The Fries Center for Global Studies is releasing the first episode of Wes and the World: The Podcast next week! Click here to tune in and learn more! Here at the Fries Center, we work to make Wes a more knowledgeable, curious, and intercultural community. Languages, studying and working abroad, intercultural learning – there’s a…
By Roxana Ayala ’27 I’ve been playing a game for the past five months: how many times can one person get sick in a single semester abroad? So far, the answer is four. With a weak immune system and a long history of catching whatever is going around (shout out WesPlague), it felt inevitable that I would…
By Bre Jordan ’27 I pride myself on being good at directions, but I am forever getting lost in Hamburg. The Pearl of the North is a beautiful, modern city with a sophisticated public transportation network I rely on daily. Truly they make it very easy to use: trains and buses display the upcoming stops…
By Marthal Aderibigbe ’27 This semester, I decided to take a Korean Musical Culture class at Seoul National University. In this class, we learn about different types of traditional Korean music, including folk songs, pansori, classical vocal music, and court music. Before taking this class, I did not think much about traditional music, especially compared…
By Lisa Lu ’27 During my study at the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, I am taking an elective course called “Kyoto Artisans and their Worlds.” This class explores Kyoto’s centuries-old artistic traditions through visiting workshops and engaging with artisans directly. Every Tuesday, we visit different artisans working with a variety of mediums, including textiles,…
By Caroline Mancini The Spring 2026 Global Correspondents are here to share their journeys abroad! Global Correspondents are students who are studying abroad this semester, sharing snippets of their experiences with all of us. Get ready for takeovers of the study abroad Instagram and an article published by each student in the Wes and the…
By Sara Larson ’27 One of the things I’ve loved most, and will miss the most, about being in South Africa is how genuinely kind people are. South Africans are known for their warm, open nature, and I can honestly say they cultivate a deeply caring culture. I’ve been lucky to become close with a few local students, mostly…
By Sara Larson ’27 Academic Life Through the CIEE Arts and Sciences program, I have started my semester taking three classes at the University of Cape Town and one class with my CIEE program. UCT is a large university with nearly 30,000 students, so it has been interesting attending lectures with more than 200 students. At UCT I…
By Luné Ariel Maldonado, Class of 2027, She/Her Studying abroad is not as easy of a matter as it appears within stories or even testimonies from other students, and I had been really feeling the brunt of that by the time I was a month into my studies in the city of Melbourne in Australia. Being…
By Rachel Walker, ’27 When I arrived in Nepal, I had never seen a rice paddy before. I came to learn that the green I saw painted all around my host family’s home was rice, for as long as I could see. In Nepali, there are three words for rice. Dhaan is unhusked rice growing…
