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Table of Contents

"I Know I Have Changed": Encounters with Zen in Japan

By Camelback to Timbuktu

The Seasons Come and Go:
Impressions of a Peace Corps Tenure in Ghana

Summerterm in Nepal:
More Than They Bargained for

To Russia, With Love

Learning Outside the Classroom: The FTAA Protests in Quebec City

"Yon ti dlo fret"
(A Little Cold Water)

Student Initiative

Memories of Afghanistan

Laurentians in the Peace Corps

SLU International Programs

Alumni Accomplishments

Class Notes

Magazine Cover

Summerterm in Nepal:
More Than They Bargained for

By Macreena A. Doyle

When a group of faculty and students traveled to Nepal for a 2001 Summerterm course that would focus on contrasting world views of several issues, they got perhaps more than they had originally bargained for.
Participants in the course The Personal and the Planetary: An Enlightened Interface were in Nepal June 1, when a member of that country's royal family allegedly murdered several other members of the family before committing suicide, throwing the nation into a crisis. For several days, the group had to remain in their hotel, under an imposed curfew; the U.S. State Department issued a warning, recommending no travel to Nepal for Americans. After a lot of uncertainty, they did leave the country safely, returning home only a few days ahead of their original schedule.
"There are things you just can't do with a slide show in the classroom," explains Catherine Tedford, director of the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and co-instructor for the course, noting that the group visited a women's community development program, a Buddhist monastery, sacred sites, handicraft organizations and more.

1. Associate professor of environmental studies Laura Fredrickson, second from left, and members of a community forestry user group in Pharping village, near Kathmandu. Fredrickson and the St. Lawrence students discussed land use, discovering it is viewed very differently in Nepal than it is in America. The cloud-draped Himalayas are in the background.

2. Lydia Brown '03, Fitzwilliam, N.H., right, seemed to be enjoying hands-on education at Nepal Creative Women's Craft in Kathmandu. She was learning to make lokta paper from the daphne plant.