Kwantlen Polytechnic University

By Alice Wang, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, winner of the 2017 Stories from Abroad Scholarship and member of the BC Study Abroad Writer in Residence Team

My Chinese heritage became very salient to me during my study-abroad. At every city I went, I had someone, often a man, shout out greetings to me in Mandarin on the street. Why they would even think that to be an appropriate behavior is beyond me. And yet these borderline discriminatory remarks enticed me to reflect on what it felt like to wear my ethnicity so visibly around me.

By: Alice (Ruo Ran) Wang, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, winner of the 2017 Stories from Abroad Scholarship.

By: Alice (Ruo Ran) Wang, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, winner of the 2017 Stories from Abroad Scholarship.

I am sitting on the train heading to a small town in Germany called Kassel. The quinquennial contemporary art festival—documenta—is taking place there and as a budding art historian, it is imperative that I visit it during my artistic pilgrimage. After two weeks in Paris, I am looking forward to being in a smaller city. Big cities have their glamour and dynamics, but it is in the countryside that we find the space and air to breath.

By: Alice (Ruo Ran) Wang, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, winner of the 2017 Stories from Abroad Scholarship.

By: Matthew Hoogwoud, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, winner of the 2017 Stories from Abroad Scholarship.

By: Matthew Hoogwoud, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, winner of the 2017 Stories from Abroad Scholarship.

“I’m terrified. I have never done something like this before!”

These were the thoughts that were rolling around in my mind during the twelve-hour flight to my exchange destination, Kyoto, Japan. It felt like the longest twelve hours that I have experienced in recent years as I sat nervously in my seat watching the on-screen map move incrementally towards Japan. I don’t even know how to cook properly, I thought.