miners over the centuries that its silver and mineral ore have been exploited.

We noticed this article yesterday, but in case you didn't, here's the bit that might have to do with why it's hard getting your study abroad program approved:

"At many campuses, study abroad programs are run by multiple companies and nonprofit institutes that offer colleges generous perks to sign up students: free and subsidized travel overseas for officials, back-office services to defray operating expenses, stipends to market the programs to students, unpaid membership on advisory councils and boards, and even cash bonuses and commissions on student-paid fees. This money generally goes directly to colleges, not always to the students who take the trips.

Kathleen McDermott, director of global programs for liberal arts undergraduates at Columbia, said trips subsidized by outside providers posed no conflict because “our business is to evaluate programs...

Since 1998, Dr. McDermott said she had taken six such trips: one to Argentina and Chile, another to Uganda and Tanzania, and visits to Cuba, western China, Jordan and Morocco. The trips were sponsored, she said, by various providers.

The Butler institute sponsored one of Dr. McDermott's trips; Columbia, along with about 120 other institutions, is a member of the its national advisory council."

We're not saying Columbia bureaucracy could ever be corrupt or anything, but we can't help wondering whether it's harder than necessary to study where you want. If you've got stories, you know the address: bwog@columbia.edu.

BW staffer Kate Linthicum left us this semester for the wilds of Tibet and Bhutan, where's she's studying abroad and generally being cooler than those of us cloistered on College Walk. In one brief internet cafe session, she updated Bwog on her life.

Dear New York,

It's been a month and a half since I last strolled your smooth, shining streets, and I long for them now as I tumble across the Bhutanese countryside in a rickety van known by locals as the "vomit comet." This letter to you, just like the saccharine beats of The Blow pumping out of my ear buds, is a bit of deliberate escapism from these twisting, pockmarked roads. Six weeks of constant stimulation in the Himalayas, I think, warrants a bit of reflection.

I spent my first month of the semester in Dharamasala, India, a colorful, bustling town of Tibetan refugees tucked at the foothills of the Himalayas. I stayed in a 10 X 12 ft. room with a family of five Tibetans who recently fled China. They were sweet and funny people, and I already miss them. Almost immediately upon my arrival, the kids found out one of my most embarrassing childhood secrets, which led them to refer to me forevermore as "Baby Model." In the middle of the street or a crowded market they would call out to me in perfect British accents, "Baby model, would you like a piece of candy?" I later learned that self-deprecation is a key part of the Tibetan personality, and that any social blunder (and ensuing teasing) actually worked to my advantage. I learned this one evening after my host mother cooked me a plate of momos -- luscious little dumplings that are perhaps God's greatest gift to the Tibetan people. Like most nights, after eating I hugged my belly and said, in terrible Tibetan, "This food will make me fat!" Finally she told me that instead of saying "gyiakpar," the work for fat, I had all along been saying, "gyiakar," the word for shit.