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IA Event #2.6: International Picnic (Social)

International Picnic (Social)

Done on April 16, 2022 @1-3pm

My IA event for this month was an International Picnic event put on by LC members Nina and Tobi. This event was for the couple of people who signed up for the event to all meet at Smith-Steeb and then all catch the COTA bus together to take to downtown. We would all go to North Market and then the original plan was to have an outdoor picnic at the nearby Goodale Park, but that park of the plan had to be scrapped due to the weather conditions on that day. We all had $10 vouchers to get whatever international foods we wanted at North Market, and then we would re-meet up and all eat together before taking the COTA bus back to campus together.

I really liked this event personally. I will take any excuse to go to North Market, and when I was there I branched out and tried a type of food I had never had before, so I’ll consider it successful. I also got to meet a couple of people that I hadn’t known before that are on the LC, which was very helpful, and got to connect with other IA members I hadn’t met before. This event relates to IA because it includes different international foods, and it was created by two members of the IA LC.

IA Event #2.5: German Village Trip with Social Chair Madison Meixner

German Village Trip with Social Chair Madison Meixner

Done on March 5, 2022 @ 11:30 am

My IA event for this month was a German Village Trip hosted by social chair Madison Meixner. This event started with everyone in the group meeting at Smith-Steeb and taking a bus down to German Village. There, our group walked down to Stauf’s Coffee Shop where we each bought drinks, and then we headed further south to the Book Loft, which was the main point of our journey. I absolutely adored the Book Loft. It is a huge complex that is absolutely filled to the brim with books, containing 38 full rooms full of every genre you could possibly image. We had about an hour to explore the shop and then meet outside as a group. After this, we headed to a nearby bakery where we got some treats for the bus ride home, and then caught the bus back.

This event was probably one of my most favorite IA events that I’ve been to recently. I am an absolutely huge bookworm, and have been wanting to explore the Book Loft since I learned of it as a first year. I highly encourage anyone else to go, as it is a truly amazing experience. I also would recommend the coffee shop and bakery to everyone as well. This event is related to IA in many ways, two of which being that it was led by IA Social Chair Madison Meixner, and it occured in German Village.

IA Event #2.4: IA Movie Night: Flee (Social/Academic)

IA Movie Night: Flee

Done on February 20, 2022 @ 8pm

My IA event for this month was a movie night hosted in Smith-Steeb by IA LC Social Chair Madison Meixner. This movie was called Flee, and it is an animated Oscar-nominated documentary about a man named Amin. This documentary follows his life and tells his story of growing up in Afghanistan and having to flee once the Mujihadeen took over. He and his family (his mother, his brother, and his two sisters) fled to Moscow, since it was the only place that would take them, and they had to stay there for a couple of years while his brother living in Sweden scrounged up enough money to pay for them to be smuggled out. His sisters were smuggled out first, safely but traumatized, on a cargo ship. Him, his brother, and his mother then made a break for it, only to be caught by a Norwegian tourist ship. He himself was then given a chance to be smuggled out, where he was sent to Denmark instead of Sweden. He spent the rest of his life in Denmark when not doing research for Princeton University, and eventually married his partner Kasper.

I actually really enjoyed this event. It was very interesting to watch an animated documentary, as I don’t think that has been done before, and if it has I have not seen it. The story was very compelling and completely tugs on your heart strings. This movie did a very good job of making you very invested in the story and making you want to learn more about Amin. This event relates to international affairs because it deals with multiple different countries (Denmark, Russia, and Afghanistan) along with multiple human rights issues present today (refugees, war, human trafficking, asylum seekers).

IA Event #2.3: IA Book Club Meeting (Academic)

IA Book Club Meeting

Done on November 10, 2021 @ 7pm

My IA event for this month was the final book club meeting for the book The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun in the IA book club run my Fatoumata Bah. This took place in Haggerty Hall. During this meeting, the student organization Enlighten, which deals with Anti-Human Trafficking, came and presented to us about the value of a human life and how exploitation affects our society. We also discussed the second half of our book in different ways than the first half. The questions for the first half were much more tied to the individuals conflicts of the story itself, while these questions were much more broad and dealed with much wider topics. Some of these topics that were discussed had us scrutinizing our main character and her decisions, wondering just how different her morals and ethics were from our own. It also had us taking a look at those that lived on the island and were being devalued and treated horribly in their own society.

I really liked this book and would recommend it. It is unlike any book I have read before and has us constantly questioning the main character and her decisions. This event relates to IA because the book club itself is run by an IA member and the book deals with international problems and was written by a non-American.

IA Event #2.2: IA Book Club Meeting (Academic)

IA Book Club Meeting

Done on October 26, 2021 @ 6pm

My IA event for this month was going to the second official IA book club meeting ran by Fatoumata Bah. The meeting was in person in Hagerty Hall, and the book we are reading this month is called The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun and translated by Lizzie Buehler. The book is broadly about a Korean woman who works for a disaster tour company and almost quits her job but is instead offered an all- expenses paid trip using one of their packages to one of their destinations. She chooses to go on a sinkhole disaster trip to an island called Mui near Vietnam and accidentally gets stuck there without her passport, wallet, or anyway home and has to figure out what to do. At the meeting we discussed the main character’s background and how that might play into some of the motivations for her actions in the book so far.

Im very interested in this book so far. We are about half way through and it seems to be picking up the pace very quickly in this disaster scenario that our protagonist has found herself in. This even relates to IA because it both deals with other nations and cultures, and is run by a member of IA herself.

IA Event #2.1: Latinx Heritage Month Keynote Speaker: Saul Flores (Academic)

Latinx Heritage Month Keynote Speaker: Saul Flores

Done on September 23, 2021 @ 6pm

My first IA event of sophomore year was a speech celebrating Latinx Heritage Month by Saul Flores. This speech was in the Union in person. The speech centered around Flores’ own life and experiences and how ideas such as sacrifice and family have personally tied themselves into his identity as someone Latinx. He discussed his own story, being the son of two immigrants, one from Mexico and one from El Salvador, and how seeing that sacrifice that his parents made for him impacted his young life. This led him on a trip to Mexico in college to his mother’s hometown where he met all of the local children and learned that their school was being shut down. In response to this, he decided that he would raise the money and so started a program called Walk of the Immigrants where he walked himself from Ecuador to El Paso, TX, taking pictures the whole time and then selling them to fund the school. He was successful.

This event was both very emotional and very educational. It was both heart-wrenching and heartwarming to see what people decide to do and sacrifice in dedication to family. Saul Flores’ story also got picked up by TED, NPR, FOX, and Huffington Post. This event is related to IA because of the multiculturalism and the internationalism shown in Saul’s stories and experiences.

IA Event #13: “Pale Blue Dot”: History of our Environment (Academic)

“Pale Blue Dot”: History of our Environment

Done on April 22, 2021 @4pm

My thirteenth IA event was a webinar put on by the College of Arts and Sciences to celebrate Earth Day with four environmental historians: Nicholas Breyfogle, Kip Curtis, Jennifer Eaglin, and Bart Elmore. During this webinar the historians talked a lot about Carl Sagan and how much he has done to help our understanding of the Earth, the history of Earth Day, the EPA, and some things that we are doing now that really aren’t helping our planet. Earth Day actually started in the 1970’s by 20 million young people- the same people that were against the Vietnam War were also against the great fires at the time and the Great Smog of LA in ‘45. The ability of the EPA to do its job and actually enforce environment-saving laws has also declined over time due to new budget cuts and regulations. Some things that we are currently doing that are not helping the environment are overfishing, which is acidifying our oceans and killing our coral reefs.

This event was very educational. While I knew in a broad sense information about the environment, it was very interesting to learn more about it and Earth Day from a couple of actual environmental historians. This event is related to IA because it deals with social issues and the whole world in general.

IA Event #12: Global Comics Lecture Series: Comics and the Humanization of the …(Academic)

Global Comics Lecture Series: Comics and the Humanization of the Middle Eastern  Experience

Done on April 19, 2021 @2-3:30pm

My twelfth IA event was a webinar put on by the International and Area Studies along with the OSU Libraries guest starring Iasmin Omar Ata, who was the Middle Eastern comic artist in question. Iasmin was very informative, both giving us a brief history of queer and trans identity in the Middle East, along with broad sexuality in general. For most of history actually, sexuality in the Middle East was usually pretty broad and usually pretty accepted everywhere. Homosexuality was actually de-criminalized in the Middle East in the mid-1800s and was only really given the stigma it has now when British people and Christians started giving it more attention and stigmatizing it. This stigma that is now present in the Middle East only feeds into the stereotype that Middle Eastern nations are ‘backwards’, even though this mentality is very recent for the Middle East. Iasmin then presented some of their comics that discussed their views on the topic.

This event was very informational. It broached a pretty interesting topic that I had pretty much zero knowledge in before I attended the webinar. It was also very nice to be taught this stuff by someone who is Middle Eastern and also trans and queer- someone who this information personally affects and most likely knows tons of information on. This event relates to IA because it deals with multiple nations and how they view certain topics.

IA Event #11: PPiNK, Freedom Speakers International, KSA and UNA event on North Korea(Academic)

PPiNK, Freedom Speakers International, KSA and UNA event on North Korea

Done on March 16, 2021 @7pm

My eleventh IA event was a webinar put on with a joint effort of Pen Pals in North Korea (PPiNK), the Korean Student Association (KSA), the United Nations Association (UNA), and Freedom Speakers International, the main nonprofit that works with these North Korean refugees. The point of the webinar was to talk with Ken Eom, who is a North Korean refugee and former North Korean soldier now living in South Korea. Ken discussed both his past growing up in North Korea and some of his time their as a soldier, and parts of his life now that he is permanently living in South Korea, along with his views on certain topics. During the part of his presentation where Ken was discussing his time in the military, he stated things such as: the soldiers wore construction uniforms, on one directive to break up bridges, they broke up 90% of it with sledgehammers alone with no medical equiptment, training, safety clothing, and only one light, and during one incident where one of the bridges beams fell, it trapped 20 people under it for 2 hours with a couple of those ending up dying, multiple losing limbs or having some other type of serious injury, and nobody receiving compensation for it.

This event was extremely informational. Some of the things that Ken talked about I had no idea about before, and it was very educational to hear things about his own life in North Korea. It seemed like a kind of once-in-a-lifetime event, being able to sort-of speak to one of these people that has lived inside North Korea personally, instead of hearing snippets of their life stories either through a video or book. This event relates to IA because it contains multiple different nations and cultures, and an ongoing international conflict.

IA Event #10: IKS Lecture: Young-mee Cho, “Korean Songs: From Sijo to K-Pop” (Academic)

IKS Lecture: Young-mee Cho, “Korean Songs: From Sijo to K-Pop” (Academic)

Done on February 16, 2021 @ 4pm

My tenth IA event was a zoom webinar hosted by Young-mee Cho, a professor at Rutgers University. She discussed how Sijo, a three line verse poem usually set to music, has transformed over time into the modern day and especially into modern K-Pop. Sijo, as a form of poetry has been around since about the 14th century in Korea, with the beginnings of it happening during the late Koryo dynasty. Professor Cho showed clips of how traditional Sijo was performed during its beginning, how it transformed during the Choson dynasty, and yet how it can be seen today in K-Pop lyrics and modern writings. It is also starting to be taught in schools here in America as another type of poem with a somewhat characteristic rhyme scheme of 3-4-4-4, 3-4-4-4, 3-5-4-3.

This event was very informational and educational. As a K-Pop fan myself it taught me something that can be seen in the lyrics that I was not even aware existed. It also was nice exposure to a brand new type of poetry to myself, and a previously unknown part of traditional Korean culture that I was unaware of. This event is related to IA because it deals with other nations and other cultures.