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1998-2001 Student Research

Am I a Tourist or Guest?  Studying abroad in Brazil

By Renée Rinaldi         

Where is the line between tourists and guests?  When you visit a country as a student, which identity do you possess?  To me a tourist is someone who visits another country to see what it is like.  The definition of traveling for them is to have fun and relax.  Getting away from work is the main objective, therefore, fun is not associated with intellectual involvement.  Perhaps, tourists read a little blurb about the history and culture of a country in a guide book, but for the most part, they can only understand things at face value.  For them, understanding can be only superficial.

Tourism, Work and Study in Ouro Preto and São Paulo

By Vanessa Berman    

 The first trip on the study tour, to Ouro Preto, exposed me to a drastically different experience from São Paulo.  The atmosphere of the town, the people, and the actual setting are completely different from where I had lived for two months.  In one of our class discussions in Ouro Preto, someone brought up that they felt like there were in another country.  That was exactly how I felt.

A First Time Feeling:  Being a tourist in Caruaru

By Sara Donohue    

I have never felt more like a tourist than in Recife.  Throughout the whole study tour, I never once felt like I was a tourist, so far only while in Recife, specifically on our trip to the Caruaru regional markets, “Feira.”