Summer is the perfect opportunity for students to immerse themselves in other cultures and increase their language proficiency. UR's summer study abroad options, which take place over a shorter timeframe, are especially suited for student athletes, STEM majors, and others who may have difficulty being away from campus for traditional semester or academic-year programs.

Students studied French in Paris and La Rochelle, France, while also visiting the D-Day museum and walking on the D-Day beaches in Normandy. In San Jose, Costa Rica, students explored one of the most biodiverse countries in the world while studying Spanish in a university classroom. Students studying German explored Berlin.

Those who traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, explored the region while completing guided readings and hands-on research assignments. As part of a literature and empire course, students explored Georgian history. A course on travel writing encouraged students to write blogs and stories about hiking in the Caucasus to Georgian feasts. Students and faculty also traveled to Japan and Denmark, sharing their stories below.

Cultural immersion in Japan

Pierce Chancy studied this summer in Japan and discovered that rinsing off before immersing oneself in shared water is a rich cultural practice rooted in sustainability and community well-being.

“I was prepared for cultural differences like having to remove my shoes inside a home and adjusting to a new language, but then I learned that even the bathing culture is different,” Chancy said.

Chancy, a recent graduate in mathematics and computer science, studied Japanese for all four years at UR and is now fluent in the language. “I always enjoyed anime and manga as a kid and decided to pursue that interest by studying Japanese,” he said. “The Japanese language has three alphabets with over 40,000 characters between them, but you only need to know about 2000 to become fluent.”

Japanese professor Akira Suzuki led Chancy and other students across the island nation, including a few days of exploration in Tokyo and Nara. Chancy’s favorite places were Suzuki’s hometown of Kosai and Okinawa. A former chief priest led students on a private tour of the Great East Temple.

He enjoyed the prolific “conveyor belt sushi.” Diners customize and order from an iPad and then wait at their tables to pick it up from a conveyor belt, much like baggage claim at an airport. “It was kind of stressful and funny at first when you made your order because everyone else was waiting for you to go quickly and you didn’t want to grab someone else’s sushi accidentally,” Chancy said.

“I had a pre-conceived notion that the way of life in Japan might be more rigid, but this experience taught me that across the globe, people are still people,” Chancy said.

Art explorations in Copenhagen

Art professor Erling Sjovold and visual resources librarian Jeannine Keefer led students on a trip exploring studio art, art history, and architecture in Copenhagen.

Sjovold usually teaches oil and acrylic painting, but the summer trip provided the perfect opportunity to break out the watercolors. The art medium travels well and provides a great medium for studying light, which he said is fitting, since the city enjoys 17 hours of daylight during the summer.

“When the summer comes after long winters, the priority on socializing in Denmark is at an all-time high. There is a sense of community, interaction, and being outdoors. You see it as you’re going through the city. Walking and biking are the primary methods of travel, so our students were taking things in all the time.”

The group visited locations including the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the National Gallery of Denmark, and some went to the Cisterns, a subterranean dripstone cave that houses an immersive art exhibition space as part of the Frederiksberg Museums in Copenhagen. This year's work is a sound installation by Taryn Simon, "Start Again the Lament."

“We were suspended above the water in this space that once held all the clean drinking water for Copenhagen while being immersed in an incredibly moving sound piece of recordings on lament throughout cultures,” Sjovold said. “The absence of light was as powerful for our study as the light itself.”

On one side trip, students listened to a concert violinist performing experimental solo work at the Bloom, a science and nature festival. “One of our students, also a violinist, was completely enraptured,” Keefer said.

“We wanted students to look,” she said. “We wanted them to observe the people in the city around them and allow their learning to be directed by their interests that resulted from their observation.”