Point/Counterpoint
Bringing foreign experiences back home to friends, Loyola
Xavier Calloway and Gretchen McGillicuddy
Issue date: 9/5/07 Section: Opinion
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Xavier Calloway
Welcome back long lost Loyola students!! So good to see you made it back safe from your abroad experiences. Let me be the first to say we're damn glad to have you back. Let me also be the first to say you can nip those pretentious abroad tales right in the bud.
"Wait, you mean to say you don't enjoy my new penchant for saying simple phrases in different languages, Lo Siento Chico!" Inevitably you people will flood my doorstep with tales of picturesque landscapes, exotic beaches, and trendy nightclubs, so let me be clear how I feel about these stories.
When you tell me these things you're assuming two things; the first is that I actually care, and the second is that these stories are interesting. You might as well be explaining the movie "Bio-Dome" to me.
But I am a realist; I know you just want to share your new love of tapas, Australian men, and bungee jumping with me regardless of my interest level. So it's only fair, gentle reader, that I too share one of my abroad experiences with you.
My journey began, as many journeys do, at the airport. I anxiously awaited my flight to the exotic coastal city of Baltimore.
When we landed I found myself so excited I couldn't hold a thought in my head. The locals spoke mainly of the indigenous wildlife, but strangely they loathed the Oriole, a bird that I had not yet seen in person. Once I arrived in town I took to the streets to seek out some fun.
My first stop was an eatery called Chicken Run, which in Balti-ese means place where you eat fried chicken. Let me back up a bit, I don't want to overwhelm you.
Fried chicken is a local concoction of chicken parts which are breaded and fried, how bizarre! Hopelessly trying to fit in I ordered a two piece box with a purple drank, as the Balti-people call it, and took my food outside.
I was approached by what seemed to be a community leader dressed in sagging black jeans with a black tee shirt reading "Stop Snitching."
He asked me if I was new in town and if I was alone. I must say the local Baltis are so friendly. After a few minutes I paid a tourist fee, as he explained it, and received a punch to the stomach which I assumed was a local custom.
With my wallet a bit lighter and my lunch finished I went to get a hair cut at a nearby barber shop, Nappee by Nature. I didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb, silly.
When I walked through the door everyone stared at me, I thought I must have had ketchup on my shirt or something. It turns out, and let me try and get the Balti-ese right on this one, a cracker such as myself ain't got no way of repping fresh dreds up in da northside.' Â
After that I figured it was time to scope out a nice watering hole and enjoy an adult beverage. I entered an establishment called Swallow at the Hallow which in Balti-ese means home of cheap beer and freshmen women. I asked the bartender for his finest homegrown beer. Natty Bo was a delectably hoppy potion brewed in honor of a cartoon character that lost his eye in a horrible dart throwing accident. After a few brews it was time to hit the dusty trail, so for the reasonable price of 37 Balti-dollars a yellow cab took me back to my hotel a few blocks away.
And that concludes my tale from the Charm City and I look forward to staring blankly at you and nodding my head as you regale me with tales of your time abroad.
I have to be honest, I'm not 100 percent in love with your tone right now. Listen, just because you couldn't meet the GPA requirement to study abroad due to your D in Common Sense 101 doesn't mean that I didn't have a kick-ass time abroad.
Gretchen McGillicuddy
And what's with the lack of gratitude? I'm doing you a favor here.
Since I pity your humble beginnings and admire the strength with which you've fought against juvenile male anorexia for so long I figured I could enrich your life by vicariously taking you to the exotic locales I've seen with mine own eyes.
But I guess we don't see eye to eye there. So since you're being so salty about this whole abroad thing, I guess you won't get the chance to hear about my trip to the Coliseum in Rome.
Ever hear of it? Yeah, didn't think so.
And you also won't be hearing about the really sweet Starbucks I went to in Vienna.
I wonder if you even know what a Starbucks looks like.
The bottom line is this, regardless of the specifics of the trips I took while I was globe gallivanting (trips whose descriptions will not grace your ears) the important point to take home is this: it is my right and my prerogative to tell you all the inane details of my adventures.
I don't care if you have no interest in the hang-gliding that I did, that's not the point.
The point is that I did it and you didn't.
Rubbing the fact that you studied abroad in the faces of those who didn't is well more than half the reason why anyone studies abroad.
Why else would you voluntarily sit in coach for a minimum of eight hours, only to live in a dorm hall with the strangest members of foreign cultures in apartments that are smaller than a single bedroom at Loyola while taking classes that may not even count towards your degree.
And why would you sample food from other countries that only tourists would order with other Loyola kids who you'll pretend to like for a short while before promising to stay in touch and then secretly deleting them as a friend on Facebook?
What I am trying to say is you owe me a solid five minutes of your time to allow me to gain something useful out of this whole experience by making you feel miserable.
And just so we're clear, "Bio-Dome" was a sick movie.
Welcome back long lost Loyola students!! So good to see you made it back safe from your abroad experiences. Let me be the first to say we're damn glad to have you back. Let me also be the first to say you can nip those pretentious abroad tales right in the bud.
"Wait, you mean to say you don't enjoy my new penchant for saying simple phrases in different languages, Lo Siento Chico!" Inevitably you people will flood my doorstep with tales of picturesque landscapes, exotic beaches, and trendy nightclubs, so let me be clear how I feel about these stories.
When you tell me these things you're assuming two things; the first is that I actually care, and the second is that these stories are interesting. You might as well be explaining the movie "Bio-Dome" to me.
But I am a realist; I know you just want to share your new love of tapas, Australian men, and bungee jumping with me regardless of my interest level. So it's only fair, gentle reader, that I too share one of my abroad experiences with you.
My journey began, as many journeys do, at the airport. I anxiously awaited my flight to the exotic coastal city of Baltimore.
When we landed I found myself so excited I couldn't hold a thought in my head. The locals spoke mainly of the indigenous wildlife, but strangely they loathed the Oriole, a bird that I had not yet seen in person. Once I arrived in town I took to the streets to seek out some fun.
My first stop was an eatery called Chicken Run, which in Balti-ese means place where you eat fried chicken. Let me back up a bit, I don't want to overwhelm you.
Fried chicken is a local concoction of chicken parts which are breaded and fried, how bizarre! Hopelessly trying to fit in I ordered a two piece box with a purple drank, as the Balti-people call it, and took my food outside.
I was approached by what seemed to be a community leader dressed in sagging black jeans with a black tee shirt reading "Stop Snitching."
He asked me if I was new in town and if I was alone. I must say the local Baltis are so friendly. After a few minutes I paid a tourist fee, as he explained it, and received a punch to the stomach which I assumed was a local custom.
With my wallet a bit lighter and my lunch finished I went to get a hair cut at a nearby barber shop, Nappee by Nature. I didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb, silly.
When I walked through the door everyone stared at me, I thought I must have had ketchup on my shirt or something. It turns out, and let me try and get the Balti-ese right on this one, a cracker such as myself ain't got no way of repping fresh dreds up in da northside.' Â
After that I figured it was time to scope out a nice watering hole and enjoy an adult beverage. I entered an establishment called Swallow at the Hallow which in Balti-ese means home of cheap beer and freshmen women. I asked the bartender for his finest homegrown beer. Natty Bo was a delectably hoppy potion brewed in honor of a cartoon character that lost his eye in a horrible dart throwing accident. After a few brews it was time to hit the dusty trail, so for the reasonable price of 37 Balti-dollars a yellow cab took me back to my hotel a few blocks away.
And that concludes my tale from the Charm City and I look forward to staring blankly at you and nodding my head as you regale me with tales of your time abroad.
I have to be honest, I'm not 100 percent in love with your tone right now. Listen, just because you couldn't meet the GPA requirement to study abroad due to your D in Common Sense 101 doesn't mean that I didn't have a kick-ass time abroad.
Gretchen McGillicuddy
And what's with the lack of gratitude? I'm doing you a favor here.
Since I pity your humble beginnings and admire the strength with which you've fought against juvenile male anorexia for so long I figured I could enrich your life by vicariously taking you to the exotic locales I've seen with mine own eyes.
But I guess we don't see eye to eye there. So since you're being so salty about this whole abroad thing, I guess you won't get the chance to hear about my trip to the Coliseum in Rome.
Ever hear of it? Yeah, didn't think so.
And you also won't be hearing about the really sweet Starbucks I went to in Vienna.
I wonder if you even know what a Starbucks looks like.
The bottom line is this, regardless of the specifics of the trips I took while I was globe gallivanting (trips whose descriptions will not grace your ears) the important point to take home is this: it is my right and my prerogative to tell you all the inane details of my adventures.
I don't care if you have no interest in the hang-gliding that I did, that's not the point.
The point is that I did it and you didn't.
Rubbing the fact that you studied abroad in the faces of those who didn't is well more than half the reason why anyone studies abroad.
Why else would you voluntarily sit in coach for a minimum of eight hours, only to live in a dorm hall with the strangest members of foreign cultures in apartments that are smaller than a single bedroom at Loyola while taking classes that may not even count towards your degree.
And why would you sample food from other countries that only tourists would order with other Loyola kids who you'll pretend to like for a short while before promising to stay in touch and then secretly deleting them as a friend on Facebook?
What I am trying to say is you owe me a solid five minutes of your time to allow me to gain something useful out of this whole experience by making you feel miserable.
And just so we're clear, "Bio-Dome" was a sick movie.
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